Heartbeat vs NodeBB

Heartbeat is a paid platform for running online communities, with Android and iOS apps. Its listed features include private spaces, event hosting, moderation tools and custom domains. Plans vary by community size: Build supports up to 350 members, Grow up to 5,000 and Scale has unlimited members. Build costs $49 a month billed monthly; Grow costs $149 a month billed monthly; Scale costs $849 a month billed monthly. Build includes five automation workflows and one custom landing page. Grow includes unlimited automation workflows and 50 hours of native video hosting. Scale includes 50 custom landing pages, 200 hours of native video hosting and a white-label branded mobile app. Native video hosting is also available as a $19 a month add-on for 50 hours of storage. Integrations include Zapier, Zoom, Outlook Calendar, Google Calendar, Slack, Circle and Peerboard imports. The 14-day trial does not become a continuing free plan: communities are deactivated if they are not upgraded afterward, and inactive communities are automatically deleted after 30 days.

NodeBB is a community discussion platform for forums and online communities, including brand communities and product support boards. Members can write topics and replies using a visual editor or Markdown, chat in real time, and receive notifications for follows, likes and topic subscriptions. They can form groups with activity feeds, tag topics and follow tags for updates. Administrators can create unlimited moderator and administrator accounts and set their permissions. More than 500 plugins and themes can be installed through the control panel, and public Read and RESTful Write APIs support integrations. Spam-prevention integrations include Akismet, StopForumSpam and Project Honeypot. Self-hosted NodeBB is free to download and install under GPLv3; hosted plans start at $20 a month and include priority support. Basic full-text search uses the bundled database engine; Solr and Elasticsearch search require third-party plugins. Installation guides cover Linux, macOS, Windows and cloud deployment options including Docker.