Leaving Skool for a community you own.
Skool is the easiest community to join and the hardest to leave. Here’s what you lose, what you gain, and when to stay.
Danica LouweUpdated 5 min readStay if Skool’s Discovery page is sending you members. Move if you want your own domain and brand, no cut on each payment, and features Skool doesn’t have. Only names and emails come with you, so courses are rebuilt and the feed starts fresh. Skool stays open until the last renewal has moved.
Skool is the best front door on the internet. It is a rented room behind it.
Skool wins because joining takes two clicks, the community and the classroom share one screen, and Discovery sends members to you. Owners start looking at the exit when the cut on every payment adds up, when their brand outgrows the Skool look, or when they want one thing Skool does not do: a quiz, a certificate, a members-only page on their own domain, an email sequence.
The cut
Hobby is $9 a month plus 10% of every payment; Pro is $99 plus 2.9%. Growth Boost takes a share of the revenue it brings. On $10k a month, Skool’s fee is about $12,000 a year on Hobby or $3,480 on Pro, plus the plan.
Everyone’s community looks the same
Same layout, same app, your logo in the corner. For a coach that is fine. For a brand that charges premium prices, members notice they are in someone else’s building.
The classroom has a ceiling
Modules and lessons only. No quizzes, no certificates, no drip by progress, no email beyond notifications. Owners bolt on a second tool, and the seam between the two is where access breaks.
Only the names leave with you
Export is members’ names and emails. Posts, courses and progress stay. The longer you wait, the more there is to leave behind, which is why the decision gets harder every month.
First we test whether you should move at all.
Some Skool communities should stay on Skool. We check these before recommending anything.
- Where new members come from: Discovery and Growth Boost, or your own audience. If Skool is your acquisition channel, leaving it is a marketing decision first.
- What the cut costs you now, and at the size you are planning for, against hosting and the hours to run your own site.
- What members do inside: feed, classroom, calls, DMs. The pattern tells us what the new site must do on day one and what can wait.
- What you are missing: quizzes, certificates, email sequences, a members-only page, your own domain, a look that matches your brand.
- The payment path: who is on which plan, when each renews, and how to move subscriptions without charging anyone twice.
- The stay-put answer. If the numbers say stay, we say stay, and name the three things to fix on Skool instead.
What comes with you, and what doesn’t.
Comes with you
- Members’ names and email addresses, as a CSV
Rebuilt or left behind
- Posts and comments
- Course content
- Course progress
If you move: keep what members liked, own the rest.
The goal is a site that feels like Skool on the first login, with the parts Skool could not give you underneath. Here is the order.
- 1
Export members, inventory the rest
The CSV of names and emails. Then a list of every course, module and pinned post, and which ones are actually used. The unused ones do not move.
- 2
Install MemBuild Community on your WordPress
Feed with stories and reels, classroom, nine levels, leaderboard, private chats. Free. Set the level names and what each one unlocks; that is the gamification members came for.
- 3
Rebuild the classroom, add what Skool could not
Modules and lessons recreated in the plugin or in LearnDash if you need quizzes and certificates. Courses locked behind a level or a membership tier so members earn the next thing.
- 4
Payments on your own account
Stripe or PayPal into a membership plugin, tags into your CRM, the access rule on every course. A test purchase, a failed card and a cancel, as a member, before anyone real pays.
- 5
Import members, announce the reset, run both for a cycle
Users created from the CSV with the plugin’s Import, which can send the welcome email with a password link. Plans are attached, and the leaderboard restarts at level one for everyone. Skool stays open until the last renewal has moved.
How owners describe it
“I am building an investor community, and it just feels more high-level than the look SKOOL gives you.”
“I have course videos that I have placed inside of a Facebook group that I am wanting to migrate over into a Skool group.”
Watch it done
Why Skool took off: one screen, community and classroom together, join in two clicks, and a Discovery page that sends members to you. The things worth keeping when you leave, and the things you cannot take with you.
Questions owners ask
Can I export my Skool community?
Members, yes: names and email addresses as a CSV. Posts, comments, course content and progress do not export. Courses are rebuilt (they are modules and lessons, so it is quick); the feed starts fresh, which is usually fine because most of what matters is the live conversation, which restarts on the new site.
Will I lose the leaderboard and levels my members like?
No. MemBuild Community has nine levels, points for posting, helping and finishing, and a leaderboard by week, month and all time. Members start at level one on the new site, and we announce it as a reset so the race restarts.
What about Discovery traffic?
That is the real trade. Skool’s Discovery page and Growth Boost send members to you from inside Skool; a WordPress site has no equivalent. What you get instead is pages Google can index and a list you own. If Discovery is a large share of your new members today, we will say so, and may say stay.
Is the WordPress version free?
The community plugin is free and stays free: feed, stories, reels, courses that unlock by level, levels, leaderboard, chats. You pay for hosting and, if you want it, our time to move you.
Can members keep paying the same way?
Payments move to Stripe or PayPal on your own account, through a membership plugin. Subscriptions are recreated at the member’s next renewal date so nobody pays twice. You keep 100% minus processing, instead of Skool’s cut.
