OpenEscool gives you a feed, courses, events, leaderboards, chat and paid memberships under your own name and domain. Install it once, run as many communities as you want, and never pay a per-group fee again.
Hosted platforms rent you a corner of their app. OpenEscool gives you the whole building.
Hosted platforms charge per community. With OpenEscool you pay only for your server, so a second, fifth or fiftieth community costs nothing extra.
Your members never see other creators' groups. They can only discover, join and switch between your communities, and members can't DM each other, so nobody can quietly pull them away.
Your domain, name and logo everywhere. Your own database, your own email list in Brevo, and the full source code to change anything you like.
Compared with a hosted plan at $99 per month for each community (Skool's Pro plan price at the time of writing).
Check the current price on Hostinger.
Payment gateway fees (Stripe, Razorpay) apply either way. OpenEscool adds no fee of its own.
And a few things the big platforms don't offer.
Same core features. Very different ownership.
| OpenEscool | Skool | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free and open source; you pay only for hosting | $99/month per group on the Pro plan* |
| Number of communities | Unlimited on one server | Each group billed separately* |
| Platform fee on your sales | None | Transaction fee on each sale* |
| Other creators' groups shown to your members | Never | Listed on Skool's public Discovery page* |
| Your own domain, name and logo | Yes | Runs on skool.com* |
| Own and move your data | Your own database | Hosted by Skool |
| Change the code, add features | Yes | No |
| Razorpay and UPI for India | Yes | Not offered* |
| SEO per community and per post | Yes | Not offered* |
| Member-to-member DMs | Off: chat with your team only | On by default* |
| Courses, events, levels, leaderboards | Yes | Yes |
* Based on Skool's public website and plans at the time of writing; they may change. Check skool.com for the latest. Skool is a trademark of its owner. OpenEscool is an independent open-source project and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Skool.
Copy-and-paste steps. No coding needed.
A Hostinger KVM 1 is enough to start. Choose Ubuntu 24.04 and point your domain at it.
PHP, MySQL, Nginx and Node with one command block from the guide.
git clone, fill in .env, and run the setup commands.
Free SSL, then sign up: the first account becomes the admin. Create your community.
Get a Hostinger VPS and follow the step-by-step guide.
Yes. It's open source under the AGPL-3.0 licence, so you can use, change and run it for your communities at no cost. You pay only for your server and domain, plus the normal fees of Stripe or Razorpay when members pay you.
No. The install guide is copy and paste. After that, everything (email keys, branding, home page, upload limits, SEO) is set inside the app's Admin settings.
As many as your server can handle; OpenEscool has no limits. A small VPS is fine for most creators; move to a bigger plan as you grow.
Admin settings shows when a new version is out. Back up, then run php artisan app:update on your server, or use the one-click button.
Only communities on your own install, and you decide which ones show on the home page. You can even make the home page open your main community directly.
Post questions, bugs and ideas at openescool.userjot.com.