Heartbeat is live · pricing from $49/mo · last verified 24 Oct 2026 · viability healthy
Heartbeat
Build a paid membership community with Pulse AI — courses, events, and payments on your own domain.
Worth the money if your community is the business and you'd rather describe your setup to Pulse AI than click through settings pages. The transaction-fee ladder is the real decision variable — 5% on Build, 2.5% on Grow, 1.25% on Scale on top of Stripe — so once you're processing a few thousand a month, jumping from $49 to $149/mo pays for itself. Circle is cheaper to start with more integrations; Kajabi is deeper on course marketing.
Verdict generatedVerified 5d ago · liveness 79/100 · cite: rightaichoice.com/tools/heartbeat
- Creators running a paid membership community where members interact with each other
- Coaches and consultants delivering cohort programs alongside live sessions
- Businesses consolidating community, courses, events and payments on their own domain
- Rapid launchers who want Pulse AI to set up structure and offers from a prompt
- Course-only businesses that don't need member interaction — Kajabi fits better
- Event-only organizers who don't need community or course delivery
- Communities planning to pass 350 members without moving off Build
We scan live Reddit threads, YouTube comments, X posts, G2 reviews and other communities — and hand you an honest verdict in under a minute.
- Honest verdict, not marketing
- Real pros & cons from real users
- Attributed quotes with receipts
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Skip Heartbeat if you sell courses to an audience that never needs to talk to each other and you want the deepest course-marketing funnel — you'd be paying for member infrastructure you won't use.
Our "biggest gripe" note written Oct 20, 2026 quotes $124, $766, $9,200, which no longer matches the verified price table, so it is being re-reviewed and is not shown.
Our price-reality note written Oct 20, 2026 quotes $40, $124, $766, $9,200, which no longer matches the verified price table, so it is being re-reviewed and is not shown.
In short
Heartbeat — Build a paid membership community with Pulse AI — courses, events, and payments on your own domain. Best for Creators running a paid membership community where members interact with each other, Coaches and consultants delivering cohort programs alongside live sessions, Businesses consolidating community, courses, events and payments on their own domain. Plans from $49/mo.
No head-to-head comparison for Heartbeat yet — the alternatives below are the closest matches we list.
What is Heartbeat?
Heartbeat — Build a paid membership community with Pulse AI — courses, events, and payments on your own domain. Best for Creators running a paid membership community where members interact with each other, Coaches and consultants delivering cohort programs alongside live sessions, Businesses consolidating community, courses, events and payments on their own domain. Plans from $49/mo.
Heartbeat is a creator community platform where paid memberships, courses, live events, and checkout all run on your own domain and branded app instead of being split across half a dozen subscriptions. It's built for coaches, educators, and membership businesses where the community itself is the product, not a funnel bonus. The vendor cites 37,000+ communities built and $27M+ paid out to builders. The core is a real community layer: organized channels with threaded discussions, private channels limited to paid members or access groups, direct and group messaging, member profiles, roles, badges, gamification, and a searchable directory. Courses run evergreen, drip, or cohort-based with modules, lessons, quizzes, assignments, and progress tracking, and discussion is attached to every lesson. Events cover live video workshops with RSVPs, reminders, calendar sync, automatic recordings and replays, recurring series, and office hours. Payments, landing pages, documents, and automation workflows round it out — subscriptions, one-time and tiered pricing, coupons, trials, offers, an affiliate program on Grow and up, and native video hosting (50 hours on Grow, 200 on Scale). Transaction fees fall as you climb: 5% on Build, 2.5% on Grow, 1.25% on Scale, on top of Stripe. Pulse AI is the hook: describe your community and it takes real actions — setting up spaces, channels, first pages, offers, courses, events, and workflows — rather than suggesting steps you execute yourself. Against Circle, which starts cheaper with a larger integration library, and Kajabi, which goes deeper on pure course marketing, Heartbeat's pitch is consolidation plus an AI that does the building in your brand voice.
Key features
- Pulse AI builds spaces, channels, pages, offers, courses, events and workflows from a prompt
- Organized channels with threaded discussions and a community feed
- Private channels restricted to paid members or access groups
- Direct and group messaging between members
- Live voice and video rooms for community calls
- Member profiles, roles, badges, gamification and searchable directory
- Branded web app on a custom domain
- White-label mobile app with push notifications on Scale
- Evergreen, drip and cohort-based courses with quizzes and assignments
- Discussion attached to every course lesson
- Live video events and workshops with RSVPs, reminders and calendar sync
- Automatic event recordings and replays, recurring series and office hours
- Subscriptions, one-time and tiered pricing with built-in checkout
- Coupons, trials, upsells, waitlists, access groups and affiliate program
- Automation workflows, auto-responder and DM rules
Our long-form take written Oct 24, 2026 quotes $125, which no longer matches the verified price table, so it is being re-reviewed and is not shown.
Models under the hood
as of 2026-10-23
Limitations
- Build is capped at 350 members, and the pricing page is explicit that admins and moderators count toward that total.
- Heartbeat also keeps a transaction fee on top of Stripe's processing fee: 5% on Build, 2.5% on Grow, 1.25% on Scale.
- Native video hosting is metered at 50 hours on Grow and 200 hours on Scale.
- API access, white-label emails, custom retention flows and the affiliate program all start on Grow at $149/mo month-to-month ($124/mo billed annually).
- The branded white-label mobile app, advanced analytics and a dedicated onboarding expert are Scale features at $849/mo month-to-month ($766/mo billed annually).
- Build also caps automation workflows at 5 and custom landing pages at 1.
as of 2026-10-20
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Is Heartbeat still active?
Heartbeat is live · pricing from $49/mo · last verified 24 Oct 2026 · viability healthy.
Viability score
How well maintained and how widely used is Heartbeat? Built from what the vendor actually publishes (docs, changelog, tutorials, integrations, pricing), whether the site is live, and how much real users discuss it. How we calculate this
Last calculated: October 2026
How we score →What's new in Heartbeat
Checked 10 days agoAcross the latest 3 updates: 3 news mentions.
Membership and course pricing calculator
A free tool showing what paying communities charge monthly by niche and what price covers a creator's time.
Gumroad Alternative: Heartbeat vs. Gumroad
Positioning comparison: Gumroad targets product sales, Heartbeat targets what buyers do after the sale.
Beacons Alternative: Heartbeat vs. Beacons
Positioning comparison: Beacons centers on a link-in-bio, while Heartbeat pitches member-to-member community.
What do users say about Heartbeat?
What people actually say about Heartbeat — is it worth it?
We scanned public community sources for Heartbeat on Aug 5, 2026 and could not establish that the discussion we found is about this tool rather than something else sharing its name. Our own analysis of that scan says the posts were off-subject. Rather than publish a sentiment score built on the wrong subject, we publish nothing here and re-run the scan.
How we verified this
Every listed fact about Heartbeat— pricing, features, links, status — is re-read from the vendor's own pages by our verification pipeline and each change is logged with a date; the last pass ran on 24 Oct 2026. Pages mix model-assisted synthesis with human review; see how we verify.
Verification history
We have re-verified Heartbeat 18 times since . Each pass re-reads the vendor's own pages and re-checks every listed field against that evidence; passes where nothing had changed are marked as such.
- — changed features, summary, our verdict, who should skip it, description, pricing tiers
- — changed pricing page
- — changed who should skip it, use cases, description, summary, our verdict, who it suits, features, setup time, hidden costs, pricing fit, limitations, pricing tiers, switching in, switching out
- — changed who should skip it, who it suits, summary, description, our verdict, features, pricing tiers
- — changed pricing page
- — changed our verdict, summary, who it suits, who should skip it, integrations, description, features, pricing tiers
Showing the 6 most recent of 18 verification passes.
Free to cite with attribution — this page re-verifies continuously.
How much does Heartbeat cost in 2026?
Heartbeat: Plans from $49/mo. Pricing last verified 24 Oct 2026.
Plans compared
Every published Heartbeat tier, its price as the vendor publishes it, who it fits, and what it adds over the tier below. The 12-month cost projection follows.
| Plan | Price | Billing | Who it's for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Build | $49/mo | monthly | A solo coach or creator launching a first paid community under 350 members who wants a custom domain and checkout without a large monthly bill.Adds: Starting tier at $49/mo month-to-month or $40/mo billed annually: 350 members, Pulse AI, unlimited channels/courses/events, 5 automation workflows, 1 custom landing page and a 5% transaction fee. |
| Grow | $149/mo | monthly | An educator already selling memberships who needs automation, white-label email, native video and API access, with a member base between 350 and 5,000.Adds: Adds 5,000 members, unlimited automation workflows, auto-responder and DM rules, 50 hours of native video, white-label emails, 15 landing pages, retention flows, affiliate program, API access and a 2.5% transaction fee. |
| Scale | $849/mo | monthly | A high-growth community business that needs a branded mobile app, advanced analytics and a dedicated onboarding expert, with no member ceiling.Adds: Adds unlimited members, the white-label mobile app, advanced analytics, 50 custom landing pages, 200 hours of native video, a dedicated onboarding expert, same-day support and a 1.25% transaction fee. |
12-month cost
Project the real annual outlay, including the implied monthly cost when only an annual tier is published.
Vendor list price only. Add-on usage, seat overages, and contract minimums are surfaced under Hidden costs & gotchas.
Our hidden-costs note written Oct 20, 2026 quotes $124, $766, $9,200, which no longer matches the verified price table, so it is being re-reviewed and is not shown.
Our price-fit note written Oct 20, 2026 quotes $40, $124, $766, $9,200, which no longer matches the verified price table, so it is being re-reviewed and is not shown.
Has Heartbeat's pricing changed?
No plan price for Heartbeat has moved since we began logging in Aug 2026; the pricing page is re-read on every verification pass.
Who should pick Heartbeat?
Pick Heartbeat if you are Creators running a paid membership community where members interact with each other, Coaches and consultants delivering cohort programs alongside live sessions, Businesses consolidating community, courses, events and payments on their own domain, Rapid launchers who want Pulse AI to set up structure and offers from a prompt.
Look elsewhere if you are Course-only businesses that don't need member interaction — Kajabi fits better, Event-only organizers who don't need community or course delivery, Communities planning to pass 350 members without moving off Build, Teams wanting a WordPress-native or self-hosted setup.
Skip it if Skip Heartbeat if you sell courses to an audience that never needs to talk to each other and you want the deepest course-marketing funnel — you'd be paying for member infrastructure you won't use.
GeneratedReal-world workflow fit
Concrete scenarios for the personas Heartbeat actually fits — and what changes day-one when you adopt it.
You paste a description of your program into Pulse AI, and it drafts the channel structure, a first landing page and an offer with tiered pricing. You connect Stripe, set the cohort dates and import your waitlist.
Outcome: A members can check out on your own domain in the first week, and lesson discussion lives next to the course instead of in a separate forum.
You rebuild on a custom domain under Build at $49/mo month-to-month, moving buyers from one-off product purchases into a recurring membership with private channels and a member directory.
Outcome: Revenue becomes recurring instead of one-time, and members get a place to keep talking after the purchase rather than a receipt and silence.
At $149/mo month-to-month you switch on unlimited automation workflows, auto-responder and DM rules, custom cancellation flows, conversion tracking and an affiliate program, and start hosting replays with 50 hours of native video.
Outcome: Onboarding runs without manual DMs, lapsed members hit a retention flow instead of churning silently, and members bring in new members through the affiliate program.
Use cases
- Launch a paid membership community on your own domain with checkout built in.
- Sell cohort-based courses with live sessions, assignments and lesson-level discussion.
- Host live workshops and office hours with RSVPs, reminders and automatic replays.
- Replace separate membership, course, event and payment subscriptions with one platform.
- Automate onboarding and DM rules so member admin shrinks as the community grows.
- Ship a branded white-label mobile app to drive retention and push notifications.
- Run an affiliate program that turns existing members into a sales channel.
- Let Pulse AI draft the initial channel structure, pages and offers for a new community.
Setup time & first value
How long it actually takes to get something useful out of Heartbeat — broken out by persona, not the marketing-page minute.
A solo coach launching with Pulse AI can have a branded space, first offer and checkout live in under an hour of hands-on time, with the 14-day trial needing no card. A creator migrating an existing paid community should plan a few hours to import members, rebuild channels and re-point DNS. Upgrading to Scale for the white-label app is the slowest path, since Heartbeat handles app store delivery
Switching to or from Heartbeat
How to bring data in from common predecessors and how to get it back out — written for the switcher, not the buyer.
- →From Circle: rebuild channels and paid spaces on Heartbeat, then import your member list; Build lists member data migration as an included feature.
- →From Gumroad: move one-off product buyers into recurring memberships and private channels, since Heartbeat targets what happens after the sale rather than the sale itself.
- →From Beacons: replace the link-in-bio with a custom domain, member directory and paid channels so visitors land somewhere they can belong.
- →From a course-only platform: recreate evergreen or cohort courses with modules, lessons and quizzes, then attach discussion to each lesson.
- →From a Zoom plus spreadsheet workflow: connect Zoom and Google Calendar, then move RSVPs, reminders and replays into native events.
- ↗To Kajabi: if you stop needing member-to-member interaction and want deeper course-marketing funnels, export members and rebuild courses there.
- ↗To Circle: if integration breadth and a lower entry price matter more than Pulse AI, rebuild channels and paid spaces on Circle.
- ↗To a self-hosted stack: if WordPress or full infrastructure control is a requirement, re-host content and rebuild checkout around Stripe.
Integrations
Resources & guides
- Resourceheartbeat.chat
Help
Helpful link from heartbeat.chat
- Resourceheartbeat.chat
Blog
Helpful link from heartbeat.chat
- Resourceheartbeat.chat
Pricing
Helpful link from heartbeat.chat
- Resourceheartbeat.chat
Features
Helpful link from heartbeat.chat
- Resourceheartbeat.chat
Integrations
Helpful link from heartbeat.chat
Tutorials & Learning
YouTube returned 6 videos for “Heartbeat”, and we withheld 5: 5 could not be judged, because “Heartbeat” is a single word that other videos use for other things. Showing the 1 we can prove is about Heartbeat.
Official links
What are the best Heartbeat alternatives?
The closest alternatives to Heartbeat we list are Circle, Kajabi and Teachable. Ranked by direct product-type match, not category overlap.
| Alternative | Pricing | Starts at | Last verified |
|---|---|---|---|
| Circle | Paid | Pricing not published | — |
| Kajabi | Paid | Pricing not published | — |
| Teachable | Freemium | Pricing not published | — |
Alternatives to Heartbeat
View all
Tools that pair well with Heartbeat
Common stack mates teams adopt alongside Heartbeat, with the specific reason each pairing earns its keep.
Circle
Circle is a community platform for hosting discussions, courses, live events, and paid memberships under your own brand.
Kajabi
Kajabi is an all-in-one course platform for coaches and creators — courses, communities, payments, and AI in one dashboard.
Teachable
Sell online courses, coaching, memberships, and digital downloads with global payments and automatic tax handling.
Frequently asked questions
Our FAQ set (4 answers) written Oct 20, 2026 quotes $40, which no longer matches the verified price table, so it is being re-reviewed and is not shown.
Best-of guides
Topics
Used Heartbeat? Help shape our editorial sentiment research.