Reselling managed Discourse in 2026

Discourse is the open-source forum behind many of the internet's best communities. DANIAN runs one instance per client for managed Discourse at €9/month, across 21 regions on six continents. Agencies resell it as a managed community line at €60 to €150 a month. Your client owns the member data; you own the relationship.

• One Discourse instance per client costs you €9 a month. Resell it at €60 to €150.
• At ten clients, that is €90 in cost against €600 to €1,500 in monthly revenue.
• Each client runs isolated: own domain, own theme, own members, own database.
• Your client owns the member data and can export it any time. No platform holds it.
• Discourse is a forum, not a courses-and-memberships product. Match the tool to the need.

The agency math — €9 in, a recurring line out

The model is simple to price. You pay DANIAN €9 a month for each client's Discourse. You charge the client €60 to €150 a month for a set-up, themed, and moderated community. The gap is your recurring margin, and it pays for the hours you put into setup and support.

Most agencies want recurring revenue without owning servers. Reselling managed Discourse fits that goal. The wholesale cost is flat: €9 per client instance, every month, regardless of how many members the community has. Retail depends on what you wrap around it. Community design, theming, category structure, onboarding flows, and single sign-on are real work. Clients pay €60 to €150 a month for that work, delivered as one managed line they renew without thinking.

A reseller running ten client communities pays €90 a month in hosting. The same ten clients bill out at €600 to €1,500. That leaves €510 to €1,410 in gross margin before your own time. Add more clients and the cost scales at a flat €9 each. The margin holds because the price never meters on members or usage.

See how DANIAN runs Discourse

What your client pays today — and why they are looking

Most clients arrive after a price shock. Discourse's own hosting starts at $100 a month on the Pro plan and $500 on Business. Community platforms like Circle and Mighty Networks start near $49 to $100 a month and take a cut of every membership sale. That is the trigger that sends a client to you.

Discourse runs a free tier and three paid plans. Pro is $100 a month with five staff seats; Business is $500 a month, adding single sign-on and automation.¹ For a small client, $100 to $500 is steep for a forum. Circle's Professional plan is $89 a month, and Business is $199, with a 1 to 2 percent fee on top of payment processing.² Mighty Networks runs from roughly $49 to $360 a month, also with a 2 to 3 percent transaction fee.³ All three are unlimited on members, but the bill climbs with features and revenue.

Two differences matter to the client. Circle and Mighty take a percentage of what your client charges members, and the members live inside the platform's own login. A managed Discourse instance takes no cut of your client's revenue. The data sits in a standard database your client can export. Against Discourse's own hosting, your wedge is different: you can run the same software for €9 and price your service below their $100 to $500, while keeping the client relationship and a region close to their members.

Where the margin comes from — your setup and moderation work

The €9-to-€150 gap is not arbitrage. It is paid work. A client is not buying a server; they are buying a community that is set up, branded, and tended. Theming, category design, onboarding flows, and single sign-on are the parts a non-technical client cannot do alone.

A bare Discourse instance is not a finished community. Someone has to design the category structure so members know where to post. Someone has to theme the forum to the client's brand. Someone has to write the welcome flow and the first pinned topics. Someone has to wire single sign-on if the client has an existing site or app. That someone is you, and that is what the retail price pays for. DANIAN runs the server underneath: monthly patching, daily off-site backups, monitoring, and 24/7 chat with a named human. You run the community on top. The split is clean, and it is what lets you sell a service rather than a server.

How you launch a client community — the setup that earns the price

Setup is the work a client pays for, and it follows a clear sequence. You design the categories, theme the forum to their brand, wire single sign-on, write the onboarding flow, and set a moderation policy. A community goes live in days, not weeks, once the pattern is yours.

A managed Discourse instance arrives running but empty. The launch work turns it into a community the client is proud to open. Start with category design, because structure tells members where to post. A small community needs four or five categories, not twenty. Too many empty sections make a forum feel dead on day one.

Next comes theme and brand. You set the logo, colours, and fonts to match the client's site, so the forum feels like part of it. Single sign-on is the step that earns trust. Members log in with the client's existing accounts and never manage a second password. Discourse supports common single sign-on methods, and wiring it is a one-time task per client.

The last layer is people, not software. Write three or four pinned topics so the forum is not a blank room. Draft a short moderation policy the client agrees to. Set a launch date and seed the first conversations yourself. Once you have run this sequence twice, the third client takes a fraction of the time, and that is where your margin widens.

One Discourse per client — isolation is the point

Reselling falls apart when clients share one system. A noisy neighbour, a plugin conflict, or a botched setting on one account can hit the others. DANIAN runs each client on a separate Discourse instance. Own database, own domain, own theme, own members. Nothing crosses between them.

Multi-tenant community software is fragile to resell, because one shared instance means one shared blast radius. The DANIAN model avoids that by giving each client an isolated instance. Each runs in its own hardened container with its own resource allocation. One client's traffic spike does not slow another's forum. One client's theme change cannot touch another's. The boundaries are real, and the operational pattern around backups and patching is the same for every instance, whatever plan size the client is on. You can hand a client a community that is theirs alone, on a domain that is theirs alone, without worrying that a second client's settings will leak in.

Who owns the member data

This is the question community owners ask first. With managed Discourse, the answer is your client. The forum stores its data in a standard database, exportable on demand over SFTP or as a download. The software is open source, so no vendor can hold the community hostage.

Member relationships are the most valuable thing a community owns. On a closed platform, those relationships live inside the vendor's system, export is limited, and leaving means rebuilding from scratch. Discourse is different because it is open source.⁴ The database belongs to your client, and a full backup runs from the browser at any time. If your client ever moves off DANIAN, the community moves with them, intact. We will not lock a community in, and we will not delete data on a failed payment. That is a promise you can pass straight to your client, in writing, as part of your offer.

What "white-label" actually means for a community — gaps included

White-label has two layers, and managed Discourse covers one fully. At the community surface, members see your client's brand and never see DANIAN. What does not exist yet is a single reseller console with your branding and your invoices across every client instance. Here is the honest split.

At the surface members touch, white-label is complete. The forum sits on the client's own domain. The login page, logo, colours, and categories are the client's. No DANIAN branding appears where members can see it. Single sign-on lets members log in with the client's existing accounts, so the community feels native to the client's site.

The gap is on your side, not the client's. There is no central control plane today that lets you manage fifty client instances under your own brand, with consolidated invoices and billing pass-through. You manage each instance individually, and you bill clients yourself. For most small agencies running ten to twenty communities, that is workable. If you need a branded multi-client console today, that product is not here yet — and we would rather tell you plainly than oversell it.

How to package the offer — a setup fee plus a monthly line

Most resellers charge two ways: a one-time setup fee and a recurring monthly line. The setup fee covers the launch work. The monthly line covers hosting, moderation support, and small changes. Splitting the two makes the price easy for a client to read and easy for you to defend.

A single flat number can hide how much work the first month takes. Splitting the offer fixes that. Charge a setup fee of a few hundred euros for category design, theming, and single sign-on. Then charge a monthly line for the running community. The client sees what they pay for upfront, and what they pay for ongoing.

The monthly line can sit in tiers, based on how much support the client wants. A light tier covers hosting and backup for breakage. A full tier covers active moderation, monthly changes, and a quarterly review. Price each tier above your €9 cost with room for your hours.

Whatever tier a client picks, your cost stays €9. The setup fee covers the heavy first month, and the monthly line recurs. This shape makes upgrades easy too. A client on the light tier can move to standard as their community grows. Nothing changes underneath; only the level of support and the price.

Two worked examples

Numbers land better with a scenario. Here are two reseller shapes that work. The first is a marketing studio adding a community line to its retainer clients. The second is a services agency pairing a forum with a real-time chat workspace for a course business.

Scenario one. A four-person marketing studio runs eight retainer clients. It adds a managed Discourse community to three of them at €110 a month each. Hosting costs €27. Revenue is €330. The studio spends a few hours a month on moderation and theming tweaks across the three communities. Margin before that time is €303 a month, and it recurs as long as the clients stay.

Scenario two. A services agency builds communities for course creators. One client wants a forum for long-form discussion and a chat workspace for live cohorts. The agency resells managed Discourse for the forum and managed Mattermost for chat, at €18 a month in hosting. It bills the client €180 a month for the paired stack, set up and supported. Both instances are isolated, branded, and owned by the client.

Talk to us about volume

Pairing Discourse with real-time chat

Discourse is built for long-form discussion that stays searchable. Some clients also want fast, live chat. Discourse has a built-in chat plugin for that. When a client wants a full chat workspace alongside the forum, managed Mattermost is the cleaner pairing at the same €9 a month.

A forum and a chat tool do different jobs. Discourse keeps knowledge organised in categories and topics that people find later through search. Its built-in chat covers quick back-and-forth inside the forum. For teams that want a separate chat workspace with channels, threads, and integrations, Mattermost for real-time chat is the open-source option. It runs on DANIAN at the same flat €9 a month, isolated per client like Discourse. You can resell the two together as a community stack, or sell the forum alone. Either way, both stay open source and exportable.

When reselling managed Discourse works — and when it doesn't

This model is not right for every agency or every client. It works when you sell community as a service and want recurring revenue without servers. It does not work when the client needs a bundled course product, or when you need a branded reseller console today.

It works when:

• You already deliver services and want a recurring line that clients renew without thinking.
• Your clients value owning their member data and running on their own domain.
• You are comfortable handling moderation and setup while someone else runs the server.

It does not work when:

• The client's core need is selling courses, memberships, and a branded mobile app in one product. A community SaaS fits that better, and you should say so.
• You need a single console to manage fifty or more client instances with consolidated branded invoices today. That is not built yet.
• The client wants the cheapest possible option and will leave on the first invoice. That client churns, and the support cost is not worth the margin.

What to do this week

Reselling managed Discourse does not need a partner program or an upfront fee. Pick one client who already asked about a community. Set up a single instance, theme it, and run it as a paid line. Prove the margin on one before you scale to ten.

Start with one client and one community. Deploy a single managed Discourse instance, design the categories, and theme it to their brand. Charge a flat monthly rate that covers your setup and moderation time. Once it runs without drama, repeat it. The cost stays €9 per instance whether you have one client or thirty. When you are ready to resell at volume, talk to us about reselling before you commit, so the numbers and the setup match your model. Own the client relationship. Let us run the server.

FAQ

How much can an agency make reselling managed Discourse?
Each client instance costs you €9 a month from DANIAN. Agencies resell community setup, theming, and moderation support at €60 to €150 a month. At ten clients that is €90 in cost against €600 to €1,500 in revenue. The margin pays for the setup and support hours you put in.

Is it really €9 a month no matter how big the community gets?
Yes. The price is €9 per client instance per month, with no per-member charge. It does not climb as members, topics, or visits grow. There are no seats and no usage tiers to track. You set your own retail price on top, and your cost per client stays flat.

How do I bill my clients?
You bill your clients directly, on your own terms, through whatever you already use. DANIAN bills you €9 per instance per month. There is no billing pass-through or sub-account system today, so you set retail pricing and keep the client relationship. For volume reselling, talk to us before you commit.

What is Discourse, and what is it good for?
Discourse is open-source forum software for online communities. It is built for long-form, threaded discussion that stays searchable over time. Teams use it for customer communities, support forums, member groups, and internal knowledge bases. It suits any group that wants conversations organised into categories rather than a fast-scrolling feed.

Can a client charge for membership or gate content behind payment?
Yes. Discourse has a Subscriptions feature, bundled with the software, that sells recurring or one-time access to a member group through Stripe. You connect the client's own Stripe account, so the money goes to them. No platform sits in the middle taking a percentage of each payment.

What plugins and integrations does Discourse support?
Discourse supports official plugins and theme components, plus many third-party ones. Common additions cover chat, subscriptions, events, single sign-on, and login through other accounts. What runs on managed hosting depends on the plugin, so tell us what a client needs and we will confirm it before launch.

Is there a mobile app for members?
Members open the community in any mobile browser, and Discourse installs to the home screen as an app, with notifications. There is also the DiscourseHub app for browsing Discourse sites. A custom app under your client's brand, listed on the app stores, is a separate project rather than part of managed hosting.

How does single sign-on work for a client's members?
Single sign-on lets members use the client's existing accounts to log in, so they manage one password, not two. Discourse supports its own connect method and standard providers like Google. We wire it once per client during setup. Members then reach the forum without a separate signup step.

How do moderation and spam control work in Discourse?
Discourse has built-in moderation tools. Trust levels grant abilities as members earn them, which limits what brand-new accounts can do. Members can flag posts for review, and spam handling catches common abuse. You set the rules and act on flags; the software does the routine filtering underneath.

Do I need to be technical to resell managed Discourse?
No. We run the server side: setup, patching, backups, and uptime. Your work is the community side, which is design and moderation, not system administration. If you can theme a site and structure categories, you can run a client community. The parts that need a terminal stay with us.

How long does it take to set up a client community?
A basic community is ready in a few days. The instance itself runs within hours of signup. The time goes into your setup work: categories, theme, welcome topics, and single sign-on if the client needs it. Heavy theming or a data import adds time. After your second client, the pattern is quick to repeat.

Can I migrate a client's existing forum or community to Discourse?
Often, yes. Discourse has import scripts for common forum software, including phpBB, vBulletin, and others. Members and posts come across; passwords do not, so members reset on first login. Moving from a closed platform depends on the export it allows. Tell us the source and we will scope the import before you commit.

Does each client get their own Discourse, or do they share one?
Each client runs on a separate Discourse instance with its own database, domain, theme, and members. Nothing is shared between clients. One client's traffic, content, or settings never touch another's. This isolation is structural, not a setting you switch on, and it is what makes reselling safe.

Where are client communities hosted, and can I choose the region?
You pick the region. Application data is hosted in any of 21 datacenter locations spanning six continents, so you can place a client's community close to its members. Different clients can sit in different regions. You choose per client at setup, based on where each community's people are.

Who owns the member data and content?
Your client does. Discourse stores its data in a standard database you can export on demand, over SFTP or as a download. The software is open source, so there is no vendor holding the community hostage. If you or your client ever leave DANIAN, the community moves with you.

What happens to a client's community if DANIAN stops operating?
The community is portable because Discourse is open source and the data is your client's. A full backup downloads from the browser at any time. With that backup, the forum can run on any host that supports Discourse. We will not lock a community in, and we will not hold its data.

Who handles support and middle-of-the-night problems?
DANIAN handles the server side: patching, backups, monitoring, and uptime, with 24/7 chat. You handle the community side: moderation, member questions, and setup changes. If something breaks at the infrastructure level, a named engineer responds. Your client talks to you, and you talk to us when you need to.

Do I have to handle Discourse updates and backups myself?
No. We run patching, software updates, and daily off-site backups on every instance, with monitoring and 24/7 chat. Your client never patches a server, and neither do you. Your side is the community: moderation, member questions, and setup changes. The maintenance underneath is ours.

How many client communities can one agency realistically run?
Most small agencies run ten to twenty client communities comfortably today. Each instance is isolated and maintained by us, so adding one does not add server work for you. Your limit is moderation and support time, not infrastructure. The cost stays €9 per client however many you run.

Can I white-label it so my clients never see DANIAN?
At the community surface, yes. Members reach the forum on your client's own domain, with their logo, colours, and categories. DANIAN's name appears nowhere members see. What does not exist yet is a single reseller console to manage every client instance under your own brand, with your own invoices.

How is this different from putting clients on Circle or Mighty Networks?
Those platforms charge a monthly tier plus a percentage of every membership payment, and the members live inside their ecosystem. Managed Discourse is a flat €9 instance you resell, with no cut of what your client charges and a database your client owns. The trade-off is that Discourse is a forum, not a bundled courses-and-memberships product.

Is managed Discourse better than a free Facebook Group for a client?
It depends on what the client values. A Facebook Group is free, but the members, content, and reach belong to the platform, and a feed algorithm decides what they see. A Discourse community runs on the client's own domain, with data they own and conversations organised by topic. For a business that wants to keep its audience, that ownership is the case for paying.

What if a client needs courses, memberships, and a branded mobile app?
Then a community SaaS may fit them better, and saying so keeps your advice honest. Discourse is a discussion platform with plugins for events, subscriptions, and chat, but it is not a course product with a branded native app. Match the tool to the client's core need, not the other way around.

Sources:
Discourse pricing ·
Circle pricing ·
Mighty Networks pricing ·
Discourse source (GitHub) ·
Discourse migration ·
Discourse Subscriptions.
Prices verified June 2026 and may change. This is operational guidance for agencies, not legal or financial advice.