Your community platform, privacy-first
Your community. Your courses. Your rules.
- Hosted in Germany
- No ad tracking
- Privacy by design
- Modular
Your place, where the sun breaks through.
The clouded web
A real community should belong to you – not to someone else's network.
Circle, Skool and Mighty Networks are powerful – but for small communities often expensive and heavier than you need. Self-hosted forums like Discourse save money but cost you server ops and headaches. Pukalani is the lean middle path: a complete community platform you start without hassle, fully under your brand – with a transparent, predictable price.
High base prices + transaction fees
Fair, predictable price. 14-day free trial.
Unclear data flows & ad tracking
Hosted in Germany, no ad tracking.
All-or-nothing monolith
Modular: switch on only what you need.
The way through
Your own community in 60 seconds.
under 60 seconds- 1Sign upEmail is enough, log in with a code – no password required.
- 2Name your communityyourname.pukalani.app is live instantly.
- 3Pick your productsTurn feed, courses, events and comments on or off. Add your design. Done.
The products
One platform, many products. You decide which.
Every product can be switched on or off. No ballast.
Modular, not monolith
Take only what you need.
Just selling courses? Turn on courses. Community around it? Add feed and comments. Events? One click. With Pukalani the platform grows with you, instead of burying you in features you never open.
- Comments
- Moderation
- Feed
- Courses
- Events
Privacy & hosting
Privacy is the standard here – not the upgrade.
Your community data lives in Germany, not in some far-away cloud. No ad tracking, no reselling – data-minimal by design.
- Servers in Germany (Hetzner)
- No ad tracking, no ads, no data selling
- Data-minimal first-party sessions
- Export and deletion flows
- Transport encryption
Who it's for
Built for people building a community – not for corporations.
Four typical paths into your own community. Find yours.
An honest comparison
Compared honestly. Including where we're (not yet) the answer.
We only compare what we can back up — with sources and a date. Where we're weaker, it says so right here.
| Criterion | Pukalani | Circle | Skool | Mighty Networks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Entry price per month | from €29 | $89 (Professional) | $9 (Hobby) | $79 (Launch) |
| Transaction fee | none | 2% | 10% (Hobby) · 2.9% (Pro) | 2% |
| Hosting / company base | Germany | USA | USA | USA |
| Courses with lessons and progress | yes (from Pro) | yes | yes | yes |
| Products can be switched off individually | yes | suite | suite | suite |
| Products embeddable in your own website | yes (comments, events) | n/a | n/a | n/a |
| Native mobile apps with push | no | yes | yes | yes |
“n/a” means: we couldn't verify it properly — so we don't claim anything. Spot a mistake? Tell us and we'll fix it.
Sources:CircleSkoolMighty Networks
We use it ourselves
No testimonial theatre. Just sites you can click.
We don't have customer quotes (yet) — so we don't invent any. Instead Pukalani runs where it hurts: on our own sites, in real operation.
- comments.pukalani.appComments (guests included), moderation and the embed widget in daily use — with live presence.
- demo.pukalani.appA real pool community: created with one click in the studio, own host, own data space — exactly the path you take.
- portfolio.pukalani.appThe same platform in a completely different design — proof that branding doesn't stop at an accent colour.
- changelog.pukalani.appWhat we changed and when, publicly readable. Including the weeks where little happened.
Pricing
One fair price for your whole community – not per product.
Try it free for 14 days, cancel anytime, data export included. Currently in early access by invitation.
Nothing is deleted when the trial ends – your community becomes read-only until you decide.
Personal and Pro side by side
Everything in Personal is also in Pro. The numbers are daily limits or totals.
| Feature | Personal | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Discussions, comments and moderation | included | included |
| Custom pages | included | included |
| Your own look: colours and fonts | included | included |
| Activity feed | included | included |
| Posting feed with polls | included | included |
| Media gallery | included | included |
| Cookieless visitor statistics | included | included |
| Private messages | included | included |
| Events with sign-up | not included | included |
| Courses with lessons and progress | not included | included |
| AI assistant for moderation | not included | included |
| AI translation of content into the reader's language | included | included |
| Custom domain | not included | included |
| Comments per day | 1,000 | 5,000 |
| Images in the gallery | 300 | 1,000 |
Enterprise (Pukalani Studio) is a tailored project and therefore not in this table — just get in touch.
Our story
A hole in the clouds.
Far out in the Pacific lies Maui. High on the slopes of Haleakalā is a place called Pukalani. Its name is understood as an opening to the sky — a puka in the grey where light breaks through. That's where the idea for this platform was born.
The hole in the clouds.
Today's web is mostly clouded – full of tracking, ads, noise and closed networks where your community never truly belongs to you. Pukalani is the opening where the sun breaks through: a clear, calm place, without all the grey.
The gateway to the sky.
Puka and lani can be read as “an opening to the sky” — a door. And that's how the beginning should feel: you step through, and in sixty seconds your own community stands – no servers, no manual, no detours.
Fertile ground.
Pukalani sits in the highlands, on rich volcanic soil where things have grown for generations. That's our promise: a place where your community grows – your posts, your courses, your events, your people.
A world of its own.
Your community here is its own living world — sovereign, and entirely yours. It doesn't fade into someone else's network. What you build here belongs to you.
Built by someone who wanted this platform to exist: honest, lean, privacy-first – without turning you or your members into the product. Pukalani is a special place. Pukalani.app is meant to be one too.
Common questions
Questions? Here are the most common ones.
Ready for your own community?
“Where the sun breaks through.”
Contact
A project built to fit
Pukalani Studio is the route for everything a plan cannot cover: your own instance, your own domain, your own concept — consulting, strategy, design and the technical build from one hand. Write two sentences about your plan; you get an honest read on whether it fits.
Ask by emailOr write directly to [email protected]
No form, no tracking: the message goes straight from your mail client to the inbox.