What BuddyNext Pro Adds

BuddyNext Free is a complete community platform - feed, spaces, profiles, messaging, moderation, and search - and you can run a busy community on it forever. BuddyNext Pro is the application layer you add on top when the community becomes a product: when you want to charge for access, reach people at the right moment, keep order at scale, and make the whole thing unmistakably yours.

This page explains what Pro actually does, grouped by what you get out of it, so you can decide what you need before opening the per-feature guides. Upgrading only adds - nothing you already use in Free changes or goes away, and your license key controls updates only, never which features are on.

1. Make money from your community

Turn membership into revenue. Pro gives you the whole money journey - plans, checkout, access control, and renewals - built in, gateway-agnostic, with the member managing their own subscription.

• Membership plans - create paid plans with a price and a billing period (monthly or yearly), describe the perks, and decide which Pro features and spaces each plan unlocks. Membership Plans
• Gated spaces - require an active plan to enter a space; non-subscribers see an invitation to subscribe instead of the feed. Gated Spaces
• Content protection (paywalls) - lock individual posts or content behind a plan, so you can sell a single piece as well as a whole space. Content Protection
• Payments - take payment through Stripe (hosted checkout and a customer billing portal) or PayPal, redeem gamification points, or record bank transfers yourself, with refunds, free trials, and a status badge that tells you the gateway is live. Stripe Payments, Payment Gateways
• Coupons and tax - run discounts and apply flat tax at checkout. Coupons and Tax
• Renewal reminders - email members before a renewal or when a payment fails, so access does not lapse by surprise. Renewal Reminders

For the models themselves - subscriptions vs gated spaces vs paywalled content, and which to pick - see Ways to Make Money, and to set one up end to end, follow the recipe Launch a Paid Community.

2. Reach your members at the right moment

Free notifies members inside the community. Pro lets you reach them proactively - by email, by push, and in real time.

• Broadcast email - compose one message and send or schedule it to a group. Broadcast Email
• Drip sequences - a series that sends automatically as members reach a stage: welcome a new member, onboard them over their first week, win back a lapsed one. Drip Sequences
• Scheduled posts - members queue posts ahead so the community never looks empty on a quiet day. Scheduling is part of free BuddyNext; Pro adds the admin queue and the plan perk. Scheduled Posts
• Push notifications - browser and mobile push so members come back without email. Push Notifications
• Real-time updates - the feed, notifications, and messages update live over WebSocket, no refresh. Real-time, Server Deployment

3. Keep order at scale

The free report-and-review queue is enough for a small community. Pro adds the tools that keep a large one manageable.

• Auto-moderation - rules that flag or hold content matching patterns you choose, before a human sees it. Auto-Moderation
• AI feed and moderation - let AI help rank the feed and pre-sort the moderation queue. AI Feed and Moderation
• Bulk moderation - action many items at once when a spam wave hits. Bulk Moderation
• Analytics - deeper insight into activity, growth, and engagement than the free at-a-glance numbers. Analytics

4. Make it unmistakably yours

Free lets you set colours and a logo. Pro lets you brand the whole thing and shape how members express themselves.

• White-label - replace the BuddyNext name and logo on admin screens and in every BuddyNext email. White-label
• Space branding - give flagship or client spaces their own header and identity. Space Branding
• Custom reactions - add your own emoji reactions alongside the six built-in ones, up to 20 in total. Custom Reactions
• Member labels - assign titles or badges (Founder, Expert, Verified) that appear next to a member’s name. Member Labels
• Advanced profile fields - richer field types beyond the free set - a map location, an advanced multi-select, an advanced number with units. Advanced Profile Fields
• Conditional logic for profile fields - show a field only when a member picks a certain answer, on the profile and at registration. Conditional Logic for Profile Fields
• Advanced search and multi-pin - stronger member search, and pinning more than one post. Advanced Search, Multi-Pin Posts

5. Connect the wider business suite

Pro is also the bridge to the rest of the Wbcom suite, so a course, an event, a job board, or a listing directory becomes part of the same community rather than a separate silo. Suite Portfolio, Suite Notification Aggregation.

One switch per capability

Each Pro capability that has its own admin screen has one on/off switch in the Features catalogue (BuddyNext > Platform > Features). Turning one off hides its admin screen and stops its feature; nothing else changes. The old per-feature options were folded into these switches, and member push preferences now follow the Push switch. Gated spaces, content protection, and the other membership features sit under the one Memberships & monetization switch. Scheduled posts is a free feature that uses the same catalogue.

Switch	Default
Memberships & monetization	Off
White-label branding	On
Member labels	On
Email broadcasts	On
Drip sequences	On
Moderation rules	On
Bulk moderation	On
Custom reactions	On
Analytics	On
Scheduled posts (free)	On
Realtime	Off, needs a realtime server
Push notifications	Off, needs an FCM project (member push preferences are part of this switch)
AI suite	Off, needs an AI provider key
AI moderation	Off, needs an AI provider key

What stays the same

Everything in Free keeps working exactly as before. Pro adds features on top and never removes one you already use. Members do not lose access to anything, and your license key is only ever used to keep you on the latest version - it does not switch features on or off.

Where to go next

• Deciding what to charge? Ways to Make Money
• Deciding what to build? What You Can Build
• The complete feature list, free and pro - Feature Directory

Related

• Start Here - the whole-product map
• Launch a Paid Community - the setup recipe for the money features