Heartbeat is a friendly place to start a paid community without a big budget. For $49 a month you get channels, threads, chat, voice rooms, DMs, unlimited courses and events, a custom domain, checkout pages, five automation workflows, and Pulse, an AI that actually sets up channels, offers, and pages for you. Grow adds unlimited workflows, DM rules, an affiliate program, and white-label email; Scale adds a branded app. For a founder with a small group who wants courses and calls next to the conversation, Heartbeat covers a lot for the price.
Cardel provides a home for your craft, starting at $69 a month if billed yearly. Share and sell your work, grow your audience, and bring your community together on a site of your own. Cardel does not host a members-only community on your site, sell courses or membership tiers, or ship an app. It is the public side of your work: a site with a blog and Showcase, a Shop with Stripe checkout, a Schedule page with calendar sync, an audience list, email from your own address, and a Messaging Center for everyone who writes back or chats in.
Heartbeat's landing page is the door to a private space. Cardel's whole site is public and indexable, with posts, pages, videos, and products search engines can find.
Heartbeat emails members through workflows and a weekly digest; Cardel emails an audience that never has to join any specific membership, and receives replies on your domain into one inbox.
Heartbeat's events sync to members' calendars; Cardel books 1:1 time with you and syncs with Google Calendar or Outlook Calendar.
Heartbeat charges 5% to 1.25% on payments; Cardel charges 0.5% on Shop card sales on Pro and up.
Choose Heartbeat when a small paid community with courses, calls, and member chat is the product. Choose Cardel when you want to publish, sell, take bookings, and answer people from one public site on your own domain, with the audience list and inbox already inside. Many founders will pair them: Cardel out front, Heartbeat behind the join button.
You are the Forgemaster. Cardel is your forge. What you build is yours.
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A check means that capability is available. Heartbeat is marked only when the offer is comparable, not the same product.
* Note: This table does not capture every feature of Cardel or Heartbeat, and is not intended as a comprehensive list. We keep this page current, but Cardel or Heartbeat may add or remove features that are not shown here.
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Cardel
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Heartbeat
See what Heartbeat charges on their pricing page.
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