Hylo vs Urgent Optimists
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Hylo
Organize and grow your community with a unified platform for management, messaging, and collaboration. Reach members globally with tools for communication, file sharing, and targeted discussions. Designed for groups of all sizes, it facilitates effective teamwork and goal achievement.
- Community management
- Direct and group messaging
- File sharing
- Searchable Topics
- Membership directories
- Offers and Requests
- Network affiliation
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Hylo is the easiest way to organize & grow your community. Hylo brings together community management, messaging and collaboration all in one place. No matter what size your group is, Hylo gives you the tools to you need to be be more organized, creative, and effective. Use Hylo’s web and mobile apps to reach people wherever they are to create together and make your goals a reality. Hylo is used all over the world in more than 80 countries by community groups, companies, coworking spaces, non-profits, social movements, start-up accelerators, schools, and more. Hylo helps you: • Communicate with your group and manage your membership. • Organize conversations, share files, and collaborate using easy-to-search Topics that preserve knowledge and target the right people. • Stay connected with direct and group messaging. • Stay up to date with customized subscriptions, notifications & email digests. Compared to other team communication tools, Hylo gives you more: • Rich membership directories allow you to see who is in your groups and networks and what their skills are. • Turn conversations into collaboration with "Offers" and "Requests." • View posts from all your communities at once or focus on one community at a time. • Group affiliated communities together into a Network, and share content within and between groups, or with the entire network. • Hylo is designed to work better for large groups than other tools so you can focus on what matters most and and make things happen. About Hylo: Hylo was created to support people coming together to solve the great challenges of our time. Our mission is to empower communities to build a world that works for everyone. We never sell ads or user data, and we will always offer a free version of our software. Learn more and come say hello at www.hylo.com .
Urgent Optimists
This community app fosters creativity and optimism about the future. It offers thought experiments, future scenario exploration, and learning journeys with researchers. Connect with a global community to build a better world.
- Collective imagination
- Future scenario exploration
- Exclusive learning journeys
- Future forecasting games
- Imagination leadership certificate
- Social networking features
- Signals of change scavenger hunts
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WHAT IT IS Are you ready to face the future with more creativity and optimism? Urgent Optimists is the Institute for the Future's first individual membership program. We’re bringing together people who want to feel authentically hopeful about the future, and who are working to create positive transformation in society and in their own lives. You're invited to join us to: + Tap into the power of collective imagination + Participate in mind-expanding thought experiments + Discover new future scenarios + Go on exclusive learning journeys with IFTF researchers + Play future forecasting games with people from around the world + See the future from many different perspectives + Learn how to measure and increase urgent optimism in yourself and others. + Earn a certificate in Imagination Leadership WHAT YOU GET As a member, you’ll have full access to: SCENARIO CLUB. Think of it like an online book club, but for future scenarios! Discover a new scenario the first Friday of every month. Each scenario includes a short narrative, followed by supporting research, discussion questions and creative prompts. Join our monthly Zoom club meeting to go deeper into the scenarios together. IMAGINATION TRAINING. Dive into the psychology and neuroscience of futures thinking, with 24/7 online courses led by Jane McGonigal, an IFTF Research Director and New York Times bestselling author of the new book Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything, Even Things that Seem Impossible Today. TOOLS TO MEASURE AND INCREASE URGENT OPTIMISM IN YOURSELF, YOUR TEAM, OR YOUR COMMUNITY. It's a highly motivating and resilient mindset that helps us stay engaged with the hard work of making a better world. “SIGNALS OF CHANGE” SCAVENGER HUNTS. Find and share examples of change already happening today that make you feel hopeful for the future. (Because we all could use a little more hope these days!) 10 DAYS IN THE FUTURE. It’s an immersive, 10-day online learning journey that IFTF organizes for our Urgent Optimists once a year. The entire community comes together to simulate an urgent future, from climate migration to geoengineering. We tell stories about how we might personally react, adapt and help others. Each journey is designed to help you feel ready for what’s next and find your own unique role to play in making a better future. PLUS all the social networking features you need to make deep, lasting connections with urgent optimists from around the world -- including group chat study groups to support your imagination training, a forum to share and get feedback on your own future scenarios, direct messaging, and customizable profiles to tell the world what futures you want to help make. WHY IT MATTERS What the world needs now are more urgent optimists. Urgent optimism is a powerful mindset made up three key psychological strengths, which we can measure and improve together. 1. Psychological flexibility. It's the opposite of being “stuck” mentally. It’s the ability to recognize that anything can become different in the future, even things that seem impossible to change today. 2. Realistic hope. It's a balance of positive and shadow imagination. It’s knowing which risks and threats it makes sense to worry about – and which new solutions, technologies, ideas, and positive actions it makes sense to be excited and optimistic about. 3. Future power. It's a feeling of control and genuine agency to directly impact how the future turns out, by taking intentional action today. Building these strengths is what this community is all about. We're practicing the proven skills, habits and games that can measurably increase our urgent optimism, even in the face of significant future challenges and uncertainty. At Institute for the Future (IFTF), we embrace the limitless, catalytic power of imagination to unleash potential. Learn more at IFTF.org -- Terms of Use: mightynetworks.com/terms-of-use
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Hylo at none against Urgent Optimists's 2. Hylo also leads on ads (none vs shown). Urgent Optimists's advantage is rating (5.0 vs 4.6) and review sentiment (100% vs 75%). On price, ratings volume, update cadence and device support there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Urgent Optimists sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $9.99 per month. Hylo asks for nothing beyond the download.
Urgent Optimists holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.6. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 11 and 14 respectively. Written reviews point the same way: 75% of Hylo's written reviews are positive against 100% of Urgent Optimists's.
Hylo ships an update every 2 weeks, Urgent Optimists weekly. The most recent releases landed on October 24, 2026 and October 20, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Hylo | Urgent Optimists |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.6 (11 ratings) | 5.0 (14 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 75.0% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 11 | 14 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 2 weeks | Weekly — better |
| Ads | No — better | Yes |
| In-app purchases | No — better | Yes |
| Monetization | Free — better | Free with in-app purchases |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 16.4 | 15.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 64 MB | 107 MB |
| Age rating | 12+ | 12+ |
| Developer | Hylozoic, Inc. | Institute for the Future |
Customer experience
Hylo
Urgent Optimists
In-app purchases
Hylo
No in-app purchases
Urgent Optimists
- Monthly Plan$9.991 Month
- Annual Plan$99.991 Year









