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Circle description
Circle is a comprehensive platform designed for businesses and creators to build and manage online communities. It consolidates various tools and features into one place, allowing you to host discussions, events, courses, and memberships under your brand. Circle enables you to engage your audience, monetize your community through subscriptions and payments, and scale your efforts with automation and integrations. It's suitable for customer communities, course creators, membership businesses, and more. Circle stands out with its ease of use, customizable branding, and all-in-one approach to community management.
Who is Circle best for
Circle is best for small businesses and creators seeking a user-friendly platform to build and manage online communities. It excels at fostering engagement through features like courses, memberships, and events. While praised for its customer support and ease of use, users note concerns about high transaction fees and limited scalability for larger businesses.
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Best for small businesses.
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Ideal for creators and businesses focused on education, coaching, memberships, and customer engagement.
Circle features
| Supported Circle enables the creation of private spaces and provides features like memberships and paid content, suggesting users can be charged for access. |
| Supported Circle.so allows you to use a custom domain for your community platform. |
| Supported Circle supports direct messaging between members. |
| Supported Circle enables the creation of events, including details like title, description, time, and integrations like Zoom. It supports various event types and offers features like RSVP management, live streaming, and notifications. |
| Supported Circle supports creating group chats with up to 50 members. |
| Supported Circle supports NFT-based membership and content restriction. |
| Supported Circle allows accepting payments via Stripe integration. |
We evaluate the sentiment that users express about non-functional aspects of the software
Value and Pricing Transparency
Customer Service
Ease of Use
Reliability and Performance
Ease of Implementation
Scalability
Circle reviews
We've summarised 43 Circle reviews (Circle TrustPilot reviews and Circle G2 reviews) and summarised the main points below.
- Clean, modern, and user-friendly interface praised by many.
- Excellent customer support and helpful resources are a major plus.
- Robust all-in-one platform consolidating community features and courses.
- Highly customizable for branding and tailoring the user experience.
- Active development and responsiveness to user feedback are appreciated.
- High transaction fees are a recurring concern.
- Inability to create multiple communities limits scalability for some users.
- Limited flexibility with automation, especially for complex workflows.
- Limited native integrations require workarounds with third-party tools.
- Mobile app experience, particularly for admins, needs improvement.
Circle pricing
The commentary is based on 12 reviews from Circle G2 reviews.
Circle's pricing is a recurring theme in user reviews. While most users acknowledge the platform's value and consider it justified, some find the subscription and transaction fees high, especially when needing add-ons or third-party integrations for full functionality.
Users sentiment
See the Circle pricing page.
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Circle has a free trial.
Professional
Includes rich member profiles, searchable member directory, discussions, events, paid memberships, weekly community digest, gamification, custom domain, courses, live streams, unlimited members, custom branding, reporting & analytics, custom code snippets, conversion tracking, and migration services for payments.
Business
Includes all features in the Professional plan, plus: workflows, custom profile fields, headless member API, admin API, branded email notifications, content co-pilot, automated transcriptions, activity scores, and migration services for courses.
Enterprise
Includes all features in the Business plan, plus unlimited workflows, custom single sign-on (SSO), priority support, advanced analytics, lower transaction fees, sandbox community, up to 10 admins & 100 moderators, concierge onboarding, quarterly business reviews, and a dedicated customer success manager.
Plus Branded App
Includes all features in the Enterprise plan, plus your own iOS and Android apps, prioritized migration services, a dedicated launch team, access to Circle's design studio, branded push notifications, the ability to offer in-app purchases, and higher limits across the board.
Circle alternatives
Bettermode
Better for a wider range of industries, especially regulated sectors. It is growing faster and users praise the customization and support. However, note its unreliable notifications and limited analytics.
Commune
Better for larger companies and has more momentum. Pricing is viewed more positively. However, it lacks direct messaging capabilities.
Heartbeat
Heartbeat is growing slower and might be a better choice if you are price sensitive.
Hivebrite
Better for larger companies and has applications across many industries like Healthcare and Education. It is growing faster and receiving positive feedback for its customer service. However, users report that it can be slow at times.
Mighty Networks
Mighty Networks is a better fit for Enterprise customers. It has more momentum and broader industry application. However, Circle users highlight better customer service.
Uuki
Better pricing and caters to a wider range of industries.
Circle FAQ
What is Circle and what does Circle do?
Circle is an all-in-one community platform for businesses and creators to build online communities. It provides tools for discussions, events, courses, memberships, and monetization, all under your own brand. Circle is praised for its ease of use, customizable branding, and comprehensive features. However, it receives negative feedback for high transaction fees and limited scalability for multiple communities.
How does Circle integrate with other tools?
Circle provides native integrations with tools like Stripe and Zoom. To connect with other tools, users can leverage Zapier or Integromat, which expands Circle's integration possibilities.
What the main competitors of Circle?
Circle's main competitors include platforms like Bettermode, Hivebrite, Mighty Networks, and Heartbeat. These alternatives offer similar features for building and managing online communities, providing options for engagement, monetization, and customization.
Is Circle legit?
Circle is generally considered a safe and legitimate platform for building online communities. It's known for its user-friendly interface and robust features, as reported by users. However, potential subscribers should be aware of user feedback on high transaction fees and limitations in scalability.
How much does Circle cost?
Circle's pricing starts at $89/month for the Professional plan, $199/month for the Business plan, and $360/month for the Enterprise plan. The Plus Branded App plan has custom pricing. They also offer add-ons like the Marketing Hub starting at $99/month.
Is Circle customer service good?
Based on user reviews, Circle's customer service is consistently praised as excellent. Users highlight the helpful resources, responsive support team, and proactive approach to addressing customer needs.
Reviewed by
Michal has worked at startups for many years and writes about topics relating to software selection and IT management. As a former consultant for Bain, a business advisory company, he also knows how to understand needs of any business and find solutions to its problems.
Tymon is a seasoned CTO who loves finding the perfect tools for any task. He recently headed up the tech department at Batmaid, a well-known Swiss company, where he managed about 60 software purchases, including CX, HR, Payroll, Marketing automation and various developer tools.