Circle was created by Andrew Guttormsen, Sid Yadav, and Rudy Santino, all ex-Teachable employees. It was launched in 2020 and is now used by thousands of online communities around the world.
We earn a commission from partner links on this site. This doesn’t affect our opinions or evaluations.
Circle is the best all-around community platform, offering comprehensive features for building your community and engaging members. It also offers built-in tools for creating online courses and memberships.
Its intuitive design makes it easy to use, while features like Workflows and branded mobile apps enable it to grow alongside your community, making the platform suitable for all types of communities.
Circle.so has been making waves in the online community space for a few years. So naturally, it’s one of your first choices if you are looking for a platform to build your online community.
But is it the best option? What features does the platform offer, and how do they compare to the competitors?
To answer these questions, we’ve created an in-depth Circle.so review. Here we’ll cover all the platform features and discuss what’s good and bad about them.
By the end of this review, you’ll have a clear idea of whether Circle is the right choice for you.
Let’s get started.
Circle is an online community software platform that enables creators and brands to build and grow an engaged community on their own websites.
The idea is to provide you with all the necessary tools to create a space where your audience can connect and interact with each other.
So, the platform offers a range of community-building tools, including posts and articles, online courses, events, live streaming, member directories, messaging, personalized notifications, and moderation tools.
On top of this, you get design customization features, built-in monetization tools, and the ability to integrate with your existing tech stack.
Circle’s homepage
Now, Circle is cloud-based, so you don’t need to install any software or go through any technical setups. You just need to create a Circle account, set up your community, and point your domain to it.
Finally, Circle is quite different from Facebook Groups since you can create a white-label community and run it on your own terms. You own the community audience and can connect with them however and whenever you want.
Now that you have an overview of the Circle community platform, let’s dive into the details.
Circle is one of the simplest community-building platforms, and it doesn’t require any special skills to use.
The admin interface is intuitive and well-organized. All your spaces are listed on the left side of the screen, along with an option to create a new one. You can navigate to a space from here and access the discussions and the space settings as well.
Plus, essential actions like creating a new post or starting a live stream are strategically positioned, so they are always visible and easily accessible.
Besides that, all the tools and settings are neatly categorized into intuitive categories, like Posts, Members, PayWalls, and Settings, so you won’t have to do much digging to find what you need.
When it comes to end-users, the interface that they see is similar to the one you see, with the exception of the admin settings.
It’s clean and intuitive, and all the important features are easily accessible from the left sidebar, so members can quickly get around and find what they need.
And they can always use the search bar at the top to quickly find posts, comments, and people.
Circle has a clean, modern design
Overall, Circle is super user-friendly and easy to manage, so you can get your community up and running in no time. Not just that, the experience is great for end-users, and they’ll actually enjoy using the software.
The primary job of a community software platform is to help you build an online community and keep it active. In this section, we’ll take a look at how Circle fares in this aspect.
Let’s start by discussing the most essential community options you get here:
Now, let’s get into the specific features.
Circle offers two features called Spaces and Space Groups to help you organize your community.
While spaces are where you add posts and other content, space groups are for grouping similar spaces together.
Let’s talk about spaces first because they’re the fundamental elements for building a Circle community.
To start with, there are six types of spaces you can create:
Plus, you have many customization options for spaces. You can easily add a cover image and adjust SEO settings.
Regarding privacy and access settings, you can keep your space open, private, or secret. Plus, you can put it behind a paywall and even show a custom landing page to non-members.
Access settings for Circle spaces
Additionally, it provides the flexibility to control the permissions of community members within a space. You can choose to allow or restrict member actions, such as adding others, creating posts, and sorting them.
Circle also has some layout customization options for the Posts space. You can choose between feed, list, or card layouts and customize the display further with options like showing a sidebar.
The options offered here let you use a Posts-type space for different needs. For instance, you can utilize the card layout to display a library of blog posts, or you can use the list layout to create a Q&A space.
Layout options for Posts-type space
Moreover, you can enable topics inside the space, allowing members to filter posts by topic. This adds another level of organization and makes it easier for members to find relevant content.
Space Groups, on the other hand, are purely an organizational element. Unlike spaces, groups don’t contain any actual content but are solely used for grouping related spaces.
So, whether you want to organize spaces by theme or attributes, like access level (free or paid), you can achieve that by creating space groups.
Overall, Circle does an excellent job of helping you organize your community as you see fit. From different space types to customizable layouts, you have a lot of flexibility.
And if you need inspiration for organizing your community, check out this ultimate list of Circle examples.
Content is the fuel that runs an online community. Therefore, it’s essential that you have the right tools and features to create engaging content and encourage conversations.
As we mentioned above, Circle has a Posts-type space for creating discussion posts, articles, and more.
For creating posts, you have a fully featured editor. It allows you to add text, images, videos, downloadable files, and even embeds. Plus, it offers basic formatting options like bold, italic, headings, and lists.
You can also add a cover image, which is useful if you’re creating a full article.
Additionally, Circle lets you create polls to survey your members or gather feedback.
However, the most interesting feature is the content co-pilot, an AI writing assistant that can suggest post ideas, write content, and improve your writing.
Additionally, Circle lets you perform various actions on posts:
Overall, the feature set for creating posts in Circle is quite powerful.
Events are likely the second most popular content type that Circle creators use, coming in just after posts.
Creating an event in Circle is quick and easy—simply provide basic information, such as date and time, one-time vs recurring event, and location, and you’re good to go.
If you want to host an online event, you have a few delivery options. You can use the platform’s native live-streaming features or another meeting solution, like Zoom, to deliver your event.
Creating an event in Circle
Your members will be able to RSVP for the event, and Circle will send them a confirmation email. There’s also an option to automatically send a reminder to the attendees before the event.
When it comes to live streaming, Circle’s capabilities are quite impressive.
Apart from using it for scheduled events, you can also go live in your community anytime. You get two options here:
During live sessions, you can present your screen and use the built-in chat to engage with your members. You can also record the session and share it with the attendees.
This is how a live session in Circle looks
Overall, Circle provides all the necessary features for hosting events and live streams, and these are excellent for driving engagement in your community.
Circle also offers course-building tools that allow you to create engaging video, audio, and text-based lessons for your students and organize them into sections.
Creating a course in Circle is simple with the drag-and-drop builder. You can use it to add sections and lessons and reorder them as you wish.
Plus, adding content to your lessons is a breeze with Circle’s simple lesson editor. You can easily add a video or audio or embed external media, as well as attaching downloadable files. And with unlimited video hosting included, you don’t have to worry about video storage or delivery.
Now, Circle also supports:
However, it’s worth noting that the platform lacks some essential learning tools, such as quizzes and certificates.
The course player itself is very well designed from a user experience point of view. You have a big content area on the left, and the navigation sidebar is on the right. Your members can also hide the navigation and switch to full-screen mode.
Course player interface
A noteworthy feature here is automated transcriptions, available as part of Circle’s Community AI. This not only allows for the automatic generation of captions but also enables users to search within videos and swiftly navigate to the relevant section.
While Circle Courses may not be as feature-rich as standalone course platforms, it’s very effective for creating courses to engage with your community. You can also combine the course functionality with features like discussion spaces and live events to use it as a cohort course platform.
Circle supports direct messaging between members, and you can enable or disable it in your community according to your needs.
You also get an option to disable direct messaging for specific members, giving you more control.
Apart from one-on-one messaging, Circle also lets you set up group chats. You can create a Chat space, and members can chat with each other, just like the chat rooms in the early days of the Internet.
The chat interface is quite simple and looks similar to other messaging apps. It supports features like mentions, emoji reactions, chat threads, and voice messages, which make it a powerful engagement tool.
Circle’s group chat feature
By default, your members will receive notifications when someone posts in a space they’re part of, likes or comments on a post they’re following, or sends them a direct message.
However, the members can completely customize the notification preferences. They can choose the activities and also the spaces for which they want to be notified.
Moreover, they can choose to receive notifications via email or in-app, as well as push notifications on mobile devices.
Notification preference settings
As an admin, you get a similar level of control over the notifications you receive, and you can also choose the channels through which to receive these notifications.
Lastly, you can send a weekly digest to your members with a personalized summary of the activities in your community. With a single click, you can enable this feature, and it’s a great way to keep your members updated.
While your community can be accessed in a browser from any device, Circle also offers free apps for iOS and Android.
The app’s interface is optimized for mobile devices and allows users to create new discussions or engage with existing ones on the go. They can also watch courses and attend livestreams through the app.
Circle app’s user interface
Plus, mobile apps support push notifications, which allow members to receive updates on the go and help bring them back into the community.
Finally, Circle also gives you the option to get branded mobile apps for your community.
Overall, Circle has excellent features for building an engaged community. From flexible
organization tools to engagement features like rich posts, live events, group chats, and
online courses, it has all the important bases covered.
Despite its many capabilities, Circle remains intuitive and straightforward to use. Plus, the
mobile apps add to the overall user experience.
Circle’s sales and marketing tools focus on helping you monetize your online community. These include the ability to create landing pages and charge for access.
Circle has a feature called Lock Screen that lets you build simple landing pages for your private spaces. This page only appears to the non-members of the space, and you can use it to encourage them to request an invite or redirect to a checkout page to buy a plan.
The page builder is very simple and supports just four page sections. You can show a Banner section, Space description, course lessons, and a call-to-action (CTA) section.
All the page sections have a predetermined layout, and you only have a few design options as well. For example, in the Banner and CTA sections, you can just add a background image, change the text, and add a button.
Circle’s Lock Screen feature in action
To organize page blocks, you can drag and drop a block to rearrange the block order. You can also hide any of the page blocks.
Even though the Lock Screen feature isn’t suitable for building proper sales pages, you can use it to create simple landing pages and redirect them to either your sales page or the checkout page.
Circle’s Paywalls feature lets you create pricing plans and lock access to your spaces and space groups based on them.
With PayWalls, you can create multiple plans and choose specific spaces or groups to include in this plan, so you can easily create multiple membership tiers.
There are two ways of charging for these plans:
Pricing options in Circle’s Paywalls
Another handy feature, should you plan to use it as a membership platform, is the ability to group multiple subscription plans together and let members switch between them in a single click.
You can set multiple pricing options for each plan. For instance, you can have monthly, annual, and one-time payment options for the same plan.
Circle also allows you to create coupons, which can be percentage-based or a fixed amount.
As far as payment gateways go, Circle only connects to Stripe (there’s no PayPal integration). The Stripe integration also supports tax collection, so you can handle sales taxes natively.
For checkout, Circle offers a one-step checkout process where members create an account and complete the payment through a single page.
The checkout page has a clean design and only asks for the minimum information.
A sample checkout page created on Circle
However, there are a few things about the checkout that could be improved:
Lastly, Circle has built-in affiliate marketing tools so that you can create and run your own affiliate program while using the Paywalls feature.
You can offer a fixed amount or a percentage of the sale as a commission to affiliates. You can also choose the pricing plans they can promote and also adjust the commission for each plan.
Your affiliates get access to a private dashboard, where they can grab their unique affiliate links and track their earnings.
Overall, Circle’s pricing features and checkout process are fine, but there’s room for improvement, especially when it comes to payment methods and conversion tools.
In this section, we’ll discuss the features Circle offers for managing your community and tracking its performance. Let’s start with the community management tools.
Circle offers two admin roles to manage your community: Moderators and Admins.
Admins have access to the entire feature set and can manage all aspects of the community, including creating new spaces, managing member billing, and even adding moderators.
Moderators, on the other hand, are assigned to specific spaces and groups and can manage space/group settings, add/remove members, remove posts and comments, etc.
Circle lets you add admins and moderators
In addition to user roles, Circle offers several features to make moderation easier:
Circle also lets you perform essential member management actions, such as inviting members, managing their profiles, messaging them, or removing them from the community.
In addition to these features, Circle has a couple of features that make member management even easier:
Finally, Circle has a powerful Workflows feature that takes community management to the next level.
With Workflows, you can automate actions based on certain events in your community. For example, you can use it to send a welcome message to new members or congratulate members when they complete a course.
Workflows can also be used to perform bulk actions, like sending a broadcast message to all members with specific tags. You can also schedule these actions on a one-time or recurring basis.
Pre-built workflow templates in Circle
By combining all of these features together, including Workflows, tags, and user roles, Circle provides a powerful suite of community-management tools.
Circle provides detailed analytics to track your community’s growth and performance.
The Analytics page is divided into several sections, including Overview, Members, Posts & Comments, Messages, and Spaces.
The Overview dashboard provides a snapshot of important metrics, such as the number of new, active, and inactive members in your community. You can see your most active members, community spaces, and posts.
Circle Analytics Overview tab
For deeper insights, you can explore the individual tabs:
You can filter these reports based on spaces, space groups, and member tags. Additionally, you can also customize the date range and group data by day, week, or month.
Overall, Circle’s reporting and analytics tools are excellent for gaining insights into your community’s engagement and activity.
One of Circle’s biggest strengths is its flexibility in integrating with third-party apps.
To start with, it supports the essential options:
Apart from this, Circle supports a few advanced integration options.
The first one is single sign-on (SSO). Circle has SSO integrations with several membership platforms, including Thinkific, Teachable, and WordPress. There’s even a custom SSO option.
As a result, you can easily connect Circle to your existing membership platform, allowing your members to access their accounts with one set of credentials.
Circle’s SSO integrations
Circle has a dedicated support team to help with any questions or issues you may encounter. You can reach them via email and expect a prompt response during US hours.
While there is no live chat support available, there’s a support widget located in the bottom-right corner of the admin area. You can use it to send a message to the support team, and you’ll get a response directly in your inbox.
Support widget inside Circle account
You can also use the widget to search through the extensive knowledge base of articles and quickly find what you need, making it a great self-help option.
Finally, Circle also has an active community of users, and it’s an excellent source of support and inspiration. You can connect with other community owners, share your ideas, and get feedback and advice from the Circle team as well as other users.
Support widget inside Circle accountpulvinar dapibus leo.
Moreover, the community is built using Circle itself, which means that you’ll get a chance to see the platform in action and get a sense of how others are using it.
Regarding Circle’s pricing, you can choose from four plans:
Apart from the monthly cost, there’s a transaction fee on all plans—it’s 4% for Basic, 2% for Professional, 1% for Business, and 0.5% for the Enterprise plans.
Circle’s pricing plans
Starting with the Basic plan, you can only have 100 members, 10 spaces, and a total storage of 10 GB. This limit is a bit too low.
If you need more, you’ll need to switch to the Professional plan, which supports unlimited members, 20 spaces, and 100 GB of storage. Additionally, you get access to several important features such as live streaming, online courses, and white labeling, making it the best value-for-money plan for creators.
However, if you need even higher limits on spaces and storage or want advanced features like automation workflows and APIs, you’ll need to switch to the Business or Enterprise plan.
And should you require branded community apps, you’ll need Circle.so Plus, the platform’s premium service.
The takeaway here is that Circle has plans to fit everyone’s needs. Whether you’re just starting out to those with larger communities.
It’s also worth mentioning that there’s a 14-day free trial (no credit card needed), during which you can test the platform and its features.
Before we give our verdict on the Circle platform, let’s have a look at where it stands against its competitors.
One of Circle’s main competitors is Mighty Networks. While both platforms offer similar functionalities, Circle emerges as a winner in several areas:
Read our Circle vs Mighty Networks guide for a detailed comparison.
Another Circle competitor is Kajabi, which is an all-in-one platform that goes beyond just courses and communities. It also includes a website builder, blogging tools, email marketing, and sales funnels.
However, when it comes to community features, Circle has the upper hand with better community organization and management tools.
Circle is, without a doubt, one of the top community platforms.
The platform is user-friendly, with a clean and intuitive interface. It also features a great mix of community-building and engagement tools, including support for online courses and live streaming.
What’s more, it offers advanced features—automation workflows, SSO integrations, and public API, which are all great for scaling online communities.
Lastly, the platform has affordable pricing plans with a 14-day free trial (no credit card required).
If you’re looking for a well-rounded and modern community platform that’s easy to use and can grow with your community, then Circle is worth considering. It’s our pick for the best online community platform.
We hope you found this Circle.so review helpful! Feel free to reach out to us with any questions. We’d love to hear from you. Thanks for reading!
Circle is an online community platform used by creators and business owners to build and engage their communities. It has a wide range of features and tools to help you create spaces, host events, and offer online courses.
Yes, Circle is a great platform for building and managing online communities. It’s easy to use, with a clean and intuitive interface. It also offers a great mix of features, including online courses, live streaming, automation workflows, API access, and more.
Circle is a cloud-based platform, so you only need to create an account to get started. Once you’re in, you can easily create a community, add content to it, and start engaging with members. You have access to a range of tools and features for the same
Yes, you can host online courses on Circle. The platform has a built-in online course builder that makes it easy to create and manage your courses. It also includes hosting for your course videos.
Yes, Circle has both Android and iOS apps available for members of your community. Your members can download the app from the App Store or Google Play Store for free.
Yes, you can host live streams in Circle. The platform has a built-in live-streaming feature that allows you to easily go live with your members. You can also schedule a live event.
Circle has a tiered pricing plan, ranging from $49 to $399 per month. On top of the monthly cost, you need to pay a transaction fee, starting from 4% per transaction. It also offers a 14-day free trial.
Hey there! I'm Baidhurya, the brains behind SellCoursesOnline. I used to run a digital agency, where I helped course businesses launch their eLearning platforms. I also led the tech and marketing teams at StationX, helping it grow to 500K+ students. In addition, I created the popular supply chain network design course. With 8+ years of experience, I'm here to share my expertise and insights on course creation and platforms with you.
SellCoursesOnline is supported by its audience. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn affiliate commissions. However, this doesn’t influence our reviews or product listings. All opinions are based on our tests and personal experience with a product/service.
Copyright © 2024 by SellCoursesOnline
Hey there! I’m Baidhurya, the brains behind SellCoursesOnline. I used to run a digital agency, where I helped course businesses launch their eLearning platforms. I also led the tech and marketing teams at StationX, helping it grow to 500K+ students. In addition, I created the popular supply chain network design course. With 8+ years of experience, I’m here to share my expertise and insights on course creation and platforms with you.
We respect your privacy and will never spam you.
