Circle.so is one of the leading online Community platforms available today. If you want to build a thriving community or scale an existing one, Circle is the best choice.

Recently, it has introduced a course feature as well. This is really helpful if you are a teacher, a course creator, or a coach. But the LMS features are just basic and are not as advanced as tools like Kajabi.

To help members access their communities and learn on the go, it has mobile Apps for both iOS and Android.

Check out this review if you’re considering using Circle to host your communities or if you’re wondering whether it’s the best platform.

Let’s get started.

Here is a quick breakdown of Circle’s features.

What do we like about Circle.so?

• Compared to other tools, Circle.so provides more features to build a thriving community. They are constantly releasing new features to make it the best tool of its kind.
• Along with communities, it also supports courses. Although it doesn’t replace dedicated LMS tools like Teachable, it gets the job done. If you want to host courses and build an LMS community for each course, Circle.so would be the best bet.
• It has mobile apps for both iOS and Android. Users can access communities, courses, and memberships and attend events on the go, anywhere, anytime.
• For marketing, Circle supports coupons/discounts, upsells, and trials. You can use these to increase sales and conversions. You can use Zapier triggers to automate issuing of coupons and discounts.
• Circle.so has a built-in live-streaming feature and has recently introduced live spaces as well (maybe inspired by Twitter?). You can go live within specific groups or spaces. It also has live rooms feature for smaller group conversations and quick huddles.
• To avoid spam, it provides community moderation tools like keyword blocklists and flagging comments & posts. If you have a larger community (and are open to the public), these features would be really helpful.
• I really like how Circle.so provided basic building blocks for building online communities vs. constricting you. They are following Notion’s roadmap in this regard, which is good!

What we don’t like about Circle.so?

• Unlike its competitors like Tribe.so, Circle lacks gamification features like badges, points, rankings, and leaderboards. If you want to increase member engagement, implementing gamification would be really helpful.
• Circle’s apps are not completely white labeled, unlike Mighty Networks. You can just remove the branding. Other than that, you don’t have any control over the apps (like designing the apps, listing them on Play Stores, or maintaining them).
• Depending on the pricing plan you choose, it has limitations on the number of spaces, admins, and moderators you can host. In case you need additional spaces or admin seats, you need to purchase add-ons.

Latest product updates

Recently Circle has introduced several new features.

• Customizable profile fields – Now you can create your own custom fields to collect additional information you need from your customers (for say effective segmentation and marketing).
• Circle’s live events now support up to 50 on-screen speakers. The Pro plan now supports up to 30 speakers (up from 15) while the Enterprise plan supports up to 50 (up from 30).
• Circle’s live stream broadcasts and recordings now support 1080p.
• To avoid spam in the community, Circle now supports profanity filters and flagging abusive comments and posts.

To see all the latest updates, you can follow this link.

Upfront bottomline

Circle is a powerhouse of courses and communities.

Similar to tools like Kajabi or Mighty Networks, it has mobile apps for both iOS and Android. But unlike Mighty Pro (Mighty Networks calls its apps Mighty Pro), the apps are not truly white labeled.

Circle has a built-in live streaming feature which eliminates the need for external integrations like Zoom or YouTube Live. With this, you can conduct events, masterclasses, and webinars. You can monetize by selling premium access to these.

Choose Circle if you want to build a thriving community for your business and you are okay to use external LMS tools like Teachable for advanced course creation (if needed).

Circle.so overview

Circle.so is a powerful community-building tool. Along with communities, it also supports coaching, memberships, and courses.

To monetize, it supports paywalls, memberships, events, masterclasses, private spaces, etc. It also offers coupons, discounts, upsells, and trials to increase sales.

But unlike advanced LMS tools like Kajabi, it doesn’t support funnels, email marketing, or automation. You can refer to my Circle.so vs Kajabi post to know more on this.

Communities in Circle.so

Creating communities with Circle is easy and straightforward. It calls community channels as spaces. You can create either public or private spaces.

Circle supports features like members, tags, directories, weekly digests, posts, comments, etc. If a user has access to multiple communities on Circle, they can easily switch using Circle’s community switcher. Also, it has a dark mode feature to increase readability.

The best thing about Circle is it is a block-based community tool helping you design the spaces as you visualize. It also provides robust API, integrations, and embeddable widgets to enable you to plug Circle into the stack.

For community customization, it provides color themes on the Pro and Enterprise plans.

Also, you can customize the feed and the community onboarding experience. You can add custom links, and codes, promote products/offers, pin the posts, etc. You have full control and flexibility over customizing the spaces.

The best thing with Circle is it supports bulk actions like –

• Send messages (you can send a different message to each member)
• Create posts
• Add or remove tags
• Add or remove members from a space
• Add or remove members from a space group
• Remove members from a community

You can also integrate with Zapier triggers to unveil new emergent use cases. You can activate the triggers to create comments, invite members, add members to spaces, remove members from spaces, etc.

Circle also supports custom domains and subdomains. You can host communities under your own domain. This builds trust among the audience and helps in conversions.

Bottomline: Its block-based community building helps in designing and customizing the spaces for more member engagement. Also, its live streams, live spaces, events, etc. help you connect with the audience in real-time and increase engagement.

Online courses

Recently in 2022, Circle introduced a course feature. It has just basic LMS features and is not feature-rich as dedicated LMS tools like Thinkific or Kajabi.

Its course curriculum consists of sections and lessons. For adding the content, it supports text, audio/video, and embed codes. The lectures can be drip-scheduled so that the students don’t binge-watch them in one sitting!

That’s it.

Unlike other tools, you can add course expiration dates and lock the modules for increasing course completion rates.

Also, Circle doesn’t offer course compliance features for enforcing the following:

• Quiz completion
• Video watch duration
• Lecture order

I really liked the fact that Circle.so provides single sign-on integration with several tools including Teachable.

With this, if you have hosted courses on Teachable, your students can log in to Circle using Teachable’s credentials, to access the communities.

Cool isn’t it?

So, what about course completion certificates?

Circle doesn’t offer these. If you’re hosting academic courses and most of your audience are students, you can use services like Accredible to issue certificates outside of Circle. Use Zapier trigger: On course completion, action: issue the certificate.

Let’s discuss the course player.

Circle doesn’t offer any course player customization features. But it has integrated with Mux, to provide the best-in-class video experience to the users.

Bottomline: Circle just has a basic course builder. If you are just beginning with the course creation journey or would wait for new features (they have impressive funding) this would be enough for you. Optionally, you can use any external LMS tools for hosting online courses (if advanced features are required).

Mobile app experience

Circle.so has both iOS and Android apps. Their Android app was recently launched at the end of 2022. The app is still in development mode (they are adding all the features that the iOS app has).

Members can access their communities, courses, events, and chats all within the apps. They also support in-app purchases and branded notifications (better open rates than good old emails).

As I mentioned, the Android app was released recently with a few restrictions. For example, members cannot edit posts on the Android app.

To explore all the future app updates, you can follow this help guide.

Bottomline: Circle’s mobile apps help members consume the content on the go. Circle has apps for both iOS and Android (recently released). However, compared to say Mighty Networks, their app has a lot of restrictions (with an impressive roadmap).

Digital product selling

If you want to create memberships in Circle, you can do that with the help of spaces. Spaces combined with Paywalls help you create various membership tiers to offer premium content. You can sell digital downloads, audio/video files, eBooks, etc.

You can use Circle’s native live streaming capability to offer coaching, sell high-ticket events, offer masterclasses, and more. To increase sales, you can even offer coupons/discounts.

Bottomline: Though Circle is not a dedicated digital product-selling platform, it gets the job done if you are just beginning. Otherwise, if you want to expand your business on digital product selling, I suggest you go with tools like Podia.

Marketing features

Circle offers coupons, discounts, upsells, and trials to increase sales. As of now, it doesn’t offer downsells and order bumps.

For payments, it natively integrates with Stripe. You can also connect with other payment gateways using Zapier.

Circle.so is pretty weak when it comes to marketing features. It doesn’t have email marketing, sales funnels, and automations. To avail these features, you need to go with third-party integrations at an additional cost. It just has branded notifications (which can be customized). That’s it.

What if you want to automate course enrollments, send coupons, give access to memberships, add tags, etc?

For this, you need to use Zapier. As of now, it has 14 triggers and whopping 21 actions. I must say Circle.so knows that the future of work is API!

Circle.so pricing

Circle is a premium platform, and its lowest pricing starts at $49/mo. This plan gives you access to all the community features.

If you need live streaming and courses feature, go with its Professional plan at $99/mo.

Its highest plan is the Enterprise plan, and it costs $399/mo. With this plan, you can customize the sender emails and the profile fields to collect more data.

One downside of Circle is that, based on the pricing plans you choose, it has limitations on the number of admins, moderators, and spaces you can host. If you need any additional features, you have to purchase add-ons at an additional fee.

Circle.so discount

If you go with annual subscriptions, you will get $10 OFF on the Pro plan and $39 OFF on the Enterprise plan. Before starting out, you can get your hands on the tool with its 14 days free trial.

If you feel Circle is not affordable for you, I suggest you take a look at some of its alternatives.

Integrations

Circle.so has integrations with 15+ tools and services. It natively integrates with Sendgrid, Teachable, Memberstack, MemberSpace, Memberful, WordPress, Twitter, etc.

It provides custom single sign-on (SSO) for all these.

What does it mean?

This means your users can login to other platforms using Circle’s credentials.

For example, they can access courses hosted on Teachable by logging in with Circle’s credentials.

For the rest, you need to use Zapier and API integrations.

Reporting and analytics

Circle.so provides detailed analytics to see your business growth.

In the analytics overview tab, you will get several metrics like –

• Average daily active members
• Monthly active members
• Top members
• Active topics
• Active spaces, and popular days/times.

Along with this it also gives dedicated reports of members, engagement, and channels.

• Member analytics: This provides data on the most active topic starters, top commenters, and most appreciated members.
• Engagement analytics: Here you will get stats on the topic and comment engagement. You can filter activity by date to see the most popular topics and comments for a custom time period.

Bottomline: Circle.so provides detailed analytics on members’ activity and the channels. But it doesn’t provide heatmaps and video analytics reports as of now, especially for training courses.

FAQs on Circle.so

What is Circle.so?

Circle.so is a leading online community platform available today. Along with communities, it also supports memberships, courses, digital downloads, and live streams.

Does Circle offer a trial to explore its features?

Yes. You can sign up for its 14 days free trial and get your hands on the tool.

Can I get any discount on Circle?

If you choose its annual billing you can avail up to $39 OFF.

Does Circle have mobile apps?

Yes. It has both iOS and Android apps, but are not truly white-labeled.

Conclusion

Circle.so is one of the top online community platforms suited for all types of businesses.

Choose Circle if you need –

• An easy-to-use yet feature-rich community platform.
• Courses but basic LMS features are enough.
• Mobile apps but they need not be white labeled.
• Native live events feature.
• Monetization features like paid events, discounts/coupons, memberships, and other digital downloads.

I hope you found this Circle.so review post helpful.