Circle
A community platform for running memberships, courses, and events under your own brand.
Independent overview by new Mantra · updated September 28, 2026
- Category
- Marketing
- Pricing
- Professional $89/mo, Business $199/mo, Scale $419/mo (billed annually); Circle Plus custom; Email Hub add-on from $99/mo (10,000+ contacts); 14-day free trial, no credit card
- Implementation
- 1-2 weeks
- Adoption risk
- Low
- Integrates with
- Zapier, Integrately, WordPress, Teachable, Memberstack, MemberSpace, Memberful, Member/Admin/Headless APIs
If you run a paid community, courses or events across several tools, Circle puts them under your own brand in one place. The 14-day free trial needs no credit card — enough to set up spaces, one course and a paid membership and watch how members use it.
Heads-up: this is an affiliate link — if you buy through it, new Mantra may earn a commission at no cost to you. It doesn’t change our take.
What Circle does
Circle is a hosted platform for building a community around your business. Members get discussion spaces, direct and group messaging, a searchable member directory, and rich profiles; you get the tools to organise all of it — spaces you configure yourself, scheduled posts, moderation controls, and a weekly email digest that pulls people back in. It runs under your own branding, on your own domain, with iOS, Android, and desktop apps.
Beyond discussion, Circle bundles the things community businesses usually buy separately. You can build and sell courses, run events, host live streams and live rooms, publish a site through the built-in website builder, and charge for access through paid memberships. Gamification and reporting sit alongside those, so you can see which spaces and content are actually holding attention.
The AI layer runs across all of it. Circle AI is a metered assistant that helps plan and draft content; higher tiers add automated transcriptions, a content co-pilot, AI agents that can act inside the community, AI moderation, and AI-driven workflows. For teams that want to build their own front end or wire Circle into other systems, there are Member, Admin, and Headless APIs, a Circle MCP server, and Zapier and Integrately connections.
Key capabilities
Community spaces and messaging
Configure discussion spaces, private spaces, chat spaces, direct messages, and group chat, with member profiles and a searchable directory. Basic moderation and automated moderation tools are included.
Courses and paid memberships
Build courses and sell access through paid memberships, with transaction fees that fall as you move up the plans — 2% on Professional, 1% on Business, 0.5% on Circle Plus.
Events, live streams, and live rooms
Run scheduled events, live streams, and interactive live rooms. Attendee and participant caps and streaming hours vary by plan, and extra capacity can be bought as an add-on.
Circle AI and AI agents
Circle AI is included with a monthly credit allowance, with extra credits sold per thousand. Business plans add automated transcriptions and a content co-pilot; Circle Plus adds AI agents, AI moderation, AI workflows, and a knowledge engine.
Workflows and automations
Automations, scheduled workflows, and bulk actions handle recurring community admin. Professional caps each at 20; Business makes them unlimited.
APIs, headless, and integrations
Member, Admin, and Headless APIs plus a Circle MCP server support custom front ends and integrations, alongside Zapier, Integrately, and single sign-on with tools including WordPress, Teachable, Memberstack, MemberSpace, and Memberful.
Best for
- Creators, coaches, and educators who want community, courses, events, and payments in one place rather than stitched together from separate tools
- Businesses moving a community off a social network and onto a branded platform with their own domain and apps
- Membership businesses that charge for access and want the billing, gating, and member management handled natively
- Teams that want to automate routine community admin — onboarding sequences, scheduled posts, digests — without writing code
- Organisations with developers who want to build a custom front end against the Headless and Member APIs
Worth knowing
- Paid communities pay a transaction fee on top of the subscription and their payment processor's cut — 2% on Professional, falling to 1% on Business and 0.5% on Circle Plus. On meaningful membership revenue that difference can outweigh the gap in plan price, so run the numbers against your actual volume.
- The headline price is not the whole price. Professional includes three admins and 20 spaces, Business five admins and 30; beyond that, extra admins are $10/mo each, extra moderators $20/mo per ten, and extra spaces $20/mo per ten. Live attendees and streaming hours are metered the same way.
- Circle AI runs on a monthly credit allowance with additional credits charged per thousand, so heavy AI use is a variable cost rather than a fixed one.
- The most capable AI — agents, moderation, AI workflows, the knowledge engine — plus branded mobile apps and SSO sit on Circle Plus, which is custom-priced and sales-led. If those are the reason you are looking, you cannot size the budget from the public pricing page.
- Moving an existing community is a real project, not a switch: member data, content, and especially active payment subscriptions all have to be migrated. Circle offers migration services, but plan for the coordination and a period of member confusion either way.
How Circle compares
Circle bundles community, courses, events and paid memberships under your own brand. The alternatives each cover one piece — email, training, a custom portal, a free group — and are the better choice if that piece is all you need.
vs GetResponse
GetResponse is email-first, with webinars, premium newsletters and an AI course creator, from $19 a month — right for a creator whose audience lives in the inbox. Circle adds what email lacks: discussion spaces, member profiles, messaging and mobile apps. Choose GetResponse if you broadcast; Circle if members need to talk to each other.
vs TalentLMS
TalentLMS is a learning management system for staff, partner and customer training, with deadlines and completion tracking for compliance and a free plan for five users. It delivers and records training rather than selling it. Pick TalentLMS for internal training; Circle for courses sold to a paying community.
vs Softr
Softr is a no-code builder for client portals and internal apps on Airtable, Google Sheets or HubSpot, with a free tier and Basic from $19 a month. It suits a business that needs a portal shaped to its own workflow. Circle is ready-made community — spaces, events, courses and memberships out of the box — with APIs if you want a custom front end.
vs A free social-media group
A free group on a social network is where many communities start, with members already on a platform they use every day. Circle is the step up when you want the community under your own branding and domain, with paid access, courses, events and messaging managed in one place.
Related tools
Ready to see Circle in action?
Price it on your real revenue: the transaction fee falls from 2% on Professional ($89/mo) to 1% on Business ($199/mo) and 0.5% on Circle Plus, and extra admins, spaces and streaming hours are charged on top. On meaningful membership income, the fee often decides the plan.
Heads-up: this is an affiliate link — if you buy through it, new Mantra may earn a commission at no cost to you. It doesn’t change our take.
Not sure where to start? Our free assessment matches your workflow with the AI tool that fits.