Growing an audience
Running the business
Both cover community platforms. Here is what separates them on price, billing, what you can take with you, and coverage.
| Circle | Discourse | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | From $89 | From $100 |
| Pricing model | Paid subscription | Free plan, paid tiers |
| Free tier | No | Yes |
| Billing | Monthly or annual | Monthly or annual |
| Free trial | 14 days | Not stated |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Data export | Some of it | Everything, in an open format |
| Their cut | 2% of what you earn | Not stated |
| Runs on | Not stated | Web, Linux |
| Covers | Community Platforms, Courses & Coaching | Community Platforms, Website Builders |
| Works with | Nothing in particular | Nothing in particular |
| Founded | Not listed | Not listed |
| Reader rating | No reviews yet | No reviews yet |
| Live deals | 1 | None right now |
Community software that looks like yours, not ours
Circle gives you spaces, events, courses and live streams under your own branding and domain. It is the more configurable answer to Skool, and the price reflects that. Worth it once a community is paying for itself.
Our note
The right answer when the community has to look like it belongs to you, and an expensive one before that is true. Against Skool it is more money and more control, which is the entire difference between them.
Only on this side
Forum software, hosted or run yourself
Discourse is the forum the internet settled on: threaded, searchable, indexed by Google, and open source, so a community that outgrows the hosted plans can take the database and run it on its own server. That escape hatch is the argument for it over anything closed. The hosted pricing starts where a hobby project stops, and self-hosting swaps the bill for a sysadmin.
Our note
The reason to choose this over Circle or Mighty Networks is that the conversation is public and indexed, which makes the forum an asset rather than a cost. The reason not to is that it is a forum, and an audience raised on Discord will find it slow.
Only on this side
Ratings are the average of reviews readers left. The facts are stated by each tool’s own listing and are not verified by CloutStack. How we make money.