Growing an audience
Running the business
Both cover community platforms and courses & coaching. Here is what separates them on price, billing, what you can take with you, and coverage.
| Circle | Heartbeat | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | From $89 | From $49 |
| Pricing model | Paid subscription | Free trial, then paid |
| Free tier | No | No |
| Billing | Monthly or annual | Monthly or annual |
| Free trial | 14 days | 14 days |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Data export | Some of it | Everything, in an open format |
| Their cut | 2% of what you earn | 5% of what you earn |
| Runs on | Not stated | Web, iOS, Android |
| Covers | Community Platforms, Courses & Coaching | Community Platforms, Courses & Coaching, Memberships & Subscriptions |
| 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.
A community with courses and events built in
Heartbeat runs channels, threads, events, courses and a member directory in one place, which is the shape most creator communities end up wanting after outgrowing a Discord server. Payments run through it and it takes a cut that falls as the plan rises. There is no free plan, and a community that stops paying is deactivated rather than frozen.
Our note
Work out the transaction fee at your own revenue before comparing headline prices: at $5,000 a month collected, Grow costs less in total than Build. Against Circle and Mighty Networks this is the one with courses and events genuinely built in rather than bolted on.
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.