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 | Memberful | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | From $89 | From $49 |
| Pricing model | Paid subscription | Paid subscription |
| Free tier | No | No |
| Billing | Monthly or annual | Monthly or annual |
| Free trial | 14 days | Not stated |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Data export | Some of it | Not stated |
| Their cut | 2% of what you earn | 4.9% of what you earn |
| Runs on | Not stated | Web |
| Covers | Community Platforms, Courses & Coaching | Memberships & Subscriptions, Community Platforms, Monetization & Payments |
| 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
Paid memberships bolted onto a site you own
Memberful sells memberships from a site you already run rather than moving your audience to a platform, and it is the tool most WordPress publishers reach for when they start charging. One price covers everything and the money is charged on top as a percentage. Nothing is billed until a first payment comes in, so a launch that never launches costs nothing.
Our note
The 4.9 percent is the number to model, because it is charged on revenue rather than on profit: at $2,000 a month collected it is about double the subscription. Against Ghost, which takes nothing, this wins on flexibility and loses on arithmetic once you are large.
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.