Circle.so was once a popular choice for building online communities, but the landscape is evolving! This guide explores the top 8 alternatives in 2024, each offering unique features to fit your specific needs. Whether you're a business owner, educator, or creators, you'll find the perfect platform to cultivate a thriving online space for your community. Dive in and discover your ideal match!

What is Circle.so?

It is only fair that we fully take a look at the ins-and-outs of the platform to make sense of what it offers and what the alternatives to Circle.so can offer in comparison.  

Circle.so was recently launched in 2020 to connect clients with their service providers. The idea was to create seamless connections whereby people can discuss, make transactions, and make purchases in an accessible and quick way.  

It is an all-in-one community-centric platform for creators and brands. A digital community space where creators, business professionals, learners, and generally, anyone interested can hop on and join the discussion. The space enables meaningful engagement and hence, effective relationships.  

Furthermore, the platform revolutionized creator and community dynamics by understanding the importance of merging community elements with business. Reports prove that investing in the community encourages employee participation, impacts positively on the business image, and client satisfaction.  

Circle.so features

• Discussion chat rooms
• Private messaging
• Brand building
• Live streams
• Paid memberships
• Single sign-on (SSO)
• Free trials
• Multiple integrations
• Advanced analytics
• Invite teammates

Why Consider Alternatives to Circle.so?

Circle.so has been a reliable platform for building online communities, but exploring alternatives can help you find a solution better tailored to your specific needs. While Circle.so excels in fostering community engagement, it may not be the best choice for managing courses.

For this purpose, Learning Management Systems (LMS) and specialized course platforms offer functionalities specifically designed for educational needs. Whether you're seeking more advanced features, better pricing, or a different user experience, these alternatives provide a variety of options.

In this section, we'll delve into why it's worth considering other platforms and what unique advantages they might offer. From enhanced customization to specialized tools for educators and businesses, these alternatives can elevate your community engagement and growth.

Top 12 alternatives to Circle.so

Teachfloor

Best Alternative to Circle.so for Learning Communities

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Teachfloor is a one-of-a-kind cohort-based course platform. It focuses on facilitating a quality solution to remote learning with the benefits of in-person learning. One of the key areas that Teachfloor emphasizes is community-building.

The central idea of working in cohorts - a close-knit group of like-minded individuals - is to build lasting relationships for educational purposes, be they academic, professional, or personal. Therefore, it offers the following features:

• Create and sell Cohort-Based Courses
• Discussion Forum
• Community Channels
• Peer Learning Tools
• White-Label + custom domain
• Zoom integration
• Multiple admins
• Live Chat
• Group Chat
• Free trial
• API & SSO
• +100 integrations

Other features include an analytics dashboard to track participant activity, student enrolment for member onboarding, and Stripe integration for smooth transactions.

The only areas where Teachfloor lacks is in having a mobile app. You can add further integrations via Zapier, however, that will spike up your costs.

Slack

Best Alternative to Circle.so for Business Communication

Slack is a popular business communication platform widely adopted by workplaces for enhancing team collaboration. It offers a designated space for each community, allowing users to communicate efficiently and keep discussions organized. Slack's primary advantages lie in its simplicity and user-friendliness. The interface is intuitive and available on both web and mobile platforms, making it accessible for all users. Key features include:

• Channels for organizing conversations
• Direct messaging
• File sharing
• Integration with other tools
• Searchable message history
• Notifications and reminders
• Video and voice calls

While Slack is excellent for fostering community engagement and collaboration, it lacks some key features such as custom branding and monetization options. Additionally, it is primarily a communication platform and does not support course creation or management. However, its ease of use and extensive integrations make it a great option for business communication and team collaboration.

Bettermode

Best Alternative to Circle.so for Customizable Business Communities

Bettermode is possibly one of the closest alternatives to Circle.so. In the same way, it is also a business community platform. It operates by focusing on customer engagement through healthy feedback and communication. The best thing about Bettermode is its customizability. It offers multiple layout options, color palettes, even custom domains for business branding.

Other features include:

• In-app integrations: Zapier, Google Analytics, your custom apps, and Amplitude for community optimization.
• Moderation: Automation tools and rules to keep the community safe.
• Discussion spaces
• Analytics
• Member access for private communities

As an incredibly customizable and flexible app, Tribe makes for an excellent alternative. Moreover, it is free for up to 100 members. The only cons; the user experience can be a bit cluttered due to excessive integrations and extra charges for removing the Tribe logo.

Discourse

Best Alternative to Circle.so for Forum-Based Communities

Discourse is a platform that lets you create community discussion boards much like Teachfloor for organized communication. Additionally, it offers exciting little features like reacting to each others' posts.

It offers the following features:

• Easy community moderation with inappropriate content flagging.
• Easy-to-use interface
• Organized discussion boards
• Notification system for keeping users updated

While it comes with many upsides, Discourse seems to be an expensive option for most with starting limit at $100/mo. Moreover, one needs some coding knowledge to set up free code from third-party sites if one chooses not to use the platform's offered code. Hence, making it a less suitable option for rookie creators.

Hivebrite

Best Alternative to Circle.so for Professional Communities

Hivebrite is an all-in-one community management platform designed for organizations, alumni networks, and professional associations. It offers a wide array of features to manage and engage members. Key features include:

• Customizable branding and layout
• Member directories and profiles
• Event management tools
• Advanced analytics and reporting
• Monetization options through memberships and donations

Hivebrite's extensive customization and professional tools make it a strong alternative for organizations looking to create a branded, interactive community experience.

Discord

Best Alternative to Circle.so for Gaming and Casual Communities

Discord is yet another popular team chat platform and one of the interesting alternatives to Circle.so. It works similarly to Slack as both are text-based communication apps and allow users to make specific discussion channels. Furthermore, it also has an easy voice chatting option that gamers seem to love.

The features include:

• Easy-to-use
• Voice and video calling
• Specific community channels

On multiple levels, Discord is similar to Circle, however, the platform seems to lack certain tools for scaling a growing community.

Kajabi

Best Alternative to Circle.so for  Creators and Influencers

Kajabi is a comprehensive platform for creating and selling online courses, memberships, and coaching programs. It integrates community-building features to enhance user engagement.

Key features include:

• Course creation and management tools
• Community forums and chat
• Email marketing and automation
• Analytics and reporting
• Monetization through subscriptions and one-time sales

Kajabi is ideal for educators and entrepreneurs looking to combine community engagement with online course delivery and business growth.

Discipline

Best Alternative to Circle.so for Structured Collaboration and Engagement

Discipline is a lesser-known but powerful platform designed for community engagement and growth. It focuses on providing tools for structured discussions, project collaboration, and user interaction.

Key features include:

• Structured discussion boards
• Project management tools
• User profiles and direct messaging
• Customizable community settings
• Integration with other tools and platforms

Discipline is perfect for communities that require organized collaboration and focused interaction, making it a versatile alternative for various community types.

Mighty Networks

Best Alternative to Circle.so for Comprehensive Community Building

Mighty Networks is a white-label community and online course creation platform. One can use it in multiple ways: community building, live event hosting, course creations, and brand development. Users can easily monetize the activity within communities and subgroups. Moreover, clients can pay in several currencies.

The main features include:

• Features like live streaming, Q&A, and polls.
• Web and mobile friendly
• Multiple currency payment option
• Monetization plans
• Unlimited hosts

Overall, Mighty Networks makes for a credible alternative to Circle. The only con is that some users report it to be complicated to navigate.

Amity

Best Alternative to Circle.so for Community and Messaging Infrastructure

Amity is a social cloud that helps to 'supercharge' your platform with lots of social features. The primary idea for the app focuses on developing online communities and driving social engagement for revenue generation. For this purpose, the platform offers solutions concerning improving app engagement, building lasting communities, promoting customer engagement, and solutions for e-commerce retention.

The platform offers four Amity exclusive features for a 'supercharged' experience:

• Social for community engagement
• Chat for one-to-one communication
• Video for immersive live interaction and webinars
• Bots for streamlining user interactions

Additionally, the platform also offers easy integrations and user profiles for fellow members to follow. It can sustain up to 500k users per community and hence make it a great option for big communities. Moreover, it also offers UI kits for customizations and SDKs. On the downside, it can be a bit much customization at times.

Facebook groups

Best Alternative to Circle.so for Wide Accessibility and Cost Efficiency

Facebook is another one of the great alternatives to Circle.so. Interestingly, it is free! It is also a convenient option as almost everyone is already using Facebook. Therefore, making it easier for people to connect with community channels in the groups.

Some of the features include:

• Wide accessibility as most people already use Facebook
• Free of cost
• Easy to use interface

One can get too excited by seeing the free option, however, there are multiple downsides to this app as well. Firstly, it doesn't notify the users about the in-group activity and has limited engagement. Moreover, monetization is very complicated. Anyways, people seem to be dropping Facebook now making it a less suitable option for hosting a community.

Reddit

Best Alternative to Circle.so for Open Community Discussions

Reddit is a widely popular platform known for its extensive range of communities, called subreddits, covering nearly every topic imaginable. It allows users to post content, comment, and engage in discussions.

Reddit's key features include:

• Extensive range of topics covered in subreddits
• User voting system to highlight popular content
• Anonymous posting and interaction
• Large, active user base

While Reddit is excellent for open community discussions and information sharing, it may not be ideal for structured community building or professional use due to its lack of advanced customization and monetization options.

Conclusions

More and more people are realizing the importance of community-building and how it can help in growing businesses. Communities offer an interesting solution to business marketing by emphasizing on 'giving back' philosophy rather than passive advertisements. By doing so, businesses end up developing lasting and more meaningful customer-seller relationships. This was a quick but detailed look at possible alternatives to Circle.so. Try them out for yourself for an all-rounded overview.

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