What are the Differences Between Mighty Networks and Circle? (2024)

Circle and Mighty both allow you to host a community, run events, livestream, offer courses and create memberships. So what are the major differences between the two? As you'll see in this comparison, there's definitely some overlap when it comes to the feature set on both platforms. The biggest differences all come down to what Mighty calls People Magic. Everything on Mighty is designed to get your members engaging with each other. That's because their data from hundreds of thousands of communities revealed that the amount of member to member interactions is the best predictor of success for communities, courses and memberships. Lets start with the basics. Circle walks you through a basic setup process, then sets up a plain community with a set of features called Spaces here on the left to keep the navigation simple, Spaces can be organized into what they call space groups. Mighty offers the ability to instantly generate branding and marketing materials for your community in seconds to start you off one step ahead. It also sets up your community with a set of simple starter spaces organized into what they call collections. In addition, as you start inviting in members, Mighty's built in People Magic features begin helping people fill out their profiles so they can meet and connect with members similar to them. You can also auto generate polls and questions with their Infinite question Engine. Their data shows that these polls spark great discussions and create rapid connections between members. Next, let's talk about how flexible these platforms are, especially as you grow. Both Circle and Mighty share a set of common features that can live inside of any space. Let's compare them side by side. Members Both Circle and Mighty offer a browsable member directory, but only Mighty offers the People Explorer feature for visual exploration and smart introductions that help your members see how others are similar to them and quickly break the ice. Feed Circle calls this feature Posts and Mighty calls it Feed, but this feature allows members to share content and add likes and comments in a traditional feed format. Mighty also offers a variety of visually rich polls and questions to help spark engagement and People Magic Chat. Both services let you create chat spaces for real time communication. Similar to Slack or Discord Courses. Both services offer the ability to create and sell course content. Mighty's courses are more visual and they also offer the Instant Course Outline feature to quickly generate lessons and sections only. Mighty offers the ability to instantly generate course content outlines using AI Events Both services offer the ability to create, browse and RSVP to events. Additionally, Mighty also has a single event feature to showcase or sell access to a one time offering Pages and galleries. Circle offers an image feature to offer a standalone image gallery page, while Mighty offers a page feature into which hosts can add images, videos, images embeds, or create a full webpage discovery. Mighty also offers a visual discovery feature to spotlight editorially selected content across the community. You can use this as a leaderboard as well to highlight top members and content. This isn't available on Circle. It's easy to set up new spaces on either platform. However, with Circle you're limited to one feature per space. Mighty allows you to start simple, then easily add multiple features inside any space when you're ready to grow, with no need to clutter up the main navigation with a long list of spaces. Both services let you customize privacy and access settings for each space, as well as charge for access to the entire community or specific spaces via one time payments or recurring subscriptions. With Circle, you can charge in six different currencies, and with Mighty, you can charge in 135 different currencies. In terms of accessing your community across devices, both services are accessible on desktop and through native iOS and Android apps. Circle's mobile apps have limited functionality limited to members engaging with content. Mighty's mobile apps are functional for members and admins, so you can invite members, create spaces, and in general manage your community on the go. Finally, let's talk about costs for both services. Circle starts with four pricing plans. When billed annually, there's the basic plan at $49 a month, the professional plan at $89 a month, the business plan at $199 a month, and the enterprise plan at $360 a month. Circle's plans are organized around limits. If you're on the basic plan, you can have up to 100 members, 1 admin, 1 moderator, and 10 spaces. If you're on the Professional plan, you can have unlimited members, 3 admins, 10 moderators, and 20 spaces. You can also purchase individual add ons with the Professional plan and higher to get more admins, moderators, spaces, and more. You'll also have to pay more for automations, live stream attendees, email white labeling and custom member profile fields on certain plans. Mighty also starts with four plans when billed annually. There's the community plan at $41 a month, the courses plan at $99 a month, the business plan at $179 a month, and path to pro at $360 a month. On Mighty, the plan tiers are based on unlocking different features, more white labeling, and services and strategy. And there aren't limits to members, admins or spaces on any plan. You're not being charged based on how much you scale or grow or how many members you have like you are with Circle, it's just a flat fee tier depending on the features and services that you want. For instance, if you want to offer courses, you'll need to be on at least Mighty's courses plan or Circle's professional plan. On Mighty, however, you'll be able to have an unlimited number of students, courses instructors, moderators and dedicated course spaces. For live streaming. You'll need to be on Circle's professional plan, while Mighty offers live streaming across all plans. Both Mighty and Circle also have the ability to launch your own branded mobile app ON Android and iOS and require you to chat with their sales team to learn more about Mighty Pro and Circle. Circle is new, so there's not much information available as they continue to build out and refine their offering. Mighty Pro has over 380 customers each with a dedicated community strategist overseeing migrations, multiple launch plans and ongoing strategy optimization. It's people magic on your own branded apps with an expert team behind you. If you want to learn more about getting started on Mighty, check out this next video.