Circle vs Skool: community platform comparison for creators

12 Dec, 2024

Community-focused platforms have been thriving recently as many creators are moving away from the format of giving access to a course only and expanding into more forum-like spaces and offers. Circle and Skool both are big names within the space so let’s compare Circle vs Skool and see which community platform might be the best fit for you.

Just recently, I had an extensive experience with Circle which is one of the top community platforms out there and I genuinely loved everything about it.

It’s great for white labeled offers – ones that you can truly turn into YOUR thing. You can customize the user experience in plenty of different ways.

Skool has a slightly different approach…

The key focus of Skool is to give you a community-focused space that thrives on interactions.

It’s famous for its gamification features – as you gain points with interactions, you can unlock new content within the space.

It’s probably one of the least-customizable platforms out there as they focus on what they believe in and don’t give you too much room to play around with it.

BUT.

It’s working as the platform has plenty of thriving members and communities on it.

So let’s explore Circle vs Skool and which platform to build your community on?!

Circle vs Skool: community platform comparison for creators

What can you expect from Circle?

Circle is built with the intention to build white-label community spaces which means that you can make it truly YOURS with plenty of different customization options, your personal branding and your own domain name.

With that also comes a bit more time investment and thought into setting up the space in a way that will work for you.

The key features on Circle:

Customizable community where you can create various Spaces and limit user access to them, based on their subscription tier.
Course feature that gives you a chance to upload courses in a curriculum-focused space. This feature is available only on their $99/plan and higher but lower plans still have the option to upload videos within the space.
Various pricing plans for your students that provide different levels of access. This gives you the opportunity to create a truly diverse space where you can host low-ticket offers, along with other upgrade variations.
An option to go LIVE via the platform, hosing Live classes or chat rooms, without using other tools like Zoom, and having an easy option to save and publish these Lives directly in the relevant space.
Some gamification options – just recently Circle introduced gamification within their community which means that people can earn points with their interactions.
Build-in video hosting – each plan has a limited version of a built-in video hosting but in most cases their provided space will be more than enough to host your video guides or courses.

Downsides of Circle:

It’s not easy to host a free community. Yes, you can provide free access to Circle community via invite link but it will require more of the backend setup, using a separate landing page, Zapier and email marketing platform to provide this access.
They don’t have built-in landing pages or extensive checkout pages that will work for easily promoting your offers. To do that, you’ll need to consider a landing page setup elsewhere like your own website or a separate landing page builder.
It can get quite expensive if you’re interested in fully optimizing the space and using all of their various features. However, the base plan of $99/monthly can also provide more than enough for running a successful community space.

Related read: Circle review for online coaches

What can you expect from Skool?

Skool is very community-focused and the key goal of the platform is to bring well-known forum space-like features into easily usable space for everyone.

As I embraced my own experiment on Skool, I loved the platform and I know I’ll return.

The user interface is very simple and straighforward. New users, when joining, are forced to complete their profiles and it builds more of that community feeling.

You have the opportunity to have some of the Classroom content unlocked – if you want, you can provide Masterclasses and Courses without any required interactions.

However, if you want to push for that community feeling, you can lock your content behind points.

Your users can gain points via receiving likes on their comments and posts – so ultimately they’re invited to generate content to unlock new content.

You can also have this community out there FOR FREE or offer monthly or annual subscriptions. There are several variations when it comes to pricing options.

The key features on Skool:

Community space.
Course space with an option to put a paywall for a specific course or encourage your users to “unlock” courses with their engagement.
A simple About page for your community that can also serve as a Checkout/Landing page – you can’t add a lot of info there but you can add explanatory images and videos.

Downsides of Skool:

Skool does not have built-in video hosting so you will have to use options like Vimeo or Wistia for hosting your videos;
It has one fixed price of $99/monthly with 2.9% transaction fee which compared to other course spaces can be high – most at $99 price tag would come with no fees.
For $99 you get only one community and you need to create new subscriptions to host more communities (but it includes unlimited courses within).
It’s NOT white-label – you can’t host the community under your domain name, it will always be skool.com/yourname.
You can NOT schedule content within the community – the owner of Skool is very vocal about it staying as authentic as possible and he’s all about “real-time” presence vs scheduled content.

Related read: 5 reasons to choose Skool for your community

How to choose between Circle vs Skool for a community platform?

I’d suggest using Skool if you want to have a quick start and don’t have too many requirements for the setup of the space – you can easily adjust to the provided offer and roll with it. Plus Skool is simpler to manage for your audience as everything is very straightforward and there aren’t too many customization options for the space.

I’d consider Circle instead if you have a bigger vision for how you’d like your space to be. If there are several payment plans and access levels you’d like to include or you’d like to use the community to host various independent groups within it. Circle will also be a better choice if you’d prefer for the platform to be fully branded.

I hope this Circle vs Skool comparison guide will help you to find the perfect fit community platform for you!

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