Mighty Networks asked me to share my experience choosing an all-in-one community platform recently.
I happily obliged.
Here’s the backstory—
I had a newsletter for ~2,400 subscribers for a few years before deciding to start my own course and community. I had obviously taken courses with separate communities over the years. But around the pandemic, I saw that the creators I admired had started to bring their courses and community together.
First, it was on Mighty Networks. Later Circle showed up as an option too.
So, when I was getting ready to launch my own course and community, I obviously wanted to compare Mighty Network and Circle. (I briefly looked at a few others, but quickly focused on these two options).
In this post, I’ll talk about how I decided which one I chose.
My criteria:
- A platform to launch a digital business with multiple revenue streams I could sell to my email subscribers.
- The flexibility to sell courses, charge for a membership, livestream, host virtual or IRL events—or, over time, all of the above.
- Spend as little time as possible messing with the technology. I wanted something that was intuitive for me and my members to start on.
- To make my decision ONCE. I didn’t want to have to move platforms next year because the one I had chosen wasn’t keeping up or made it harder for me to do things I knew my subscribers wanted.
- Finally, if there was a way to make managing things easier with native AI, great. But, to be clear, I initially saw this as a bonus..
To find the right platform, I paid for courses and communities on both Mighty Networks and Circle, and signed up for each platform’s free trial.
Want to try the platform with the most $1M communities created in the past year?
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Mighty Networks vs. Circle - Who's Behind the Companies?
Mighty Networks
Mighty Networks has been around since 2017.
While I had used Mighty Networks for a while, when I looked into it as a creator, three things surprised me —
- First, they have some SERIOUS technical chops. Mighty Networks was founded by the former CEO of Ning, who alongside Marc Andreessen, ran the OG community platform for interest-based communities before Facebook groups took over. They have deep experience in programmable platforms and, in a brief look at LinkedIn, seem to be mainly engineers.
- Second, some big names have their courses and communities on Mighty Networks. People and brands like Tony Robbins, TED, Mel Robbins, Marie Forleo, Jim Kwik, and Matthew Hussey.
- Third, Mighty Networks has an interesting take on what they’re building. Rather than just talk about courses and community, they talk about helping creators ‘build their own network effect.’ What do they mean by this? They mean making it possible for people in a community to make direct connections with each other.
Pay attention to this last point. I’m going to come back to it.
Circle
Circle was started by a team out of Teachable, the popular course platform, in 2021.
They saw that Teachable users often wanted to add communities to a course, but there wasn’t a great way to do it. With that, Circle was born.
Featurewise, Circle started as a community platform similar to Mighty Networks with one big difference—it was heavily integrated into Teachable. As a result, creators like Pat Flynn and Brendan Burchard got behind it early.
Mighty Networks vs. Circle — How to Compare Them?
Over time, both platforms have expanded with relatively similar feature sets, including a community feed, member directories, direct messaging, chat, courses, events, livestreaming, analytics, and AI.
Both platforms hold their features and subsets of members in what they call ‘spaces,’ or containers similar to channels on Slack or Discord.
And since 2023, Circle has also begun to offer their own branded mobile apps. A standout feature Mighty Networks has offered since they launched in 2017.
Here’s a quick summary of what both Mighty Networks and Circle offer—
Where Mighty Networks and Circle overlap
White-label community, course, and event platform available on every platform—web, iOS, and Android.
Get members back and engaged with both email and mobile notifications.
The option to have your own branded iOS and Android apps in addition to your own white-label website.
Your own logo, visual imagery, single sign-on (SSO), and integration with outside tech stacks.
‘Spaces’ to organize and sell content, courses, paid memberships, challenges, and events with monthly, yearly, or one-time access.
Landing pages, sales pages, and marketing administration to support sales conversion.
Member profiles, search, directories, badges, tags, and administrative features.
Community activity feeds (similar to Facebook) with posts, comments, replies, video, photos, articles, files, polls, questions, and surveys.
Chat (similar to Discord or Slack) with replies and embeds.
Livestreaming in spaces and across the platform with live chat, multiple guests, and automatic replays.
Different types of courses—async or live—with structured content and course quizzes.
Direct 1x1 and group messaging with privacy and moderation.
Custom fields and automations to connect members around different variables.
Rich analytics across community and course activity.
Exportable data and integrations via Zapier.
Where the differences between Mighty Networks and Circle start to appear
Mighty Networks and Circle seem very similar at first glance. There is a lot of overlap.
Initially, I didn’t think I could go wrong with either one.
That changed as I started to see the ways the two platforms diverged.
Here’s how I would now organize the differences that went into my decision—
- The Member Experience on Mighty Networks vs. Circle
- How Mighty Networks and Circle Use AI
- How Mighty Networks and Circle Organize Spaces, Features, and APIs
- How Mighty Networks and Circle Charge
From there, I’ll touch on a few other things that went into making my ultimate decision between Mighty Networks and Circle.
Before diving into the details, let me first offer a quick comparison chart.
Mighty Networks vs. Circle – Comparison Chart
Features Included | Mighty Networks | Circle |
|---|---|---|
Member Welcome Checklist |  |  |
Member Introductions | | |
AI Profile Assist | | |
AI Show Member Similarities | | |
AI Onboarding | | |
AI Course Outline | | |
Multi-Feature Spaces | | |
APIs & Integrations | | |
Branded Mobile Apps | Mighty Pro | Circle Plus |
Page Feature | | |
Top Members Leaderboard | | |
Members Near You | | |
Livestreaming | | |
Courses | | |
Course & Community in the Same Space | | |
Email Marketing | Native ConvertKit Integration | |
Sales Pages | | |
Currencies Supported | 135 | 12 |
Affiliate Tracking | Coming Soon | |
Unlimited Members on Any Plan | | |
The Member Experience on Mighty Networks vs. Circle
This is the starkest difference between the two platforms.
Mighty Networks
Remember how I said that Mighty Networks talks about what they are building as “giving creators their own network effect”?
To them, this means using technology and AI to “connect the most relevant members to each other, break the ice, and bring them back to do things together.”
Be forewarned. Mighty Networks talks a lot about connecting members. They’ve even coined a phrase for it, ‘people magic.’ Again, you will hear this a lot.
Here’s how it works:
When a new member joins, they immediately see a welcome message from the person who invited them. This could either be another member or the creator of the Mighty Network.
The creator of the Mighty Network decides where a new member lands. They can also add a customizable welcome checklist:
Mighty Networks has a feature it calls a ‘people explorer.’ It’s an interactive clustering of members designed for someone to explore and meet other members.
The clusters include Top Members, ‘Members Near You,’ and other member categories that a member can choose.
In this people explorer, when you roll over someone’s profile photo, their bio pops up.
And when you click on someone’s profile photo, you see what you have in common with them.
I thought this was pretty cool. They’re using AI behind-the-scenes to ‘show similarities’ between you and the other member.
I found myself playing with the people explorer for longer than I realized. I think that’s the point.
Finally, a profile page on a Mighty Network is different.
It has the ‘show similarities’ feature as well as similar members, in addition to a more detailed bio, badges and a listing of the member’s activity.
To summarize, members on a Mighty Network have:
- A personal welcome
- A customizable welcome checklist
- A people explorer feature
- AI-enabled ‘show similarities’ between members
- A member profile page that shows similarities and similar members
Circle
Circle has a clean homepage with spaces on the left, an activity feed in the middle, a welcome article for new members, as well as upcoming events and trending posts on the right.
Both Mighty Networks and Circle have a set of “global” features at the top of the left-hand navigation that also includes a tab for members.
Circle’s member directory is nice with big, beautiful photos, names, and a simple blurb that describes a person. It’s off by default, but can be easily turned on to get to the filters.
Circle’s member profile page is also a right-hand flyout that’s simple, straightforward, and solid.
To summarize, members in a Circle community have:
- A welcome article when they first land
- A member directory
- Member profiles
How Mighty Networks and Circle Use AI
I said AI didn’t matter to me going into my research. But getting my members to engage with what would be a new course and community was critical.
I didn’t want to be pulled into trying to get my members to talk to each other. Far too much work.
So, the way that Mighty Networks and Circle approached AI ended up making a difference.
Mighty Networks
Mighty Networks’ AI features are powered by GPT-4 and start on by default, but can be turned off entirely or one-by-one.
They are organized into five buckets:
- Set Up/Network Creation. You can start a Mighty Network by telling it who you want to bring together. It will generate your visuals, about page, welcome article, and first spaces.
- ‘People Magic’ AI. These are all of the features used to connect members to each other. It includes: Show similarities—so members can see what they share in common; Profile writing assistant—answer three questions to have AI assist with your profile bio; Start a conversation—help members message each other based on what they have in common.
- Infinite Question Engine. As I mentioned above, Mighty Networks has three kinds of polls and a question feature. It also uses AI to suggest questions and polls based on the description of the Mighty Network or the space.
- Courses AI. Get an ‘instant’ course outline with just a brief description of what you want to teach.
- Writing Assistant AI. Finally, Mighty Networks has the content features you’re probably used to elsewhere, including ‘Make It Better,’ ‘Suggested Hashtags,’ and automatic video captions.
Circle
Circle has focused its AI work on content and analytics. Specifically:
- A Content Co-Pilot. A native ChatGPT content generator, it’s convenient to have it directly in a Circle community. (Side Note: on their website, they say it gives you more time for onboarding members and admin work. No thank you. 🤣)
- Automated Transcriptions. This AI feature transcribes any video content, adding closed captions and search capabilities. It’s great.
- Activity Scores. Finally, Circle offers an AI ‘tool’ to score how engaged a member is. How it uses AI was a little lost on me. Both Mighty Networks and Circle have analytics to show this stuff. It’s probably helpful in identifying top members, and it will likely get more valuable as they add to it in the future.
Between how Mighty Networks and Circle treat members and how they use AI, the differences between the platforms started to crystalize.
Specifically, as I started playing with Mighty Networks’ ‘people magic’ AI features in one of the courses I was taking, I found myself spending more time. It was just fun. I met more people, I attended the live streams, and did more of the course.
I could see how it would be a lot less work getting my members to engage if they were coming back for each other, not just my course or content.
But I still really liked a lot about Circle, especially in the area where they had clearly invested the most—content.
How Mighty Networks and Circle Organize Spaces, Features, and APIs
Mighty Networks
As I’ve mentioned earlier, both Mighty Networks and Circle have the concept of a space to hold features, content, and members.
Mighty Networks has one major difference. You can have one or more features in a space.
See this example of a space with a community feed. See where it says Latest Activity and Hashtags?
It’s small, but it means you can make a space more functional. For example, you can have:
- Your course community and course materials in the same space.
- Your course community feed and hashtags in the same space.
- Your events and replays in the same space.
- Your live training and replay recording in the same space.
Mighty Networks offers space templates—
Or you can build your own space from a set of eight features:
- Chat
- Feed
- Members
- Table of Contents (Course Content)
- Page
- Events
- Single Event
- Hashtags
Chat on a Mighty Network
An Event on a Mighty Network
A Livestream on a Mighty Network
A Course on a Mighty Network
The way that Mighty Networks handles course content is pretty interesting.
They call it a ‘Table of Contents.’ It’s built to be flexible for courses or other use cases for structured content. Like a resource library or a video replays library.
They also offer course quizzes.
APIs & Integrations
Mighty Networks has APIs via Zapier as well as native integrations with ConvertKit for email marketing and newsletters, support for the Meta ad pixel, and Single Sign On (SSO on its higher tier plans). They’re also adding affiliate tracking shortly as well.
One stand out integration on Mighty Networks—ConvertKit.
I can connect my ConvertKit and Mighty Networks accounts directly, and the branding is totally consistent. Plus, when I pull in a link from a Mighty Network, it shows up in my newsletter as a full content block.
Mighty Networks also offers support for iFramely, which means ~2,000 services you can embed natively and look great on the web, iOS, and Android.
It was important to me that I would be able to use external marketing pages (in my case, Clickfunnels), set up a Calendly link for 1x1 coaching calls, add an ecom store when I get there, and that I could integrate a new AI twin I’ve been messing around with.
For the purposes of this post, I also checked with a developer buddy of mine to look at how the options Mighty Networks offers with Zapier versus Circle’s API options. I’ll get to that in the Circle section.
Circle
Circle’s spaces are similar to those on a Mighty Network with two major differences:
- There is only one feature per space.
- There are no web page or hashtag options.
Beyond these limitations, chat, events, livestreaming, and courses on Circle and Mighty Networks are similar. Have a quick look—
Chat on Circle
An Event on Circle
A Livestream on Circle
A Course on Circle
Finally, a course on Circle is very similar to the Table of Contents on a Mighty Network. And Circle just added quizzes to match Mighty Networks, which is nice.
In summary, features are similar between Mighty Networks and Circle. But spaces on a Mighty Network are significantly more flexible.
This started to matter to me more as I thought about running into limitations on Circle in the future.
I wanted to pick a platform that could grow with me, even if I was starting simple.
APIs & Integrations
This is where I initially thought Circle had an edge over Mighty Networks. They offer direct APIs in addition to Zapier, embeds, snippets, and native integrations.
Circle has multiple types of integrations, similar to Mighty Networks. A few highlights:
- Circle’s Embeds are similar to Mighty Networks and include Facebook, Instagram, and X.
- Their Native Integrations focus on video and audio player embeds, along with Single Sign-On (SSO), also offered by Mighty.
- Their Snippets include Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Meta Pixel, and Rewardful for affiliates.
- Finally, Circle has a subset of Zapier integrations compared to those on Mighty Networks.
The two places that Circle seems to differ from Mighty Networks are support for Rewardful and what they call their “headless community APIs.”
On the API front, I wanted to understand how deep Circle’s APIs went and how they compared to what you can do on Mighty Networks.
I had a developer buddy of mine look at the options both Mighty Networks offers with Zapier and integrations and Circle’s API options. He went into Circle’s documentation and came back to me with this:
“I checked out the documentation and I also did a bit of research.
They do offer a basic API to create and update records in Circle or export data, but the public chatter is mixed, and I’m not entirely sure why you wouldn’t just use Zapier to do most of this.
I also checked with Mighty, and they offer data exports upon request as well, so I’d kind of call this whole area a draw. Hope that helps.”
How Mighty Networks and Circle Charge
When comparing Mighty Networks and Circle, which platform has the better price?
On the surface, they seem similar. But there are some differences to know going in.
Mighty Networks
Mighty Networks offers 5 different plans with 2 months free when you buy annual:
- Community Plan at $49/month and a 3% transaction fee
- Courses Plan at $119/month and a 2% transaction fee
- Business Plan at $219/month and a 2% transaction fee
- “Path-to-Pro” Plan at $360/month and a 1% transaction fee
- Mighty Pro Plan where you get your own branded mobile apps starting at $20,000/year
Each Mighty Networks plan comes with unlimited admins, moderators, spaces, and members. And the ‘people explorer’, AI options, livestreaming, and multiple features per space are available on every plan.
Circle
Circle has similar plans and price points to Mighty Networks:
- Basic at $49/month and a 4% transaction fee
- Professional at $99/month and a 2% transaction fee
- Business at $219/month and a 1% transaction fee
- Enterprise at $399/month and a 0.5% transaction fee
Here’s the fine print. On Circle, there are limited admins, moderators, space, and members on each plan. Plus, a lot of their comparable features to Mighty Networks aren’t available until you upgrade to Business at $219/month.
For example, on Basic, you get one admin, one moderator, 10 spaces, and 100 members. And there’s no access to AI, workflows, or automations until you pay $219/month.
Mighty Pro vs. Circle Plus — When You Want White-Label Apps
This wasn’t important to my decision, but for completeness, I looked at the options Mighty Networks and Circle offer for branded, or white-label mobile apps on iOS and Android.
Mighty Networks
Mighty Networks has offered their Mighty Pro Plan since 2017. They claim over 400+ creators and brands on Mighty Pro today with weekly app releases and less than four weeks to launch.
Beyond the branded mobile apps, a Mighty Pro Plan comes with exclusive web branding options, massive storage and bandwidth limits, more member video options, and more space admin flexibility.
Additionally, Mighty Pro includes ConvertKit’s professional plan for 10,000 subscribers, external shopping cart fees if used, and will pay a portion of Zapier’s fees.
Plus, there’s free migration support and services from any other platform.
Mighty Networks offers Mighty Pro in two ways. First, “Do It With You” where you get the software, branding and visual design support, and membership in an exclusive community of other 7-figure creators, brands, and their teams. Second, “Do It With You” takes all of these things and adds a service layer with a dedicated community strategist.
Learn more about Mighty's branded apps here.
Circle
Circle launched Circle Plus at the beginning of 2023. They don’t share the number of brands on Circle Plus or their app release schedule. They too claim four weeks to launch.
Their biggest Circle Plus customer seems to be Exit Five. From online reviews, it seems Circle Plus is priced about the same as Mighty Pro with roughly the same offering, including a dedicated community account representative.
They also have an ecosystem of additional consultants who you can hire to set up your Circle Plus courses and community. These seem to be the same kinds of services that are included with the Mighty Pro “Do It For You” option.
Comparing Mighty Pro and Circle Plus side-by-side, Mighty Pro seems to be the more established choice when you’re making an investment at this level.
Mighty Networks vs. Circle – Final Considerations
Before I get to what I chose, I mentioned at the top of this article that I wanted to touch on a few other things as I compared Mighty Networks and Circle.
Simple to Learn. I really didn’t want to learn new software. Or have my members reject my choice of platform. I don’t think that this is an issue for either Mighty Networks or Circle. You can design a Mighty Network to be super simple. And Circle is more basic by default with more limited options.
Simple to Extend. Both Mighty Networks and Circle have integrations, although they seem to have different philosophies in how they want people to use them. Mighty Networks uses Zapier and Embeds to extend its features. It has a direct integration with ConvertKit for email marketing and newsletters plus one for Zoom. Circle supports both Zapier and a handful of lightly documented public APIs. For me, the lack of newsletter integration was a problem.
Flexible Paywall Options. I knew I wanted to charge a one-time fee for a course, then add a paid membership subscription over time. Both Mighty Networks or Circle support this. Plus, both platforms support external marketing funnels and shopping carts nicely.
Analytics & Data Downloads. Both Mighty Networks and Circle offer analytics. I found Mighty’s analytics to be a bit more comprehensive and I like their detailed downloads and how they handle IP ownership.
Pace of Development. The pace of change in social media and software in general is a real thing. I wanted to make sure that I was choosing a platform where my members would be able to get something different, valuable, and, yes, fun compared to other places they could spend their time.
Not only is Mighty Networks a more feature-rich platform than Circle, but it seems to be releasing improvements and novel experiences faster simultaneously on the web, iOS, and Android.
People magic AI is a perfect example.
Strategy Support. Initially, I wanted to keep my evaluation of Mighty Networks vs. Circle focused on the software alone. But I couldn’t help getting pulled into Mighty Networks’ free community course. It was legit awesome. It gave me more confidence that this was going to be easier and less intimidating than I thought—whether I chose Mighty Networks or Circle.
Branded Mobile Apps. Finally, both Mighty Networks and Circle offer the option of launching your courses and community on your own branded apps. Mighty Networks has been doing it since 2017 on what it calls Mighty Pro. Circle since 2023 on Circle Plus. This was out of scope (and budget) for me.
The Verdict — Mighty Networks or Circle?
I chose Mighty Networks.
The engagement is real.
The money is nice.
I see a clear path to launching more things I’m excited to put out in the world.
My decision came down to the platform I thought had the stronger foundation for my members to meet and come back for each other—and what I thought was going to be easier to grow with less work.
But that wasn’t all. I also felt like the simpler pricing, multiple features per space, and pace of development were better on Mighty Networks.
Whether Mighty Networks wants to call it a community, a network effect, or ‘people magic,’ I don’t care. I found Mighty Networks was more fun as a member. I found myself coming back more. And I ended up finishing a course I probably would have abandoned on any other platform.
Now as the creator of a course and soon-to-launch paid membership, it’s great to see the ways my members are meeting, messaging, showing up to livestreams, and answering polls and questions created for me by the Infinite Question Engine.
To be clear, I don’t see Circle as a terrible choice. They are about two years behind Mighty Networks platform-wise, aren’t investing very quickly in people or AI, and have a few more gotchas under the hood, especially with respect to pricing. But they do have a solid community offering, courses that work, and good integrations.
Next Steps
If you’re interested in comparing Mighty Networks vs. Circle, I recommend the following steps:
- Go to Mighty’s free strategy course, People Magic Profit: How to Build a $1M Community. It’s good, short, and will set the context for evaluating the two platforms. The best part is that you can use it no matter what platform you use.
- Start a free trial of Mighty Networks. This is a great way to see their AI onboarding.
- Start a free trial of Circle. It makes a great side-by-side comparison.
