BuddyPress vs Circle
BuddyPress
buddypress.org
Circle
circle.soSide by side
| Figure | BuddyPress | Circle |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | $89/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| iOS | — | Yes |
| Android | — | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 1 | 4 |
| Spec score · Community Building Platforms | 8.5 (#7) | 8.9 (#2) |
| Spec score · Social Networking Software | 8.5 (#8) | 8.8 (#1) |
| Spec score · Community Platforms | 8.0 (#66) | 8.9 (#10) |
| Event hosting | No | Yes |
| Free plan | Yes | No |
| Integrations | BuddyPress can be extended with WordPress.org plugins, and the project points developers to its plugin developer documentation and supported add-ons. | Circle lists integrations including Airtable, Google Sheets, Memberstack, WordPress, Memberful, Typeform, and Slack through native connections, embeds, snippets, or Zapier. |
| Mobile apps | none | both |
| Moderation tools | Yes | Yes |
| Private spaces | Yes | Yes |
| Support | The project provides a community support forum for questions and troubleshooting. | The pricing page lists standard support for Professional and Business, priority support for Scale, and premium support for Circle Plus. |
Plans
Circle
- Professional$89 a month
- Business$199 a month
- Scale$419 a month
- Circle PlusPriced on request
In their own words
BuddyPress
BuddyPress is a free, open-source WordPress plugin that adds social networking features to websites. It supports campus networks, company communication tools, niche communities, and product-focused networks. Administrators can disable unneeded features, with the theme adjusting menus, pages, and buttons to match. Extended Profiles provides configurable fields, field groups, avatars, account settings, and visibility choices such as Everyone, Only Me, All Members, and My Friends. Activity streams combine site, member, and group activity with updates, comments, favorites, mentions, and RSS feeds. Members can create public, private, or hidden groups, while group administrators manage membership and invitations. Private messages work between people on a member’s friends list, with inbox and sent folders. Notifications cover activity, messages, friendships, and groups. WordPress.org plugins extend the system, and the BP REST API exposes community data and authenticated actions through JSON endpoints. BuddyPress requires WordPress, PHP 5.2.4 or later, MySQL 5.0 or later, and Apache mod_rewrite.
Circle
Circle brings community, content, events, courses, payments, email and website tools into one platform. Its community features include discussions, chat, member profiles and directories, gamification and analytics. Courses can be self-paced, structured or scheduled, with sections, lessons and quizzes. Events, live streams and live rooms include Q&A, attendee participation and session recordings. Circle lists integrations such as Airtable, Google Sheets, Memberstack, WordPress, Memberful, Typeform and Slack through native connections, embeds, snippets or Zapier. It offers Admin and Headless Member APIs, with request limits varying by plan. Access includes Android, iOS, Mac, Windows and web; desktop apps are available to communities on all plans. Professional costs $89 a month with annual billing, Business costs $199 a month with annual billing, and Scale costs $419 a month with annual billing. A 14-day trial is listed, but there is no free plan. The pricing comparison lists live-stream attendee caps of 100, 200 and 500 for Professional, Business and Scale, respectively.