Circle vs Elgg
Circle
circle.so
Elgg
elgg.orgSide by side
| Figure | Circle | Elgg |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $89/mo | Free |
| 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 | 4 | 1 |
| Spec score · Online Community Platforms | 8.9 (#2) | 8.7 (#8) |
| Spec score · Social Networking Software | 8.8 (#1) | 8.6 (#5) |
| Spec score · Community Building Platforms | 8.9 (#2) | 8.7 (#5) |
| Spec score · Community Platforms | 8.9 (#10) | 8.1 (#59) |
| Free plan | No | Yes |
| Integrations | Circle lists integrations including Airtable, Google Sheets, Memberstack, WordPress, Memberful, Typeform, and Slack through native connections, embeds, snippets, or Zapier. | Elgg provides RPC web services for integrations with external applications and mobile clients. |
| Private spaces | Yes | Yes |
| Support | The pricing page lists standard support for Professional and Business, priority support for Scale, and premium support for Circle Plus. | Elgg lists community discussions, technical support forums, and professional service providers as support resources. |
| What it does | Circle brings community, content, events, courses, payments, email, and website tools together on one platform. | Elgg is an open source framework for building socially aware web applications where users log in and share information. |
| Who it is for | Circle describes its platform as serving creators, brands, solopreneurs, and community businesses. | Elgg describes use cases including campus social networks, organizational collaboration platforms, and company communications tools. |
Plans
Circle
- Professional$89 a month
- Business$199 a month
- Scale$419 a month
- Circle PlusPriced on request
In their own words
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.
Elgg
Elgg is a free, open-source framework for building web applications where people sign in and share information. It can serve as a foundation for campus networks, organizational collaboration platforms, or company communications tools. Hooks and events let plugins extend or change application behavior, while the view system supports custom themes. Granular content access policies can support private networks and intranets; user groups and a file storage API provide building blocks for managing members and their files. Elgg supports on-site and email notifications, as well as RPC web services for external applications and mobile clients. Its listed security features include anti-CSRF validation, XSS filters, HMAC signatures, and password hashing. The project offers documentation, tutorials, an API reference, community discussions, and a repository with more than 1,000 open-source plugins. It is free to download, install, and use. The full package with core plugins is offered under GPLv2; the framework without plugins is offered under MIT. Self-hosting requires a database and a configured cron job for background tasks.