Circle vs Fora
Circle
circle.so
Fora
fora.soSide by side
| Figure | Circle | Fora |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $89/mo | Free |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| iOS | Yes | — |
| Android | Yes | — |
| API | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 4 | 5 |
| Spec score · Online Community Platforms | 8.9 (#2) | 8.4 (#13) |
| Spec score · Learning Community Platforms | 9.0 (#2) | 8.4 (#5) |
| Spec score · Community Platforms | 8.9 (#10) | 8.1 (#55) |
| Courses | Circle supports self-paced, structured, and scheduled courses with sections, lessons, and quizzes. | Fora supports courses, and its comparison article describes chapters and progress tracking. |
| Custom domain | Yes | Custom domains are included with Pro and are presented as a way to remove Fora branding from the member experience. |
| Event hosting | Yes | Yes |
| 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. | The official comparison mentions no named third-party integrations and says payment connections use the creator’s own stack. |
| Mobile apps | both | none |
| Support | The pricing page lists standard support for Professional and Business, priority support for Scale, and premium support for Circle Plus. | The contact page provides a form and the address [email protected] for assistance. |
| What it does | Circle brings community, content, events, courses, payments, email, and website tools together on one platform. | Fora presents itself as a platform where creators sell courses, coaching calls and downloads from a branded page, with an assistant members can question. |
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.
Fora
Fora is a web-based white-label community platform for creators, educators, and coaches. It combines discussions, courses, events, and a member directory in one branded space. Communities can use a Fora subdomain or a custom domain owned by the creator. Course material can be arranged into chapters and lessons, while a leaderboard ranks members by posts, completions, and activity. Fora supports event hosting and lists a 5,000-member limit, with Starter and Pro plans shown for 200 and 5,000 members respectively. The FAQ says most communities can launch in under 20 minutes without code or infrastructure setup. Fora is in beta and free, with no credit card or trial period. Starter and Pro are each listed at free, billed monthly; Enterprise lists unlimited members but no price. There are no mobile apps. Fora says it does not sell personal information, though it may share data with service and analytics providers. Beta terms do not guarantee uptime or service availability.