Circle vs NodeBB
Circle
circle.so
NodeBB
nodebb.orgSide by side
| Figure | Circle | NodeBB |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $89/mo | $20/mo |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| iOS | Yes | — |
| Android | Yes | — |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 4 | 6 |
| Spec score · Online Community Platforms | 8.9 (#2) | 8.6 (#11) |
| Spec score · Social Networking Software | 8.8 (#1) | 8.6 (#7) |
| Spec score · Community Building Platforms | 8.9 (#2) | 8.7 (#6) |
| Spec score · Community Platforms | 8.9 (#10) | 9.3 (#3) |
| Custom domain | Yes | Yes |
| Free plan | No | Yes |
| GDPR | Circle's pricing comparison lists GDPR compliance as a feature. | NodeBB says registration presents users with data and rights information and requires affirmative consent; third-party plugins and themes may collect additional data outside its DPA. |
| Moderation tools | Yes | Yes |
| Private spaces | Yes | Yes |
| Paid from | 89 | 20 |
| Support | The pricing page lists standard support for Professional and Business, priority support for Scale, and premium support for Circle Plus. | Paid hosting plans list priority support, and NodeBB also points users to its community support forum. |
Plans
Circle
- Professional$89 a month
- Business$199 a month
- Scale$419 a month
- Circle PlusPriced on request
NodeBB
- Starter$20 a month
- Hamlet$100 a month
- Village$250 a month
- City$750 a month
- Self-hostedFree
- Enterprise SolutionsPriced 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.
NodeBB
NodeBB is a community discussion platform for forums and online communities, including brand communities and product support boards. Members can write topics and replies using a visual editor or Markdown, chat in real time, and receive notifications for follows, likes and topic subscriptions. They can form groups with activity feeds, tag topics and follow tags for updates. Administrators can create unlimited moderator and administrator accounts and set their permissions. More than 500 plugins and themes can be installed through the control panel, and public Read and RESTful Write APIs support integrations. Spam-prevention integrations include Akismet, StopForumSpam and Project Honeypot. Self-hosted NodeBB is free to download and install under GPLv3; hosted plans start at $20 a month and include priority support. Basic full-text search uses the bundled database engine; Solr and Elasticsearch search require third-party plugins. Installation guides cover Linux, macOS, Windows and cloud deployment options including Docker.