Ever feel overwhelmed trying to build a thriving online community?
Choosing the right platform can be challenging.
You want something easy to use, has the features you need, and won’t break the bank.
Circle and LearnWorlds are two popular options, but how do you know which is the perfect fit for your community?
This post dives deep into Circle vs LearnWorlds, comparing their features, pricing, and overall user experience.
Overzicht
We’ve extensively tested Circle and LearnWorlds, diving deep into their features, pricing, and user experience.
Our hands-on comparison explores everything from course creation and community building to marketing tools and integrations, helping you make an informed decision.
Ready to create and sell your online course? LearnWorlds’ powerful platform makes it easy. Also, it builds a thriving online learning business.
Pricing: Free trial available. Paid plan Starts at $24/month
Belangrijkste kenmerken:
- Interactive videos
- Assessments
- Marketing tools
They offer a 14-day free trial, and no credit card is required. Click here to explore Circle’s features and see how it can elevate your community!
Pricing: It has a free plan. Paid plan Starts at $89/month
Belangrijkste kenmerken:
- Memberships
- Events
- Live Streams
What is a Circle?
Okay, let’s talk about Circle. It’s a platform designed for building online communities.
Think of it as a modern forum, which is way more engaging.
It’s focused on bringing people together around shared interests and does a pretty good job.
Also, explore our favorite Circle alternatives…
Onze mening
Build a powerful community hub with Circle. Get a clean, branded space for your members to connect, with a variety of monetization options, and reduce your transaction fees from 4% to 2% by upgrading to the professional plan.
Belangrijkste voordelen
Circle prides itself on fostering deeper connections and providing a distraction-free environment. They have a proven track record, powering communities for big names like Adobe, ConvertKit, and Teachable.
- Clean and organized: Easy to navigate and find what you need.
- Spaces for different topics: Keep conversations focused.
- Rich member profiles: Get to know your members better.
- Events and live streams: Host engaging online gatherings.
- Integrations: Connect with your favorite tools.
Prijzen
Circle offers a 14-day free trial and three main pricing plans:
- Professional Plan starts at $89 per month: This unlocks more features and integrations.
- Business Plan starts at $199 per month: This unlocks everything in Professional Plus.
- Enterprise Plan starts at $419 per month: This is for large organizations with specific needs.
- Plus Branded App: Custom Pricing.
Voordelen
Nadelen
What is LearnWorlds?
Okay, now let’s chat about LearnWorlds. This platform is all about creating and selling online courses.
It’s packed with features to help you create an engaging learning experience and strongly focuses on marketing.
Also, explore our favorite LearnWorlds alternatives…
Onze mening
Ready to create and sell your online course? LearnWorlds’ powerful platform makes it easy. See how you can build a thriving online learning business.
Key Benefits
- Interactive Video: LearnWorlds excels at engaging learners with interactive video features. Think quizzes and annotations right inside your videos.
- Assessments: You can create assessments, from quizzes to assignments, to test your students’ knowledge.
- Marketing Tools: LearnWorlds provides marketing tools to help you promote and sell your courses.
Prijzen
LearnWorlds offers a range of pricing plans. The lowest tier starts at $24 monthly and gives access to core features like course creation and hosting. Higher-tier plans unlock more advanced features, such as marketing automation and white-labeling.
- Starter: $24/month
- Pro Trainer: $79/month
- Learning Center: $249/month
- High Volume & Corporate: Contact Sales
Voordelen
Nadelen
Functievergelijking
Choosing between Circle and LearnWorlds depends entirely on whether your online business owners prioritize robust course functionality or maximum community engagement for your online community platform.
1. Primary Focus and Architecture
- Circle: A dedicated online community platform centered around community members and interaction. It is built to replace the fragmented experience of a facebook group by housing discussions, live events, and content in a dedicated circle community space.
- LearnWorlds: A full-featured learning management system (LMS) designed for the creation and sale of a holistic online learning experience. The community aspect is included, but the primary focus is structured online learning and content delivery.
2. Course Creation and LMS Features
- Circle: Offers an integrated course feature within its community spaces but lacks advanced LMS tools like certifications, detailed advanced analytics, and SCORM support. It’s best for delivering simple lessons or a few courses.
- LearnWorlds: Provides a powerful course builder with comprehensive features for creating interactive videos, quizzes, assignments, and certificates. It is designed as a reliable training solution with all the necessary tools to create courses for employee training or a course business.
3. Community Engagement and Spaces
- Circle: Excels at fostering engagement. It allows for unlimited members and the creation of multiple spaces (posts, chats, courses, events), including private spaces with granular control access. The design is built to encourage continuous community engagement.
- LearnWorlds: Offers community members a dedicated forum and social features often described as “Facebook-like,” allowing community posts and group discussions, but it is less feature-rich than a dedicated community platform space like circle platform.
4. Live Events and Video Capabilities
- Circle: Features robust native live streaming and hosting for live events directly within any space group, making it easy for community builders to engage members in real-time.
- LearnWorlds: While supporting video hosting for course materials, it relies on third party integrations (like Zoom or other platforms) for live stream and high-level live events functionality, though it has excellent native features for creating interactive videos for courses.
5. Mobile Experience
- Circle: Offers a full-featured, branded mobile app (on higher tiers) to ensure community members can participate in group discussions, view content, and engage with other members on the go.
- LearnWorlds: Also offers a mobile app for students to consume course materials. This is typically a branded, white-label app available on higher plans or as an add-on, focusing on learning access.
6. User Interface and Customization
- Circle: Known for its clean, modern, and intuitive user interface that feels similar to Slack or Discord, making it easy for new users and the entire community to navigate. It allows a custom domain.
- LearnWorlds: Provides extensive control over website design via a website builder and all in one platform solution, but its user interface for the administrative backend can have a slightly steeper learning curve due to its more advanced features.
7. Marketing and Sales Tools
- Circle: Facilitates payment processing for memberships and courses via paywalls and a simple checkout. However, it requires integrations circle (like Zapier) to connect with more marketing features like advanced funnels and external email platforms.
- LearnWorlds: Built for online business owners who want to sell online courses effectively. It includes built-in sales pages, robust affiliate tools, and e-commerce functionalities, making it a stronger choice for monetization beyond basic membership.
8. Automation and Workflows
- Circle: Provides powerful automation tools (available on higher tiers) for community management, such as sending a welcome message to new members, adding users to certain spaces, and performing bulk actions, enhancing community management.
- LearnWorlds: Focuses automation tools mainly on the learning journey, such as content dripping, automated certificates, and email triggers related to course completion or lack of progress.
9. Circle’s Pricing vs. LearnWorlds Pricing
- Circle: Pricing circle (starts around $49/month) is often based on the number of active community members and access to advanced features like native live streaming. It also has an undisclosed transaction fee on the base plan.
- LearnWorlds: Pricing plans (starts around $29/month) are structured around features and the number of admins, with a $5 transaction fee on the entry-level plan, which is removed on the mid-tier plan (around $99/month), offering clear costs for unlimited members.
What to Look for When Choosing a Community Platform?
Beyond the specific features, consider these additional factors:
- Support Availability: Look for guaranteed support channels and documented SLA (Service Level Agreement) for priority support, especially if you opt for the professional plan or enterprise plan. Relying solely on a knowledge base or community forum can be frustrating when you need immediate assistance.
- Core Functionality: Ensure the platform isn’t plagued by missing features critical to your operations. For example, if you need full LMS capabilities, check the circle.so review to see if its integrated course feature is sufficient, or if a dedicated learning platform is better.
- Future-Proofing: Investigate the platform’s history of rolling out new features and improvements. A good learning platform should constantly evolve to stay ahead of other learning platforms.
- Ecosystem Integration: Look at the ease of connecting with your existing tools, such as your customer relationship management (CRM) system or if it allows simple data collection via google forms or native forms. This reduces the need to manually connect and maintain many third party integrations.
- Monetization and Pricing Model: Carefully assess the price point, especially the difference between the basic plan and the business plan. Check if the platform is the only platform that combines your community and course needs, or if separate tools are more cost-effective.
- Community vs. Course Quality: Evaluate whether the support channels are geared toward community builders (like Circle review) or course instructors. For example, Circle’s focus is on engagement tools like the live streaming feature and circle’s post editor, while LearnWorlds focuses on interactive course creation and assessments.
- Support Quality: Don’t just look for a customer service team; look for one with specialized knowledge. The best platforms offer dedicated managers on their higher tiers who truly understand your course business model and offer priority support.
- Hidden Costs: Many many course platforms advertise a low basic plan, but essential tools like automation tools or removing a transaction fee may require jumping to an expensive enterprise plan.
- Feature Utility: A cool feature is not the same as a necessary feature. Be wary of platforms that look sleek but have poor back-end functionality needed to create online courses effectively.
- Hosting Events: If you regularly host events with large numbers of attendees, verify the platform’s native live streaming feature and capacity, or if you will need a separate, high-capacity tool.
- Technical Stability: The platform’s overall stability and speed are paramount. A slow or buggy site will undermine the credibility of your offering, regardless of how good the support team is.
Eindoordeel
Choosing between Circle and LearnWorlds depends on what you need.
Circle is the winner if building a vibrant community is your top priority.
Its easy-to-use interface and robust community features make it a great choice.
LearnWorlds is better if your main goal is creating and selling online courses. Its strong marketing tools and LMS features are hard to beat.
Both offer a free trial so you can test them out yourself. Unfortunately, neither provides a free plan.
We’ve spent hours testing both platforms, even using their logo di BitDefender chat support, so we’re confident our comparison will help you make the right choice.
Try our recommendation, and see which platform fits your needs best!
More of Circle
Here is a comparison of Circle with the specified alternatives:
- Circle vs Skool: Circle focuses broadly on community customization, while Skool adds strong gamification and simplified course delivery.
- Circle vs Swarm: Circle offers general community building, while Swarm emphasizes highly structured interest-based groups.
- Circle vs Teachable: Circle is primarily a community platform, whereas Teachable is focused on course creation with an integrated community.
- Circle vs GoHighLevel: Circle specializes in community features, while GoHighLevel is a comprehensive marketing automation suite that includes community tools.
- Circle vs MightyNetworks: Circle offers robust community features, while Mighty Networks integrates community tightly with courses, content, and events.
- Circle vs Bettermode: Circle provides customizable community spaces, while Bettermode focuses on deep branding and white-label community solutions.
- Circle vs Thinkific: Circle is a dedicated community platform, while Thinkific is mainly for online courses with the community as an add-on.
- Circle vs LearnWorlds: Circle builds diverse communities, while LearnWorlds integrates community specifically with interactive online learning.
- Circle vs Disco: Circle is for general community building, while Disco focuses specifically on cohort-based learning communities.
- Circle vs Kajabi: Circle is centered on community, whereas Kajabi is an all-in-one platform for courses, marketing, and community.
- Circle vs Wylo: Circle provides a structured platform for creators, while Wylo connects individuals through interest-driven discovery and communities.
- Circle vs Whop: Circle builds direct communities for creators, while Whop is a marketplace for selling access to digital communities and products.
More of LearnWorlds
Here are brief comparisons of LearnWorlds against the specified alternatives:
- LearnWorlds vs Swarm: LearnWorlds focuses on courses/site building; Swarm focuses on structured community.
- LearnWorlds vs Kajabi: LearnWorlds specializes in courses/site building; Kajabi is an all-in-one marketing platform.
- LearnWorlds vs Teachable: LearnWorlds offers stronger interactive courses/site building; Teachable is a simpler course platform.
- LearnWorlds vs GoHighLevel: LearnWorlds is course/site-focused; GoHighLevel is a broad marketing platform.
- LearnWorlds vs MightyNetworks: LearnWorlds focuses on course and site building, while MightyNetworks integrates community, courses, and content tightly.
- LearnWorlds vs Bettermode: LearnWorlds for courses/site building; Bettermode for the customizable community.
- LearnWorlds vs Wylo: LearnWorlds is course/site-focused; Wylo connects via interest groups.
- LearnWorlds vs Circle: LearnWorlds focuses on courses/site building; Circle focuses purely on community.
- LearnWorlds vs Disco: LearnWorlds for varied courses/site building; Disco for cohort-based learning communities.
- LearnWorlds vs Thinkific: LearnWorlds offers interactive courses/site building; Thinkific is a flexible course platform.
- LearnWorlds vs Whop: LearnWorlds builds and hosts courses and sites, while Whop sells access to communities and digital products.
Veelgestelde vragen
Is Circle better than LearnWorlds for building a community?
Yes, if the community is your primary focus. Circle’s features are designed specifically to foster engagement and interaction. LearnWorlds has community features, but they’re less robust.
Is LearnWorlds better than Circle for selling online courses?
Absolutely. LearnWorlds is a dedicated LMS with powerful tools for course creation, marketing, and sales, while Circle’s course features are fundamental.
Does Circle offer a free plan?
No, but they do offer a free trial.
Does LearnWorlds offer a free plan?
No, but they do offer a free trial.
Which platform is easier to use?
Circle is generally considered more user-friendly, especially for newcomers to community platforms. LearnWorlds has a steeper learning curve, especially for newcomers to LMS platforms.
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