We make Drry, one of the alternatives below, so read accordingly. The six Circle alternatives worth your time are Drry, Skool, Mighty Networks, Kajabi, Discord, and Patreon, and which one fits depends on whether your product is the community itself, the live gatherings, the marketing machine, the chat, or the content feed. Most "best alternatives" posts are written by one of the vendors and pretend otherwise; we would rather tell you in the first line and then earn your trust with the rest of the page. Every claim here is qualitative on purpose, prices and fee structures change, so verify current terms before you commit to anything, including us.
First, credit where due: Circle is probably the most polished, premium community product in the category. Clean spaces, real events, courses, and a professional finish that flatters an established brand. If people are searching for alternatives, it is usually for structural reasons rather than quality: Circle has no free plan, it charges a platform transaction fee on member payments on every tier (smaller as the plan gets pricier), seeing each member's activity is reserved for the top tier, and there is no funnel builder that closes the loop from a page view to revenue. We broke down the plans, transaction fees, and add-ons in our Circle pricing guide. If those are your frustrations, here is the honest field, including us. For a feature-by-feature look at just the two of us, see Drry vs Circle.
Drry: the fee-free one (ours)
Our product, so treat this section as a pitch with numbers you can check. Drry is a paid-community platform for coaches: community feed, video courses, audio, member emails, and funnels in one branded space, at your own address like grace.drry.com or your own custom domain on paid plans.
- Best for:coaches who want Circle's community-plus-courses shape without the platform taking a cut of member payments, and who want a real free plan to start plus landing pages and email built in rather than bolted on.
- Pricing structure: a genuinely free plan (100 members, 5 GB, unlimited courses, one funnel, no card), then flat subscriptions at $29 (Creator) and $99 (Growth) a month. 0% of member payments on every plan; money flows through your own Stripe account.
- What you give up:Circle's most polished, enterprise-grade design and its deeper roster of integrations. Our ecosystem is younger, so if you need a long list of native third-party hooks today, Circle is further along.
Skool: the focused-community one
Skool got a lot right by doing less: one community, one course area, one calendar, and gamification (leaderboards, levels, points) that genuinely drives engagement. If you want the simplest possible community-plus-courses shape, it is a strong default.
- Best for: coaches who want a dead-simple, focused community with courses and leaderboard-style gamification, and no feature sprawl to manage.
- Pricing structure: no free plan, a flat monthly subscription, and a transaction fee on every member payment on top (steepest on the entry plan).
- What you give up: your own brand and address (everything lives on skool.com), plus landing pages and funnels, so you bolt on a separate page builder. For the two of us head to head, see Drry vs Skool.
Mighty Networks: the events-first one
Mighty Networks bundles communities, courses, and a notably strong live-events and cohort layer, with its own mobile apps and a philosophy built around member connection. If your community IS the gatherings, it deserves a serious look.
- Best for: coaches whose model centers on live events, cohorts, and challenges rather than a content library.
- Pricing structure: paid plans only (after a trial), with a platform transaction fee on every plan that shrinks on the pricier tiers.
- What you give up: simplicity, mostly. The surface area is large and takes real setup, landing pages are templated with no funnel analytics, and deeper features sit on higher tiers. See Drry vs Mighty Networks for the detail.
Kajabi: the marketing-suite one
Kajabi is a different animal: a full course-and-marketing suite with funnels, email sequences, podcasts, and websites. Community exists but is not the center of gravity; the pitch is replacing your whole marketing stack with one heavyweight tool.
- Best for: established course businesses that want funnels, email automation, and courses in one place and can absorb a suite-level bill.
- Pricing structure:notably pricier, no free plan, and a payment catch: the headline 0% claim requires Kajabi's in-house processor, which keeps your billing locked to Kajabi; outside processors pay a platform fee.
- What you give up: community depth (it is a feature, not the heart), the entry price, and payment portability. If you mostly want a home for members rather than a marketing machine, you are paying for a lot of machine. See Drry vs Kajabi.
Discord: the free one
The honest budget answer. Discord is free, real-time, and your audience may already live there. Plenty of thriving paid groups run on it. But Discord is a chat tool, not a membership business tool, and the difference shows up exactly where the money is.
- Best for: free communities, gaming and dev audiences, and coaches validating an idea before spending anything at all.
- Pricing structure: free, genuinely. Paid cosmetic upgrades exist but nothing you need.
- What you give up:nearly everything a paid membership needs natively. No built-in payments for your membership (you wire up third-party bots and checkout tools yourself), no courses, no landing pages, no member email, and a fast-scrolling chat where yesterday's gold is buried by lunchtime. Great energy, weak structure, and you own the duct tape.
Patreon: the percentage one
Patreon is the lowest-friction way to charge for your work: fans pledge, you post. For artists and podcasters with an existing audience it remains a fine answer. For a coaching community it gets thin quickly.
- Best for: creators monetizing content and behind-the-scenes access, where a post feed is the product.
- Pricing structure: free to start, then Patreon takes a percentage of everything you earn, forever. No monthly fee, but the cut scales with your success.
- What you give up:a real home. Courses are limited, there is no true community space beyond posts and comments, your page lives on Patreon with limited branding, and the percentage compounds as you grow. Members are Patreon's users on Patreon's pages, not yours. See Drry vs Patreon.
How to actually choose
If you want the side-by-side version of this with all the dimensions laid out, our comparison hub covers each of these platforms against Drry in detail, and Drry vs Circle zooms in on just the two of us, same disclosure, same rules: qualitative claims, verify current terms.
Questions coaches ask
Is Circle worth the price?
For a certain buyer, yes. Circle is the most polished community product in this category: clean spaces, strong events, a professional feel, and integrations that suit established, well-funded brands. If premium design and a mature ecosystem are what you are paying for, it delivers. The reasons people go looking for alternatives are structural rather than quality: there is no free plan, a platform transaction fee rides on member payments on every tier, seeing each member's activity is gated to the top tier, and there is no funnel builder that closes the loop to revenue. If none of those pinch, Circle is a fine choice.
What is the cheapest Circle alternative?
Discord is free forever if you are willing to run payments and courses with third-party bots and duct tape. Among real membership platforms, Drry is the only one on this list with a genuinely free plan (100 members, 5 GB, unlimited courses, one funnel, no card), and we make Drry, so verify that claim yourself rather than taking our word. Every other platform here starts at a paid subscription or takes a percentage of what you earn.
Does Circle charge fees on member payments?
Yes. Circle applies a platform transaction fee on member payments on every plan, on top of the monthly subscription. The fee is smaller on the pricier tiers, which is the usual pattern: the cheaper you pay up front, the more the platform takes on the back end. It is separate from the standard payment-processor fee, so it is money the platform earns purely for sitting in the middle. Always check Circle's current rate, since fee structures move.
Does Drry really take 0% of member payments?
Yes, on every plan including free. Member payments run through your own Stripe account, so only Stripe's standard processing fee applies and the customer relationship belongs to you, not us. That is our business model being different, not us being charitable: we charge a flat subscription ($0, $29, or $99 a month) instead of a cut of your revenue, so your thousandth member costs us the same to serve as your tenth.