Skool vs Circle: My Experience So Far (Late 2024)

Skool and Circle are two of the most popular online community platforms. 

I’ve used Circle for over a year and have helped over 12 creators launch their communities on it. Recently, I’ve been testing Skool to see how it compares and if it lives up to the hype. So, here goes everything.

Skool is best for small creators and starters looking to build their first membership community for their courses and coaching programs. It’s easy to use, affordable, and has strong gamification features. But simplicity also comes with some tradeoffs. It’s less customizable and lacks options to white-label your community.

Meanwhile, Circle has more advanced online community-building and course-creation tools. It lets you organize your community using spaces and space groups, and automate repetitive tasks through workflow automation. You also get access to features like native course hosting, quizzes, live streaming, and email marketing. But all that comes at a higher price tag.

So which one should you choose?

In this Skool vs Circle review, I’ll show you in detail how both platforms compare in terms of: 

• User experience
• Course creation tools
• Community building and management
• Student engagement
• Pricing

Let’s get right into it.

Circle vs Skool: Differences Summarized

Circle and Skool are reputable online community platforms that allow you to build courses, community memberships, and coaching programs.

However, after testing both platforms and comparing them side-by-side, it’s clear each one best suits different users. Here’s a quick summary of how both platforms compare.

• Skool is easier to use than Circle, but Circle has a more modern and sleek interface.
• Both platforms offer impressive gamification tools but Circle takes it further by letting you award member badges. However, Skool allows you to gamify access to course content based on member levels. 
• Circle has more features including video course hosting, native live streaming, automations, email marketing, AI activity scores, and rich member profiles— all of which Skool lacks.
• Circle is more customizable than Skool. It also allows you to white-label your community while Skool doesn’t.
• Circle is more expensive than Skool. 
• Skool makes it easy for your community to be found via its Discovery tool.
• Circle is a data powerhouse, whereas Skool offers only basic reporting features.
• Skool is best for creators looking for a simple online community and coaching platform with strong gamification features. Circle suits various community sizes and types, ranging from simple course communities and coaching spaces to advanced enterprise-level customer communities.

The table below shows how Skool vs Circle measure up in various aspects, including community building, courses, memberships, pricing, event hosting, and more.

Skool vs Circle: User Experience

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Both Skool and Circle have user-friendly interfaces. Their designs are clean, and navigating through the tabs feels smooth.

During my tests, I did not encounter any glitches or persky experiences. Both platforms worked flawlessly across various browsers, including Chrome, Brave, Edge, and Firefox.

However, I found Skool easier to use than Circle. It has a cleaner UI, and its workflow for creating courses and setting up memberships is more straightforward. So much so that I’d argue that if you have ever set up a Facebook Group you’ll find Skool even easier to use.

Below is my comprehensive review of how Skool vs Circle measure up in terms of user experience.

Skool’s interface is minimal, and easier to use than Circle’s but it also looks dated.

Skool has a simple and clutter-free UI. Its core tools are located on the top navigation bar, with additional settings on the right sidebar making everything easy to find. 

There are no hidden menus or redundant tabs, so you don’t need to sift through multiple tabs to access essential tools or settings.

However, having a minimal UI also comes with some tradeoffs. Skool’s interface feels cheap and outdated. 

I’m a big advocate of intuitive designs but having a warm, sleek, and modern-looking interface makes users perceive your product as high quality.

Meanwhile, Circle’s interface looks more modern, visually appealing, and organized. Its main tools sit on the left sidebar, giving you quick access to tools for creating spaces, downloading mobile apps, and going live.

It also has a top navigation bar (which’s customizable) that includes links to your community feed, course library, event space, members directory, gamification, and a search functionality.

However, Circle has hidden menus that are hard to find for new users. For example, its Workflow and moderation tools, are tucked behind the dropdown icon next to your community logo which is easy to overlook. Only when you click this icon does it reveal a menu with more tools and settings.

Compared to Skool Circle has a ton of features and some nifty settings in various tabs. While this also adds to its robustness and flexibility — it can feel daunting for new users looking for a platform that’s much easier to use.

Verdict: 👨‍⚖️ Skool wins for ease of use and simplicity, making it an excellent choice if you prioritize a no-frills, straightforward setup. Circle, however, edges ahead with its modern design that feels more welcoming.

Skool vs Circle: Online Community Building, Engagement & Management

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Both platforms enable you to build private online spaces for your courses, coaching programs, and membership businesses.

Skool has strong gamification and community discussion tools — but beyond that, it falls short in aspects like community organization, event hosting, and moderation.

Until recently, Circle did not include gamification, but it has introduced leaderboards, putting it on the same ladder as Skool in this area.

Both platforms allow you to engage members via community posts, and message each other but Circle also includes group chats.

I assessed both platforms in detail to see how well they can help you keep your community organized, active, value-packed, and safe for your members and here’s how they stack up.

Circle helps you organize your community using Spaces and Space Groups, while Skool uses simple Categories to organize discussions.

Circle blows Skool out of the water in helping you keep your community organized for easier navigation for members. It lets you organize your community discussions, chats, events, and courses using Spaces and Space Groups. 

Spaces work like Slack channels, allowing you to build dedicated areas for specific topics while Space Groups let you bundle related Spaces under common themes.

Let’s say you’re building a community for coffee enthusiasts. In Circle, you can create separate Spaces for specific topics like “Brewing Techniques”, “Coffee Recipes”, “Equipment Reviews”, and “Bean Origins”. 

Then, you can group these Spaces under broader themes. For example, Spaces for coffee recipes and brewing techniques could be grouped under a “Learning Resources” Space Group.

The good thing is that Circle doesn’t limit this to your community forum or discussions. You can also use spaces to organize events, courses, group chats, and resources.

Additionally, you set access settings to individual spaces so that only specific members can access them. This is the level of flexibility you’ll not find in Skool.

Meanwhile, Skool has limited tools to segment your community. It allows you to organize your discussion forum into simple topics they call categories so that members can use them to directly jump to relevant posts. 

But since Skool only supports one community forum you can’t use categories to organize other community content formats including events and courses. You also can’t set access to them so that only selected members can access them.

Both platforms offer tools to create community posts, but Circle’s post editor is more robust.

In Circle, you can create rich community posts with formatting options, including H2 and H3 headers, numbered lists, bullet points, and blockquotes. You can also link to relevant community posts and add call-to-action buttons.

Circle also supports embedding content from over 700 apps, such as forms, presentations, templates, and code snippets—something Skool doesn’t offer.

For example, I tried embedding a presentation into the platform and I was quickly impressed that Circle previews it allowing users to access it without needing to click on an external link.

Meanwhile, Skool doesn’t have the same capabilities. Its post editor has limited formatting features which include only one headline. It doesn’t support other formatting such as bullets, blockquotes, bold, italics, buttons, or the ability to link previous posts directly. 

While you can share text, images, videos, and GIFs, and embed videos from platforms like Vimeo and YouTube, it doesn’t support directly embedding other file formats. For example, I tried embedding the same carousel that I did on Circle above but, Skool only supports it as a link that redirects users outside the platform.

The last thing you want is to direct users to other platforms and risk losing their attention to other platforms.

Both Skool and Circle offer gamification features, but Circle includes the option to award custom badges to members.

Both platforms integrate gamification tools within the community to drive engagement and participation.

Skool has a leaderboard where you can reward members points whenever others like their posts or comments. 

This can encourage them to create helpful posts and comments. Essentially, the more points they accumulate the higher they rank on the leaderboard.

Skool also allows you to link the leaderboard to your courses, granting access to course materials only when members reach a specific level.

This can encourage members to participate more, to unlock more learning materials.

Circle’s gamification features are similar, with a leaderboard where you can award points for likes received on posts, improving their rankings.

However, Circle goes a step further by letting you award members with custom badges which are displayed on their profile card and page signifying their achievements.

Circle has stronger community moderation tools than Skool.

In Circle, you can set up roles for moderators to manage specific spaces or the whole community. Moderators can remove posts, handle flagged content, and enforce content approvals for members. 

You also get built-in profanity filters, reporting tools, and automatic flagging for review—tools that save time and keep your community in check.

Skool’s moderation capabilities on the other hand are more limited. While you can assign moderators and ban members, it lacks automated content flagging and profanity filters, requiring more manual oversight to uphold community standards.

Circle has built-in livestreaming tools, whereas Skool relies on Zoom.

Circle lets you natively schedule and hold live events eliminating the need for third-party platforms. Using its “Go-Live” tool you can host:

• A live room of up to 30 people where everyone can participate with a video (best for group calls, live cohorts and 1-on-1 coaching sessions).
• A live stream of 100 to 2,000 participants depending on your Circle plan. Only co-hosts can participate with video and audio.

You can record your live sessions which you can later repurpose as course materials.

Meanwhile, Skool doesn’t have built-in tools to livestream community events or coaching sessions and instead relies on Zoom and Google Meet integrations. 

While both software are free you can use them to some extent until you decide to upgrade to their paid plans. For example, a Zoom free account is capped to 100 participants and 40-minute session durations. Beyond that, you need to upgrade to its paid plans that start at $15.99 per month.

My Verdict: 👨‍⚖️ Circle decisively outperforms Skool in community building, engagement, and management. It offers superior features for community organization via its Spaces and Space Groups, event hosting, and moderation. Skool has strong gamification but keeps everything else simple which also makes it more limited.

Skool vs Circle: Course Creation

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Both Skool and Circle offer tools to build online courses and sell them as standalone products or as part of your community membership. After using each platform’s course-building tools, Circle outperformed Skool in many aspects. Let me show you:

Both platforms have easy course creation workflows — but Circle allows you to create more course types, and natively host learning materials.

Circle has hands-down better tools for building and managing courses. From course structuring, student assessment, and engagement. 

To begin with, Circle offers a more guided course creation workflow so that you’re not stranded on where to start. You start by creating a course space and then choose from three different course types. 

• Self-paced: Students can access all materials immediately after enrolling.
• Structured: Course content is delivered in a drip-feed format.
• Scheduled: Courses start on a specific date, with materials released on a set schedule.

Once you’ve chosen the course structure, the course builder allows you to structure your course curriculum using Sections and Lessons. 

Inside your course lessons you can choose to upload your video recordings directly to the platform as Circle provides you with storage of 10 GB to 1TB depending on your plan. 

Or you can embed your video lessons from external video storage platforms like YouTube, Vimeo and Wistia. 

Besides video, Circle online course builder allows you to add other content materials including PDF attachments, audio, templates, images, and presentations to enhance learning for your students. 

You can also configure additional settings for your video lessons such as:

• Allowing students to leave comments in your lessons.
• Enforce students to watch at least 70% of the video lesson to proceed to the next lesson
• Auto-advance students to the next lesson.

Skool, on the other hand, offers a streamlined and simple course creation process.

After naming your course and adding a description, you can set access levels for your content. Options include open access, member-level-based access, one-time payments, time-locked content, or specific member access. 

Options include open access, member-level-based access, one-time payments, time-locked content, or specific member access.

From there, Skool uses Folders and Pages to organize your course but you can customize them to your preferred structure (e.g., changing Folders to Modules and Pages to Lessons) as shown below.

Now, unlike Circle which allows you to upload video recordings directly to the platform, Skool doesn’t and instead requires you to embed them from external hosting platforms like YouTube, Loom, Wistia, and Vimeo.

Circle has quizzes to assess students, while Skool doesn’t. Neither platform offers the tools to issue course certificates.

In Circle, you can create quizzes to evaluate students’ understanding and gauge the effectiveness of your teaching materials. You can set up quizzes with multiple-choice answers, define a minimum passing grade, and require students to achieve this grade before advancing to the next module.

Skool lacks native quiz tools or any form of student assessments. Instead, you need to integrate a third party like Typeform via Zapier to add one. Or use the method recommended by the user below—which you can tell already, is a lot of work.

Verdict:👨‍⚖️ Circle outpaces Skool as it offers multiple course structures, built-in video hosting, and quizzes for student assessments. While neither platform can compete with specialized online course platforms like Thinkific and Teachable, Circle does a good job by providing more than just the barebones when it comes to course creation.

Skool vs Circle: Customization and Branding

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The ability to customize a community that reflects your brand helps you stand out from other generic online forums. But when it comes to Circle vs Skool, how do they compare in meeting your customization needs?

Spoiler alert;

Circle wins over Skool by a huge margin.

But let’s see to what extent.

Circle offers more customization options and lets you white-label your community, whereas Skool is super limited.

Circle provides extensive customization options, allowing you to tailor your community to align with your branding needs. You can:

• customize the theme layout to match your brand’s look and feel
• add your logo, and community icon
• customize individual spaces with unique icons and banner images
• add your community to a custom domain white-labelling it

And if you anything about code or have a budget to hire a developer, you can further customize your community using CSS.

If you need a fully white-labeled solution—ideal for SaaS companies or businesses wanting a seamless integration with their branding—Circle allows you to use its headless API to integrate the community into your website or application, giving it a bespoke, in-house appearance.

Meanwhile, Skool’s customization options are extremely limited. You can add a custom icon, a cover banner, and choose between light and dark mode, but that’s about it. 

Beyond these basic adjustments, your community will look nearly identical to countless others on the platform. There are no tools to modify layouts, themes, or integrate advanced branding features.

Verdict:👨‍⚖️ Circle is highly customizable which makes it the ideal option for businesses that what to build custom community spaces that feel unique to their brands. Meanwhile, Skool offers barely any meaningful options to tailor your brand — and your community will end up looking like the thousands of them hosted on the platform. So go with Circle if you want more than just adding a custom logo and icon to your community.

Skool vs Circle: Pricing Review

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Circle has a plan for every budget while Skool has a fixed plan with unlimited courses and members.

Circle offers tiered pricing plans, making it more scalable for businesses with different budgets and needs. 

The Basic plan starts at $49 per month but includes significant limitations: only 100 members, 1 admin, and no access to essential tools like courses. 

The Professional plan, which compares to Skool’s offering, costs $99 per month and supports unlimited members, up to 3 admins, and 10 moderators. It also unlocks livestreams for up to 100 attendees and live rooms for up to 30 participants. However, advanced features like workflow automations are reserved for higher-tier plans. 

The Business plan ($219 per month) and Enterprise plan ($399 per month) scale up features, offering unlimited workflows, up to 1,000 livestream attendees, and admin API access.

Skool, on the other hand, has a single pricing plan at $99 per month. 

This includes all features, such as course creation, event scheduling, and community discovery. The plan allows unlimited courses and members but limits you to one group (essentially one community) and charges a transaction fee of 2.9% per sale.

Both have transaction fees but Circle’s are slightly higher in the long run.

Circle charges a fee based on your subscription tier, ranging from 4% on the Basic plan to 0.5% on the Enterprise plan. 

These fees are not inclusive of Stripe’s processing fees, which start at 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction. But according to Circle they use additional Stripe features depending on the type of paywall you have setup which also adds extra charge. 

This includes 0.5% for subscriptions and installments (Stripe Billing) or 0.4% for one-time products (Stripe Invoicing). 

Essentially, if you’re on the Circle’s Professinal plan, the charges for paywall subscriptions will include:

• 2% Circle transaction fee
• 2.9% + $0.30 Stripe processing fee
• 0.5% Stripe Billing fee

That’s a heck of unknown charges you weren’t expecting. Right? I know.
On the other hand, Skool simplifies things with a flat 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction, with no hidden fees. Skool acts as the merchant, using Stripe Express to process payments and transfer money to your bank. It also handles VAT and sales tax compliance, offering a more straightforward approach.

Verdict:👨‍⚖️ Skool wins for affordability and low transaction fees. It has a single pricing plan that is simpler and includes all features at a predictable cost. Meanwhile, Circle’s tiered pricing allows flexibility and scalability but comes with higher transaction fees and more complexity.

Skool vs Circle: Pros and Cons

Below are the pros and cons to expect when using Skool and Cirlce.

Skool Pros and Cons

Circle Pros and Cons

Skool or Circle: Which One Should You Choose?

In this Skool vs Circle guide, I did my best to objectively compare both platforms in their strongest suit of features. And as you can tell, each platform best suits different users.

Skool is easier to use than Circle. Its interface feels intuitive, like Facebook Groups, and focuses on essentials: discussions, courses, and gamification. You can quickly set up, engage your community, and monetize without the headache of complex configurations.

However, Skool lacks many advanced native features, requiring third-party tools for live events (Zoom), video hosting (YouTube), and assessments (Typeform).

Skool is ideal for:

• Coaches and course creators who value simplicity and a fast setup.
• Community builders looking to integrate gamification (leaderboards, challenges) to boost engagement.
• Small-scale educators who are comfortable relying on external tools for live streams, video content, and assessments.

Try Skool free for 14 days.

Circle excels in flexibility and scalability. It offers dedicated spaces for discussions, courses, and events, with customizable access for different membership tiers. It supports advanced engagement tools, including group chats, polls, and leaderboards.

For creators wanting more, Circle’s tools like Workflow Automation and its Marketing Hub add-on allow you to build email sequences and automated processes for your membership business.

Circle is ideal for:

• Coaches and course creators looking for an all-in-one platform that doesn’t rely on third-party tools.
• Educators hosting workshops, events, or cohorts directly on the platform.
• Businesses building custom, white-label communities with scalability in mind.
• Digital entrepreneurs seeking advanced tools to grow and manage a membership-based business.

Try Circle free for 14 days.

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