This article is routinely updated as new features are rolled out from Circle, Heartbeat, and Mighty Networks. It was last updated January 27, 2025.
Introduction
Whether you are creating a new community or you’ve outgrown your Facebook group or Slack channel, every community manager will at some point wonder which community platform is a good fit for you. I’ve found this process to be daunting with tons of overpriced options and few resources to help compare and contrast. The purpose of this article is not to declare a winner between these platforms, but rather to help you put the pieces together more easily to understand the best fit for your community.
In this article, we chose to focus on non-Enterprise, all-in-one platforms with templated structures and customizable features.
Comparison Chart
Circle (this is an affiliate link) is an asynchronous community platform that has a simple and sleek layout that can easily be customized and white-labeled. This platform is ideal for communities that use the freemium community model (parts of the community available for free and parts only privately accessible to paying members) - though I personally would not recommend this model of community design. Circle boasts some pretty impressive communities hosted on their platform including Jay Clouse's Creator Science, Ness Labs, and The Upside. While Circle heavily targets creators looking to turn their audience into a paid community, brands are increasingly using the platform to host their own customer communities as well. Find examples of communities in their showcase. Circle's design centers on asynchronous conversation, though they have significantly expanded their features and functionality especially since securing funding.
Heartbeat (this is an affiliate link) is a synchronous community platform that shines when hosting communities that need both public and private events. Heartbeat offers a broad range of thoughtful and energizing features for your community. Heartbeat is leveraged by a variety of different communities, but we’ve noticed it’s especially popular with cohort-based communities, courses or solopreneur communities. Heartbeat is where I host my own community. Heartbeat's design centers on events (they have the best event functionality of any platform I've used!), but their entire app ecosystem is growing and improving every quarter.
Mighty Networks has been around for several years and was effectively one of the first community platforms available to non-enterprise communities. While the product was originally designed as more of a learning platform to host courses, they quickly adapted to incorporate a strong community experience. I've been pleasantly surprised to see this platform get a major overhaul in their design (they copied a lot of Circle's features). That being said, I still find navigation and the user experience for members and even more for the admin to be confusing and disincentivizing. Approach this platform with caution, highly intentional community design, and not getting too dazzled by the long list of features.
Acknowledging my bias:
You will probably be able to tell my bias for Circle and Heartbeat over Mighty Networks right away. I include Mighty Networks because they are an industry giant, but I truly believe their product (though vastly improved over the last year) is inferior to the other two. It's easier for me to keep a close beat on Circle and Heartbeat updates, but it usually takes me more time to update Mighty Networks features because I'm not usually actively building communities for my clients on that platform.
There are loads more community platforms out there (feels like I get approached by a new one every week) that I will not explore here like Skool, Kajabi Community, Insided, Tribe, Disciple, Vanilla, Guild, Haaartland, Honeycomb, Meltingspot, Pensil, Gradual, and Geneva because they are either inferior or serve communities outside of my scope.
How to decide which community platform is right for you?
At the end of the day, the platform you choose matters less than how you design and implement your community. That being said, certain platforms can create way more barriers than necessary depending on the programming strategy of your community. While it's important to plan ahead, try to make the majority of your decision on where your community is today, not where you suppose it will be in five years.
For a really practical approach, for each row in the table, rate how that platform’s features stack up based on what you need. Total each column up and make a quantitative decision. But we highly encourage you to get in and test each platform yourself (each has a free trial) to play around and get a feeling for it yourself.
Compare Core Features of Community Platforms: Circle, Heartbeat and Mighty Networks
🏅This feature is best for communities that...
🔔 This feature is unique to this platform ✅ This is a feature the platform has ❌ This is not a feature the platform has
Compare the Member Experience and Onboarding in Circle, Heartbeat, and Mighty Networks
Member Onboarding Features | Circle | Heartbeat | Mighty Networks |
|---|---|---|---|
Community Marketing Page | Circle does have a very basic custom description on the checkout page for the community. | Heartbeat does have a very basic custom description and upsells on the checkout page. | ✅ 🔔 Available with the Business Plan and up - a freeform marketing or information page. |
Onboarding Emails | Circle allows you to customize the onboarding email that is sent with the invitation to join Circle. | Heartbeat allows you to customize the onboarding email and you can customize different onboarding experiences based on the group they are tagged in. | Mighty Networks allows you to customize onboarding emails and 🔔 has a great custom onboarding checklist that you can set up for your members to complete when they first join. |
Application to Join | ❌ Circle does not have a custom application - you have to do this separately and use integrations to connect with the platform. They do have custom profile fields available with the business plan. | ❌ Heartbeat does not have a custom application - you have to do this separately and use integrations to connect with the platform. | ✅ 🔔 Mighty Networks allows you to ask up to five questions in the Community plan and up. |
Paywalls | ✅ Circle allows you to collect payments in your community through Stripe. | ✅ Heartbeat allows you to collect payments in your community through Stripe. | ✅ Mighty Networks allows you to collect payments in your community. You can also do a sliding scale and there's tons of customizability for charging for different programs in the Business and above plans. |
Conversion Tracking | ✅ Conversion tracking in the professional plan and up | ✅ Conversion Tracking for FB and Google available with Growth plan and up | ✅ FB Pixel with the Business plan and up |
Referral/Affiliate Program | ✅ Circle has an affiliate program feature where you can reward members in a % or flat rate for referring new members. | ✅ Heartbeat has a referral feature where members can refer other members to your community directly in their platform. | ✅ There is a built-in member referral program to encourage existing members to invite new ones. |
Accessibility | Circle is finally working to ensure they adhere to the WCAG2 (not quite there yet, but making strides in their latest updates). | Heartbeat doesn't have any information on their WCAG rating. | Mighty Networks has been known for their friendliness to making their platform accessible. I couldn't find anything about the WCAG rating, but they have this resources available. |
Compare Customization Abilities in Circle, Heartbeat, and Mighty Networks
Customization Feature | Circle | Heartbeat | Mighty Networks |
|---|---|---|---|
Custom logo and brand colors | ✅ In all plans | ✅ | ✅ |
White-label Platform | ✅ Professional and Enterprise Plan | ✅ All Plans | ✅ All Plans |
Custom App | ✅ Circle Plus offers a custom, white-label community app | ❌ | ✅ Mighty Pro offers a custom, white-label community app |
Custom Sub-domain | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
Email White-labeling | ✅ with the pro plan and above you can white-label emails | ✅ with the growth plan and above you can white-label emails | ✅ with a pro plan and above you can white-label emails |
Custom Profile Fields | ✅ Circle has customizable profile fields when a member fills out their profile. This feature is an add-on price | ✅ Heartbeat does have custom profile questions, though ❌ these are not reflected in their profile in the member directory only in their intro. | ❌ Mighty Networks does not have custom profile fields, but ✅ the profile fields do show up in the member directory |
Custom Emojis | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ |
Custom Code Snippets (CSS) | ✅ In all plans | ❌ | ❌ |
Compare Additional Tech Features in Circle, Heartbeat, and Mighty Networks
Other Features | Circle | Heartbeat | Mighty Networks |
|---|---|---|---|
Integrations | ✅ Open API for Pro and above ✅ Tons of Zapier + Integrately Integrations available in the Pro and above accounts | ✅ Limited API access for starter and growth, full for business ✅ Tons of integrations: zapier, zoom, stripe, outlook, google calendar, notion, slack, circle, and peerboard import | ✅ Only the zoom integration with community plan ✅ API and Zapier integrations with business plan and up |
Native Automations/ Workflows | ✅ Circle offers a workflow feature directly in the platform with the business plan and above. | ✅ Heartbeat offers workflows and automations natively with all of their packages (this is awesome). You can use these automations for bulk actions or to create an action based on community activity. | ❌ |
AI | ✅ Circle has an AI features available for the Business Plan | ❌ | ✅ Mighty Networks leverages AI to help you set up your community quickly and to provide tips. For ongoing access to AI (Mighty Co-Host) you must purchase the Business Plan |
Gamification | ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ Circle's member tags can be used to create a gamification experience, but usually you'll need to manually tag members for accomplishments or build through an external automation platform. | ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ Heartbeat’s groups can be assigned to members and used as badges, but these badges must be assigned manually or through an automation. | ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ Mighty Networks has gamification baked into their referral program, but no other tagging or badge system. |
Moderation | ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ In Circle, you have access to admin and moderator roles. You cannot customize the moderator permissions and the number of spots is limited depending on the plan. | ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ 🔔 In Heartbeat you can segment your community into different roles in the community and give each role different permissions of management in the community. You can create several roles and customize the titles. 🏅 This is great for team collaboration and customizing the role of your moderators. | ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ Mighty Networks has host, moderator, and member roles. They list that you get an unlimited number of these. |
Warnings, profanity filters, and reporting content | ✅ In Circle you can set up profanity filters. If a post includes them, it must be approved by a moderator first. | ❌ | ✅ In Mighty Networks, members and content can be flagged by other members. |
SEO | ✅ Each Circle space has the option to be made public, private, or secret. For public spaces, you can customize SEO features and the space can even be embedded in a page on your website. | ❌ Heartbeat does not have functionality for optimizing SEO and all channels are private to the community (you can customize who sees what, but logged-out members cannot view). | ✅ Mighty Networks has the ability to turn on and off search indexing. |
Analytics | ✅ Analytics are available for professional and enterprise plans. Professional analytics include:Member analytics: daily active members, 30 day active members, top members, active commenters, post starters, most appreciated (likes received).Posts: # posts per day, # comments per day, top posts + comments in likes.Messages: # direct messages sent, # new direct messages, group chats, new group chats. | ✅ Analytics are available for growth + custom plans. Growth analytics include:Overview: feature views broken into % over threads, DMs, docs, voice calls, and the directory, time before first view, emoji, and comment, and platform usage for website vs mobile app vs desktop appActivity: best times people are lurking or engaging, public vs private conversations, top active users (threads, comments, messages, and reacts), top threads, top channels, top docsEngagement: logins over time, and see increase over last month for threads growth, DM growth, logins, doc views, voice rooms | ✅ Analytics and member data are listed as available for the business plan. |
SSO | ✅ Available in Business Plan | ❌ Heartbeat uses passwordless login through Magic Link | ✅ |
Mobile | ✅ iOs App ✅Android App | ✅ iOs App ✅ Android App ✅ Desktop App | ✅ iOs App ✅ Android App |
Polls in Posts | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
Search | ✅ Search bar ✅ Filters in search bar | ✅ Search bar ✅ Filters in search bar | ✅ Search bar ✅ Filters in search bar |
Resources for Community Building | The Circle Community (for people who are building communities on Circle) has a plethora of knowledge and experts willing to jump in to answer questions. The content tends to be difficult to sort through in a linear fashion (something we know they are working on). | The Hearth (for people who are building communities in Heartbeat) has an excellent crowd of community builders to share knowledge and events to guide your community building process. The team also provides a lot of tech support directly in the community. | Mighty Community is for their community builders where members can connect with other Mighty Networks customers. They host events, have free and paid courses, and much more. |
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