CircleReviews of circle.so

Run! They keep billing me even though I canceled service. Terrible customer service The product is not user friendly.

afzetterij

The app is OK, but unexpected charges and upsells on top of an already very expensive SaaS. Just importing contacts already kicking in an additional 25$ per month AND I DIDN'T DO ANYTHING WITH IT. Outrageous. Thinking of switching now. Pricing totally undefensible and will definitely build my own within a year if pricing stays elevated.

I signed up for Circle through Capterra, where the price was listed as $49/month. After signing up and testing the platform, I was shown a price of $89/month, and only if billed annually. That price is extremely high for a SaaS platform, so I decided not to use it. I also continued receiving newsletters and later tried to delete my account. However, my dashboard was locked behind a paywall. If you don't pay, you can't properly manage or delete your account. Overall, the pricing discrepancy and the inability to easily delete a trial account made for a very poor experience.

Before buying an annual Circle Enterprise subscription for several thousand dollars, I researched the available tools for online communities. In the end, it came down to Circle and Wix. Circle seemed like the simpler, more complete solution. I spent several months on the technical setup, and shortly before launch, I decided to write off the money and switch to Wix after all. In short: when it comes to community features and hosting, the two products are absolutely comparable. Both let you build online communities, including websites and, if needed, a branded mobile app, without coding (unlike WordPress, which is much more complicated). Both also let you work with custom code if you need to. Neither is super easy to use like, say, Skool, and neither has Discord’s intimidatingly technical look. The reason I dumped Circle was that, once you get into the details, it is incredibly restrictive and limited. You’re forced into a template that you constantly want to break out of but can’t. On top of that, the price is truly ridiculous. With Wix, I get much more flexibility and overall functionality for only about 20% of the price. After months of working with these products, I can say that, in my view, Circle is a laughable alternative to Wix. So why do people buy it, as I did? Because it’s a marketing ploy. People and companies building communities quickly get the impression that Circle is specifically designed for online communities, so it must make things easier and better. This is purely about MARKETING - which is legit, but my review is here to help you avoid that pitfall. The marketing has NOTHING to do with the technical reality. Yet you end up paying several times as much for far less flexibility and functionality. There is only one thing built into Circle that Wix doesn’t have: video sessions. But again, Circle’s implementation is incredibly limited. Get a Zoom subscription instead (or use Google Meet). Zoom in particular gives you 100 times more options for tailoring it to your needs without programming. Integrating it with Wix takes just a few minutes. More generally, when it comes to email marketing and AI, I would advise against using any of the built-in solutions. Across the board, they are extremely limited compared with specialized tools, which are also very easy to integrate. My recommendation for an AI agent: ElevenLabs. For email marketing: Brevo. I’m glad I migrated away from Circle before my community goes live. After that, my community data would lock me into the platform. This is a very long-term decision.

Not upfront about what you get. They don't tell you the time limits for streaming or video conferencing. So here it is... Base package you get 10 hours combined over all your spaces. In a month. That's all. Just ten hours. So the base package is absolutely useless and there to just piss you off.

Absolute JOKE. This "website" has NO customer support contact, and NO "help menu". They literally provide NO WAY OF CONTACTING THEM in any way, shape or form. I have to laugh at the top review that said they have"incredibly helpful staff and exceptional customer service".... Uuummm.. that is an absolute LIE. A FAKE REVIEW. Cirlce.so DOES NOT HAVE ANY CUSTOMER SUPPORT-- not even a phucking EMAIL CONTACT.

This used to be a community based platform but they had since added in landing pages, a website builder, and some other features. Every feature they have is lackluster. None of their features work properly and I believe this is from adding in features so quickly. I would not recommend setting up your community or using the website/landing page builders.