MemberPress vs. Circle: Was eignet sich am besten für Ihre Online-Community?

Circle is one of the most polished community platforms available. MemberPress, with ClubSuite™ now in the mix, gives you a community that runs on your own site, under your brand, without transaction fees or platform dependency. Here's how they compare.

Die kurze Antwort: Circle is a standalone SaaS community platform starting at $89/Monat (annual billing) with transaction fees on top.

MemberPress is a WordPress plugin with community features (ClubSuite™) starting from $349.50/year on plans that include them, no transaction fees, and everything lives on your site.

Circle is more polished out of the box. MemberPress is more cost effective gives you ownership of what you build.

What Is Circle?

Circle is a purpose-built community platform that brings together discussion spaces, courses, live events, and member management in one dashboard.

It has a clean, modern interface, genuinely good native community features, and has been actively developed (the team shipped over 150 improvements in the past year).

If you want a dedicated community platform that's well-designed and doesn't require a website, Circle is one of the better options in the market.

The trade-off is that every plan comes with transaction fees on member payments. The Professional plan takes 2%, Business takes 1%, Enterprise 0.5%. And as with any SaaS community platform, your members, your content, and your community history live on Circle's servers, not yours.

Was ist MemberPress?

MemberPress is a WordPress membership plugin that has been running since 2012. It's expanded well beyond access control into a full platform for memberships, courses, coaching, and community.

ClubSuite™. gives you ClubCircles™ (community discussion boards), ClubDirectory™ (searchable member profiles and directories), and ClubConnect™ (real-time direct messaging, on the Scale plan).

All of it runs on your WordPress site, under your domain, with your brand. Members experience your community, not MemberPress's.

The honest caveat remains the same as with any WordPress solution: you're managing a self-hosted site; hosting, security, backups.

ReadyLaunch™ reduces the setup friction considerably, but it's a different model from Circle's hosted environment.

Die Hauptunterschiede

MemberPress vs. Circle: Pricing

Circle's plans (annual billing):

• Professional: $89/month ($1,068/year) + 2% transaction fee
• Business: $199/month ($2,388/year) + 1% transaction fee
• Enterprise: $419/month ($5,028/year) + 0.5% transaction fee
• Email Hub: Priced separately based on contact count
• Branded mobile app (Circle Plus): Custom pricing on top of any plan

MemberPress-Pläne (prices shown are introductory, check memberpress.com/pläne/preisgestaltung für aktuelle Tarife):

• Start: Ab $199,50/Jahr + 4,9% Transaktionsgebühr (no community features)
• Wachstum: Ab $349,50/Jahr + 0% Gebühren (ClubSuite™: ClubCircles™ + ClubDirectory™)
• Maßstab: Ab $499,50/Jahr + 0% Gebühren (adds ClubConnect™ + CoachKit™)

The transaction fee point is worth dwelling on. At $5,000/month in community revenue:

Circle's transaction fees are lower than Skool's, but they're still a recurring cost that compounds as your community grows.

And unlike Skool's fees, Circle's don't disappear even on the Business plan – you're paying $199/month plus 1% of everything you earn.

Unterm Strich: Circle Professional is a lower monthly commitment than Kajabi or Skool's Pro plan. But once you factor in transaction fees and compare against MemberPress Growth (which includes community features, zero fees, and no monthly billing) the value equation shifts considerably.

MemberPress vs. Circle: Community Features

Circle is genuinely excellent at community. Discussion spaces are well-designed, with multiple space types (posts, Q&A, events, chat). The feed is clean. Live streaming is built in, no integrations needed.

Members get a native iOS and Android app included in all plans. If you want a community platform that feels polished and requires minimal setup, Circle delivers.

MemberPress with ClubSuite™ covers community fundamentals well and adds something Circle doesn't have: direct messaging.

• ClubCircles™. provides discussion boards where members post, share, and engage inside your WordPress site.
• ClubDirectory™. creates searchable member profiles – useful for peer networking within a paid community.
• ClubConnect™. (Scale plan) adds real-time direct messaging between members and coaches.

The gap: Circle's native community experience is more mature and polished than ClubSuite™ right now.

Live streaming, in particular, is something Circle does natively that MemberPress routes through integrations.

If the community feed and live engagement experience are central to your model, Circle has the edge on the UX side.

There's also a third option worth knowing about if your audience is already on Discord.

Die kostenlose MemberPress mit Discord-Plugin verbinden lets you use MemberPress as the membership and billing layer for a Discord server,

• automatically assigning Discord roles based on membership tier,
• revoking access when memberships lapse, and
• DM-ing members about billing changes.

Circle markets itself as the professional alternative to Discord. But for communities where members are already comfortable on Discord, pairing it with MemberPress might be your best option.

It gives you a powerful community experience und full ownership of the membership infrastructure underneath it.

Unterm Strich: Circle's community features are polished and purpose-built. MemberPress ClubSuite™ covers the essentials and adds direct messaging, but Circle leads on live streaming and overall community UX.

For communities already on Discord, the free MemberPress–Discord integration offers a compelling third path. The question is whether Circle's polish is worth the platform dependency… and the price difference.

MemberPress vs. Circle: Courses and LMS

Circle has course functionality – you can build modular courses with video, audio, and text, integrate live events and office hours, and sell access directly.

It's a reasonable course host, particularly for course content that's closely tied to community discussion.

MemberPress-Kurse goes deeper.

• Inhalt des Tropfens gibt den Unterricht nach einem Zeitplan frei.
• Quizze support graded assessments.
• A Notenbuch verfolgt die Leistungen der Schüler.
• Zuweisungen let students submit all kinds of work.
• Abschlusszeugnisse are included (and you can set expiry dates too)
• An AI Course Generator add-on speeds up content creation.

If your business model blends community with serious structured learning, progress tracking, graded work, certification, MemberPress has significantly more LMS depth than Circle.

Unterm Strich: Circle's courses are adequate for content-plus-community. MemberPress is the stronger choice for structured learning programs with accountability and assessment built in.

MemberPress vs. Circle: Platform Ownership and Data

With Circle, your community exists on Circle's infrastructure. Your member list, your discussions, your content, your years of community history, all of it lives in a system you don't control.

Circle has revised its pricing and plans before. If they do it again, or if the platform is acquired, or if your community grows to a size where their pricing no longer works for you, migrating a live community is genuinely disruptive.

With MemberPress on WordPress, your site is yours. Your member database is yours. Your community discussions, content library, and member relationships live on your server.

If you want to move hosts, change your stack, or build something custom on top of it, nothing requires Circle's permission.

The practical trade-off is real: running WordPress means managing hosting, security, and updates.

But for a community you're building long-term (one that represents your brand, your relationships, your IP) it's a one-time investment in infrastructure you actually own, rather than a recurring subscription to someone else's.

Unterm Strich: Circle is convenient. MemberPress is defensible. If you're building a community you intend to grow for years, it's worth investing your time up front.

MemberPress vs. Circle: Customer Satisfaction

This one requires a bit of context. Circle's Trustpilot score is 2.5/5 – but that's from only 20 reviews, which makes it a thin sample.

Their G2 score of 4.6/5 from 416 verified users tells a more reliable story: Circle has a lot of satisfied customers, particularly those who value the polished UX and active feature development.

The Trustpilot complaints are still worth knowing about, even if the sample is small.

The recurring themes are billing disputes, support responsiveness, and (in a few cases) content deletion issues.

One reviewer put it plainly:

“Thought it would be easier to manage than a website – Actually more awkward and limited what can be done. lacking some very basic features… Having used other services and wordpress plugins I would opt for them instead”

That's a useful reality check on Circle's all-in-one promise: the simplicity doesn't always materialise once you're deeper into building, and the platform's limitations can surface at inconvenient moments.

MemberPress holds a 4.8/5 on Trustpilot and a 4.7/5 on G2 – consistently high across both platforms and a much larger review pool.

The common thread in positive reviews: a support team that responds to real problems and a product that has been reliably maintained for over a decade.

Unterm Strich: Circle's G2 score reflects genuine user satisfaction with the product. The Trustpilot complaints (particularly around billing and content) are worth reading before committing.

MemberPress scores highly on both platforms and has the larger, more consistent review base.

MemberPress vs. Circle: Integrations

Circle is fairly self-contained. Email marketing requires the Email Hub add-on, priced separately.

Integrations outside the core platform run through Zapier. It's a closed ecosystem, which keeps things simple but limits flexibility as your business grows.

MemberPress connects with the full WordPress ecosystem:

• Stripe,
• PayPal,
• WooCommerce,
• Mailchimp,
• Kit,
• ActiveCampaign,
• Leichtes Affiliate,
• PrettyLinks,
• Zapier,
• und Hunderte of other plugins.

If you have existing tools you want to keep, or specialist integrations your business depends on, MemberPress accommodates them. Circle asks you to work within its boundaries.

Unterm Strich: Circle is simple and contained. MemberPress connects to whatever you're already using.

Für wen ist MemberPress geeignet?

• Committed community builders who want to own their platform, data, and member relationships, not rent them from a SaaS provider
• Anyone combining community with serious course or coaching features, where LMS depth and CoachKit™ matter alongside the community
• Businesses already on WordPress that want to add community without rebuilding their stack
• Anyone doing consistent revenue where Circle's transaction fees would materially add to costs
• Organisations that need deep integrations with email providers, CRMs, or affiliate platforms
• Communities whose members are already active on Discord. The free MemberPress mit Discord-Plugin verbinden lets MemberPress handle billing and access control while Discord handles the community experience, with no transaction fees and no platform lock-in

Who Circle Is Best For

• Community builders who want the most polished out-of-the-box community experience, without managing a WordPress site
• Creators whose model centres on live streaming and live events, where Circle's native video tools genuinely shine
• Anyone starting out who wants a clean, modern community platform live in an afternoon
• Communities where the member-facing experience and mobile app quality are a top priority and the cost is workable

Switching from Circle to MemberPress

Your member list and content export from Circle, but community discussion history doesn't transfer – you'd be starting fresh on the conversation side.

The practical experience is: course content and files come with you, community dynamics don't.

MemberPress ReadyLaunch™. gets a WordPress community site live faster than most people expect. The heavier work is re-engaging your existing members in a new space, which is about communication more than technology.

MemberPress's customer success team (real people, not AI)can help you map out the migration before you commit to it.

Häufig gestellte Fragen

Endgültiges Urteil

Circle is a genuinely well-built community platform and it earns its user base. If you want the most polished standalone community experience (particularly with live streaming built in) it's a credible choice.

But your community lives on Circle's servers. Transaction fees compound as you grow. And the ownership question, once you sit with it, tends to matter more the longer you're building.

MemberPress with ClubSuite™ is the better foundation for anyone who wants their community to be genuinely theirs.

The setup requires WordPress, but the trade-off is a platform you own outright, no revenue cut, and an ecosystem that grows with you rather than billing you more as it does.

Holen Sie sich MemberPress noch heute!

Start a paid community that's all yours.

MemberPress jetzt kaufen Alle Merkmale anzeigen

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Victoria Lloyd

Victoria hat ein Händchen dafür, aus kleinen Anfängen große Erfolge zu machen. Sie hat ihre Schmuckmarke aus dem pulsierenden Treiben der Londoner Straßenmärkte an so prestigeträchtige Orte wie die Royal Academy of Arts und den Topshop-Flagshipstore am Oxford Circus gebracht. Ihr Fachwissen beschränkt sich nicht nur auf physische Produkte. Victoria hat eine nachweisliche Erfolgsbilanz bei der Steigerung des Online-Engagements für eine Vielzahl von Marken. Von dynamischen Start-ups bis hin zu bekannten Namen wie Nokia und Jack Daniels hat Victoria ihre starke Mischung aus Wortschatz, strategischem Verständnis und digitalem Scharfsinn eingesetzt, um das Engagement und die Suchmaschinenoptimierung von Marken zu steigern. Bei MemberPress setzt Victoria ihre vielfältigen Erfahrungen ein, um die Welt der Online-Mitgliedschaft und des Unternehmenswachstums zu vereinfachen und zu entmystifizieren. Sie ist hier, um die Leser mit ihren einzigartigen Einblicken zu führen und ihnen zu helfen, ihre Online-Communities und Mitgliedschaftsseiten selbstbewusst und kreativ aufzubauen.

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