-Community First

Circle is built around people and conversations, not algorithms and advertising.

-Human Connection

Aligns with Surf-Connection's mission: Powered by Human Connection.

-Continuous Improvement

Circle actively develops the platform and listens to community builders. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

-Learning Curve

New members can feel overwhelmed when first entering a large community.

-Too Many Options

Community builders can easily overbuild and create unnecessary complexity.

-Onboarding Challenges

Requires a thoughtful "Mudroom" or welcome experience for members to understand where they belong. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I really like that we can use the API to ingest learners directly. Since we have hundreds of thousands of learners, this has been awesome and has made a big difference for us.

The new AI Agent has also been really helpful for boosting our community engagement efforts. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Circle could improve its qualitative analytics. The quantitative analytics are amazing, but strengthening the “who” aspect would go a long way. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Multi-purpose features, bringing community at the heart of the product. Easy to use interface, much more than competitors we also reviewed. Useful onboarding procedure, giving examples of what we could do to bring the community to life. Pricing is fair - it would be useful if we could have more spaces included within the pro tiers though. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Pricing - would be good to have more space options in the paid for tiers. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Having a mobile app where our community can post, engage with others' posts, and send DMs without having to be on a computer enables us to fit into the "small gaps" in the day where people would go to social media. Making it much easier to have daily & weekly active users, compared to if it were just a desktop thing. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There's no automatic way for events to show up on our members' calendars. For our specific use case with 2 available calls per week, we found that our members would miss calls because they hadn't RSVP'd for events & manually added the calls to their calendar. The workaround we're using right now is we have a shared Google calendar that we add each user to when they join, so all the events automatically show up on their calendars. It's working... but we're currently having to make all our calls in two places. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It’s easy to connect with a large number of people who share similar values, hobbies, and interests. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Honestly, I can’t think of anything I don’t like. If I had to mention one thing, it’s that sometimes it takes too long when adding members to private groups—you have to refresh the page to actually see all the members you’ve added. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I really like how much more organized Circle is than some other alternatives we are used to. It's a lot easier to search and find information, which is important for our large group with hundreds and thousands of posts. With the AI tools and the better organization, it makes it a lot easier for them to find that valuable information they need about points and miles. We had a really helpful onboard manager who made the setup process easier by explaining things, along with the course and all the helpful instructions, making the setup more seamless. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Haven’t really disliked anything, it’s all been working well for us so far Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

That it allows me to create a special space for my clients (book editors) and my business all in one place (courses, direct messaging, live streaming, event planning, blog posting, discussion forums, and more with additional integrations). I also like seeing how Circle members like Pedro are always replying to messages and listening to us. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

1. Cost for a small business owner like me (1 person building a community)

2.Steep learning curve on how to set up spaces, create automations, setting up paywalls, figuring out how to use integrations

3. Stripe processing fees and lack of PayPal integration

4. No "alerts" if I'm doing something wrong (i.e. I set up a paywall incorrectly and members were using Circle w/o paying) Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I love that you can do pretty much everything you need to run a community within Circle. Webinars, posts, badges, gamification, private messages, search by location, organize spaces, payment integration. It has so much functionality Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It can be glitchy. The AI chat doesn't always respond accurately. I don't completely like how the spaces are organized. Trying to figure out how to private spaces, how the backend is configured to give people access to certain parts of the platform can be kind of difficult to figure out. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What is great about Circle is that it creates a space where people can come together and communicate, share resources, and so much more. It is halfway between social media and a slack type platform, with opportunities for storage and a library. It is also relatively user friendly. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I do not think that the video option for Circle is very good, especially compared to things like Zoom and Teams. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Circle works well for both complex and more surface level setup of online communities. It's interface is particularly well designed when it comes to adding new posts, events and information. There's a good amount of freedom in how things can be set up - but not too much. The design options that are available are well implemented, it's hard to mess up - and easy to learn, which is a good combination. Our team accesses our Circle member portal daily, and rarely encounter bugs or issues. If we do they are resolved very quickly and have always been very minor. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There is still a ways to go with some of the smaller features that make workflows a little easier, that other platforms already have. For example, it would be great to have toggles that automatically setup event reminders at common times such as 1 day, 1 week before the event. That being said, the Circle team is very responsive to issues, and takes feedback well, each update brings new features that are often helpful. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.