Our pick for societies and networks · Verified 18 August 2026
Circle — the only one shaped like an organisation with sub-groups
From $89/mo · 14-day free trial
Learned societies and research networks have internal structure — regional chapters, special interest groups, methods streams, an early-career section, committees — and they need spaces with their own moderators and permissions. Circle handles that structure natively and includes courses on every paid tier, which matters because societies increasingly run training alongside membership. Professional is $89/month with a 2% transaction fee, with a 14-day trial requiring no card.
Start a Circle trial Opens on the vendor’s site · CASRAI referral link
Running a single cohort rather than a membership? → — Then Circle is probably over-specified, and a simpler platform will get better engagement for less money. That section explains why.
Editorial disclosure: CASRAI has commercial referral arrangements with some of the vendors named on this page, and may earn a commission if you subscribe to them. We name them here regardless of whether a link is present. We only recommend tools our editorial team has independently researched. Read our full disclosure policy.
In summary
- Match the platform to the community shape: standing membership with sub-groups, single cohort, or personal audience.
- Circle: Professional $89/mo (2% fee), Business $199/mo (1%), Circle Plus custom (0.5%). Courses on all tiers, unlimited members. Verified 18 August 2026.
- We do not quote Skool or Mighty Networks pricing — we only verified Circle against a vendor page.
- Moderator limits, not member limits, are what push a structured society up a tier.
- Ask every vendor what you can export, in what format, including posts as well as the member list.
How the three differ structurally
Only the Circle prices here are verified against a vendor page (18 August 2026)
| Dimension | Circle | Skool | Mighty Networks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Designed around | A structured organisation with spaces and sub-groups | A single focused group with courses and gamified engagement | A creator building a personal audience and brand |
| Sub-groups with own moderators | Core capability | Deliberately minimal | Supported |
| Courses | Included on every paid tier | Core to the product | Supported |
| Member payments | Yes — 2% / 1% / 0.5% by tier | Yes | Yes |
| Complexity | Higher — configurable, needs setting up properly | Deliberately simple, few decisions to make | Moderate, with strong branded-app emphasis |
| Best fit | Learned societies, research networks, training programmes | One cohort, one course, one focused conversation | An individual academic building a following |
Skool and Mighty Networks pricing changes and varies by plan and promotion; we describe structure rather than printing figures we have not verified against their own pages. Check their current pricing directly.
Match the platform to the community shape
Feature comparisons obscure this, so start here. Three community shapes recur in research, and each points at a different answer.
A standing membership with internal structure. A learned society, a national research network, a multi-institution consortium. It has regional chapters or special interest groups, a committee or two, an early-career section, and volunteers who moderate their own corner. Members join and stay for years, subscriptions renew annually, and there is probably a training programme attached. This shape needs configurable spaces, per-group moderators and real permissions — which is Circle’s territory, and the reason it is our pick for this sector.
A single cohort. Twenty people going through a methods course together, a doctoral training programme intake, a fellowship year group. Everyone is in the same conversation at the same stage, engagement is high and time-bounded, and structure would only get in the way. This shape is Skool’s, and it is a genuinely better fit than Circle — a configurable multi-space platform for twenty people in one cohort is over-specification that dilutes the one conversation you want.
A personal audience. An individual academic with a newsletter, a following and something to sell — a course, a book, consulting. Mighty Networks is built around this, with heavy emphasis on branded presence.
Most research organisations reading this page are the first shape. Some training programmes are the second. Very few institutional buyers are the third, though individual academics often are.
Count moderators, not members
All three platforms advertise generous or unlimited member counts, which makes member numbers a poor comparison axis. The constraint that actually binds a structured organisation is how many people can moderate.
Work it through for a typical society: eight special interest groups each wanting a moderator, an early-career section, a regional chapter or two, an executive committee space and an editorial board space. That is a dozen or more volunteers who need to manage their own area without routing everything through one central administrator — and if they cannot, the central administrator becomes the bottleneck and the sub-groups quietly die.
Circle’s Professional tier gives 3 admins and 10 moderators; Business gives 5 and 15; Circle Plus removes the limit. A structured society can hit the Professional ceiling immediately, well before member count is relevant.
So: count your groups and their volunteers before pricing anything. This is the most common reason an organisation lands on a higher tier than it budgeted for, and it is entirely predictable in advance.
Whether courses need to live in the same place
Societies are running more training than they used to — methods series, certification pathways, early-career development, summer schools. Where that training lives has more practical consequence than most feature comparisons suggest.
Running courses on a separate learning platform means separate logins for members, separate enrolment administration, separate payment reconciliation and two member lists that drift apart. For a volunteer committee with no dedicated staff, that duplication is the difference between a training programme that runs and one that quietly lapses.
Circle includes courses on every paid tier and Skool treats them as core, so both avoid this. If your organisation runs or plans to run training, weight that heavily — it usually matters more than any difference in discussion features, and it is the strongest structural argument for Circle in this sector.
Data portability and the questions vendors dislike
For a society, the membership list is the organisation’s most valuable asset. Settle these before migrating, not after.
- What exactly can we export? Member list only, or posts and course content too? In what format?
- What happens if we stop paying? How long is the data retrievable, and in what form?
- Where is data stored, and who are the sub-processors? For UK and EU organisations this is a documented DPO question, not an optional one.
- Can we integrate with our existing systems? If membership must sync with a CRM or finance system, check the automation limits — Circle caps Professional at 20 automations.
- Who owns the member relationship? The reason to pay for a dedicated platform rather than use a free Facebook or LinkedIn group is precisely that you keep this. Confirm it.
One further caution that applies whichever you pick: migrating a mailing list means re-consenting members under GDPR in most cases, and you will lose a proportion. That is usually informative rather than harmful — an address that will not re-consent was likely not reading the list either — but plan for it rather than being surprised.
None of these work unattended
Whichever platform you choose, the failure mode is identical and it has nothing to do with software.
An empty community is worse than no community. A member who visits twice, finds nothing new and leaves will not return when it eventually becomes active — and a visibly dead official community makes the next attempt harder than the first. The subscription is the small cost; the credibility is the expensive one.
What separates the ones that work: somebody owns it as part of their actual job with time allocated; it launches with content already in it rather than a welcome post; it launches to a small committed core rather than the whole membership; there is a recurring reason to return such as a journal club or a weekly thread; and something exists there that exists nowhere else.
If you cannot name the person and cannot say what will be there in week three, delay the purchase regardless of which platform you preferred. That advice costs us a referral and is the right advice.
Trial it with one group before committing the organisation
The 14-day trial needs no card and there is a 30-day money-back guarantee. Run a single committee or special interest group on it first — that tests the fit properly and leaves you with the seeded content a full launch needs.
From $89/mo · 14-day free trial
Start a Circle trial Opens on the vendor’s site · CASRAI referral link
Frequently asked questions
Circle or Skool for a research community?
Circle if you are a standing membership with internal structure — sub-groups, chapters, committees, volunteer moderators. Skool if you are a single cohort going through something together, where structure would dilute the one conversation you want. The shape of the community decides it, not the feature list.
How much does Circle cost?
Professional is $89/month with a 2% transaction fee, Business is $199/month at 1%, and Circle Plus is custom-priced at 0.5%. All tiers include unlimited members and courses, with a 14-day trial requiring no card and a 30-day money-back guarantee. Verified 18 August 2026.
Why do you not list Skool and Mighty Networks prices?
Because we only verified Circle’s pricing directly against its own pricing page, and every price on this site carries a verification date. Printing competitor figures we had not checked would break that standard. We compare their structure instead and recommend checking their current pricing yourself.
Which limit should we check before choosing a tier?
Moderator count, not member count. Member limits are generous or unlimited across these platforms, but a society with several special interest groups plus committees needs a dozen or more volunteer moderators — and Circle’s Professional tier allows 3 admins and 10 moderators, which a structured organisation hits immediately.
Does it matter whether courses are on the same platform?
More than most comparisons suggest. Separate platforms mean separate logins, separate enrolment administration, separate payment reconciliation and two member lists that drift apart — which for a volunteer committee is the difference between a training programme that runs and one that lapses. Circle includes courses on every paid tier.
What should we ask a vendor before migrating?
What exactly you can export and in what format, including posts as well as the member list; how long data is retrievable if you stop paying; where data is stored and who the sub-processors are; and what integration is possible with your CRM or finance system. The membership list is your most valuable asset — settle portability before you move it.
