Hey IH Community builders,
Wondering if you have thoughts on Mighty Networks vs Circle for building communities. Having profiles, direct messaging, private channels with a knowledge base, community posting board, and having a paid subscription - are some of the most important features for me. Would really appreciate any thoughts!
On a separate note, would love to connect with any people here who are freelancers / independent consultants or are interested in building something for this market. More here: https://www.indiehackers.com/product/nomawo
Thanks a ton!
Great question!
I am building our community on MN. Very happy with the support they are having on their own 'mighty host' community and that they are constantly delivering on their product road-map.
Have no experience with Circle but you if you want to have a look inside what I am building my community is still free https://impactbreakfastclub.com
Thanks @OscarO. I will definitely check out your community. Also, didn't know about the 'mighty host' community - looks like a great resource.
I've been using MN extensively (business plan) for over 6 months now. Biggest pros: paid plans, private and secret areas, MN mobile app (HUGE engagement booster), events section looks amazing, polls and questions (this is a type of post and is also huge for engagement), and as someone else mentioned they have a community for their hosts which is free and public and has been an amazing resource for me.
I know another community (nocodedevs.com) that recently switched from MN so I asked him what made him switch and he said "It’s open and flexible has an api."
To do the same kind of membership site on circle requires a few extra services like Memberstack/Memberful & Teachable for courses so it would end up being more expensive and require more work to implement. AFAIK it's not really any more customizable - all of the circle communities I've seen look the same and remind me of Slack.
To be clear, Mighty Networks does not have an API. They have a few (approx 5) endpoints on Zapier.
Yes, the service he moved to (I believe circle) was the one that had an API.
Thanks a lot, @JPHaus for the insights. Totally agree MN has way more to offer than Circle (which needs Memberstack and more to accomplish the same). And no mobile app.
Mighty is a trustworthy and solid platform and works well, however Circle does offer most the features you're looking for and might be a better fit as it has strong presence in the indie/nocode scene and are more of new challenger/player (so likely eager to implement features you are interested in). You can use Memberstack for subscriptions with Circle.
Circle's knowledge base functionality is a bit limited, but you can post simple articles within groups/channels and might do the trick.
The native mighty app for mobile is really nice, that's something you will not get from Circle.
You can check my other recommendations on our website https://crowded.co/alternatives
Thanks, this is very helpful. I am also leaning towards Circle. Crowded.co looks super cool!
It really depends on what you are building. On the face of it Circle seems like a better fit.
Thanks @rosiesherry. Not sure if you'd have an answer to this question: can you do profiles in Circle?
Like this? https://community.makerpad.co/u/1fa213b9
Thanks. Yep, this looks good enough :)