Review: Mighty Networks vs. Circle – Update

It's a fact: humans crave community. And with online membership sites becoming increasingly popular in the online business world, we wanted to explore and review two different membership community platforms: Mighty Networks and Circle.so, to help you determine which one would work best for your community.

Before, it was not so difficult to create a community. We naturally found a community in bars and churches, sporting events and dinner parties. But since the advent of the Internet, it has become both easier and more difficult to find a real community. Sure, we have social networks, but as we all know, they can be loud and distracting, and connections often don't rise above the surface.

We increasingly need healthy, safe and quiet online spaces to connect. More peaceful places with fewer distractions and where you can spend time with people you have something in common with. And where you, the community leader, have more control.

Member communities are the newest way to connect with people in your audience online. We launched SPI Pro in July and we already have hundreds of members who all want to start and grow their online business.

We're all about member communities, and if you're an entrepreneur, we want to help you create one too.

During the process of creating SPI Pro, many things had to be considered, including where to host it. Powerful networks? Speech? Disciple? Circle? There are so many platforms out there, and finding the right "home" is key to helping your members stay engaged and keep coming back for more.

In this blog post, we'll compare two membership platforms: Mighty Networks and Circle.so. One has been around for years. The other was launched less than a year ago.

Both are amazing platforms, but as you will see there are key differences, and they have different strengths and advantages. Which might be right for you?

Disclosure: This article contains our unbiased review and recommendations to help you choose between Mighty Networks and Circle.so for your membership community platform. However, Circle.so is the platform that SPI uses for its community of members, SPI Pro, and this post contains affiliate links for Circle.so. Read our full disclaimer here.

The platform has been around for a few years. Here is some information about the creation of this platform.

Mighty Networks was founded by Gina Bianchini, co-founder of Ning.com, an online social networking platform for individuals and organizations to create personalized social networks. Gina left Ning in 2010 and started Mighty Networks.

She and her team wanted to create something that was fast on mobile and creator-led.

Pat interviewed Gina on the SPI Podcast Session 405, where she talks about her vision with Mighty Networks: "...to create something that lets you bring your people together in one one place, do more with them, host online classes, host virtual workshops, or even host in-person events because of some of the features we've linked to people close to me."

"What's powerful about a Mighty Network," Gina explains, "is that you don't just bring your community and your courses together in one place. In fact, you create and leverage the same dynamic underlying dynamic that has built some of the most successful businesses in corporate history [Facebook, Twitter, etc.] The difference is that as a creator, you can leverage the same underlying dynamic that ...