Circle vs Disco

Circle is a community platform from a US company founded in 2019 by people who previously built creator tools, and it has become one of the most popular homes for paid communities, cohort courses and B2B customer communities. It brings discussion spaces, chat, events, live streams, courses and memberships into one branded space on web, iOS and Android.

Communities are organized into spaces, each of which can be a post feed, a chat channel, an event calendar or a course. Paywalls, tiers and gated spaces handle monetization with Stripe, and the platform adds its own transaction fee on top of Stripe's charges, a percentage that shrinks on higher plans. Business adds workflows that automate onboarding and member journeys, custom profile fields and API access; AI features help with moderation, summaries and an AI agent that answers members. Fully branded iOS and Android apps are a separate Plus offering with a significant extra price.

Circle fits creators and companies who want a polished, premium community and are willing to pay for it. It is less suited to tight budgets and to knowledge-heavy communities where search and threaded discussion matter most. Skool is simpler and cheaper with gamification built in, Mighty Networks offers a similar all-in-one bundle, Discord is free but noisy and hard to monetize, and Discourse is the open-source choice for searchable forums.

Disco is a learning platform from Disco Inc., a remote-first company based in Toronto and founded in 2020 by Candice Faktor, formerly of Wattpad, and Chris Sukornyk. It raised a $15 million round led by GSV Ventures in 2022. Disco helps organizations build branded academies that mix self-paced courses, live cohorts, events and community in one place, for customer education, member programs, partner enablement or employee training.

Admins can generate a program outline with AI, then build lessons with video, assignments and quizzes, run live events, and keep members engaged with channels, threads, DMs, groups, leaderboards and smart nudges. AI tools include a curriculum builder, quiz generator, video transcripts and summaries, audio narration, image generation, community moderation and Ask AI, which answers learner questions from program content. Payments run through Stripe, and Enterprise adds API and webhooks, SAML SSO and branded iOS and Android apps. The public plans are Organization and Enterprise.

Disco fits associations, training companies and businesses running cohort programs where community matters as much as content. Circle and Mighty Networks are stronger pure community tools with lower entry prices, Thinkific is a simpler course store, and Skool is far cheaper for creators. At $399 per month and up, Disco is priced for organizations rather than solo creators.

Ask AI lets learners query program knowledge directly. The 14-day trial is the best way to test the AI course builder on your own material before committing to annual billing.