Leaving Circle? Know what comes with you first.
Circle is the most polished community platform there is, but leaving means leaving things behind. Here’s what you own, what it costs, and when to stay.
Danica LouweUpdated 5 min readMove only if the tiers, the fees or what the export leaves behind are your real problem. The export gives you members, spaces, posts and comments, but not courses, progress, messages or uploaded media. If you go, we build beside Circle and switch on one day. If the numbers say stay, we say stay.
Circle is the nicest room you can rent. The question is the lease.
Circle earns its reputation: the most polished interface in the category, frequent releases, deep AI. Owners start looking at the door when the plan tier blocks a feature they need, when the fees and add-ons stack up, or when they realise what the export leaves behind. Those are different problems, and only some of them are solved by moving.
The tiers decide what you can do
Professional is $89 a month with 3 admins, 20 spaces and a 2% fee; white label and the API start at Business ($199); webhooks and custom SSO at Scale ($419). Prices are on annual billing. The feature you need next tends to live one tier up.
The add-ons stack
Email Hub is $99 a month for 10,000 contacts. Reviewers on Trustpilot describe importing contacts triggering an extra monthly charge, and a dashboard locked behind a paywall. Each one is small; together they add up.
Two systems, two logins
Circle is the community; the courses or the checkout often live somewhere else. Members get two logins and two bills, and the seam between the systems is where access breaks.
What the export leaves behind
The full export is requested from support and returns four CSVs: members, spaces, posts and comments, with no uploaded media. Direct messages, courses and course progress are not part of it as documented. The longer you stay, the more there is to leave behind.
First we test whether you should move at all.
A migration is the most expensive way to fix a problem that was never about the platform. Before anything moves, we answer these, in writing.
- What is actually hurting: a tier limit, the fees and add-ons, the two-system seam, or a quiet community that would be quiet on WordPress too.
- What Circle will let you take: members, spaces, posts and comments as CSVs. What is not in the export: media, DMs, courses, progress. We request it early so there are no surprises.
- Your real monthly number: the Circle plan, the fee on sales, the Email Hub and any other add-ons, against hosting, licences and the hours to run WordPress yourself or with us.
- What your members would notice on day one, and whether staying on Circle and fixing three things would get you most of the way.
- The stack that fits: MemBuild Community or BuddyBoss for the room, LearnDash if you need quizzes and certificates, WP Fusion or MemberPress for access, FluentCRM or your current CRM for email.
- The stay-put answer. If our answer is stay, that is the recommendation, and you have lost nothing.
What comes with you, and what doesn’t.
Comes with you
- Members, spaces, posts and comments, as CSVs you request from Circle support
- Contacts and tags
Rebuilt or left behind
- Uploaded media
- Direct messages
- Courses and course progress
- Email sequences
If you move: build it beside Circle, switch on one day.
Nothing is turned off until the new site has let real members in. The order below is the one we use on every hosted-platform migration.
- 1
Request the export and inventory the rest
The four CSVs from Circle support, plus a list of every space, course and pinned post, and which ones are actually used. The unused ones do not move.
- 2
Build the community and classroom on WordPress
MemBuild Community for the feed, levels, leaderboard and chats; LearnDash if you need quizzes and certificates. Spaces that gate content become member groups tied to a WordPress role. Spaces that are just subjects become topics.
- 3
Wire payments and access, then test the chain
Stripe or PayPal into the membership plugin, tags into the CRM, the access rule on every course and group. A test purchase, a failed card, a cancel, as a member on a phone.
- 4
Import members and send one email
Members come in through the plugin’s Import, which has steps for Circle exports, with their plans attached. One “set your password” email, sent in batches, with a reply address a human reads that week.
- 5
Run both for one billing cycle, then close Circle
Subscriptions move at renewal so nobody is double-charged. The feed starts with a pinned welcome and the levels announced. Then the Circle plan, the fee and the Email Hub stop.
How owners describe it
“I use Kajabi now but am not in love with the community feature... am considering Circle for that but not sure I want to have two systems to run my business.”
“I need someone who can build the Circle experience for me, not just advise on how to build it myself.”
Watch it done
The plain-English version of hosted platform versus your own WordPress: what you rent, what you own, and the questions to ask before you move anything.
Questions owners ask
Will my members have to make new accounts?
No. Members come over as WordPress users from the Circle member export, and set a password through a “welcome to the new home” email on the day we switch. Their email address is the key; nothing else changes for them.
Do my posts, courses and progress come with me?
Members do. You can download the member list yourself; the fuller export is requested from Circle support and comes as four CSVs (members, spaces, posts, comments) with no uploaded media. Direct messages, courses and course progress are not part of that export as Circle documents it. Courses are rebuilt by hand (they are sections and lessons, so it is quick); the feed starts fresh. We tell you this before you commit, not after.
What about Circle’s email hub and automations?
Contacts and tags export; the sequences are rebuilt in FluentCRM, Keap or ActiveCampaign, which is also the moment to delete the ones nobody remembers writing. If you pay for the Email Hub, that $99 a month stops.
Circle’s interface is nicer than WordPress. Will my members notice?
Circle is the most polished community product on the market, and we say so. MemBuild Community is built for the same one-screen feel: feed, classroom, leaderboard, chats. It is not Circle; it is yours. We show you the demo next to your current site before any decision.
What if the answer is to stay on Circle?
Then that is what we tell you, in writing: stay, and fix these three things. It happens often.
