All-in-one Community Platform Comparison: Circle vs. Heartbeat

This article is routinely updated as new features are rolled out. Last updated 4/11/2023.

The most common question I get from clients as a platform-agnostic brand community strategist is which all-in-one community platform is best? The only right answer at the moment is, "it depends." This comparison chart has continued to be my most viewed piece, so I figured I would break it down further into some of the nuances between two platforms at a time.

Glad you asked, let's get on the same page here. First, I define an all-in-one community platform as one place to host the three pillars of community programming: events, conversation, and content. This is important because many community tools like to call themselves platforms (please stop doing that!), but really they only offer one element of community programming. They might only offer you additional analytics, or events management, or a way to do matchups in your community. These are great tools, but they are designed to layer over existing communities and they are not a great place to start for starting your community (or to host your community if what you want is one centralized location).

There are a host of enterprise-level community platforms that afford you tons of customization for almost any type of community you want to build. These are platforms like Vanilla by Higher Logic, Khoros, and Insided. Generally, if you are taking the first step to become community-led as a brand, or this is your first time creating a community from your audience, you probably don't want to fork over the tens of thousands of dollars required to get set up in one of these platforms.

Like most of my clients, you are looking for a slightly more templated and dramatically less expensive community platform that can help you launch quickly but still provide room for you to grow. For this type of all-in-one community platform I recommend platforms such as Circle, Heartbeat, Mighty Networks, or MeltingSpot. So let's dive into the differences between the two most common platforms I build on: Circle and Heartbeat!

Circle (this is an affiliate link) is an asynchronous community platform that has a simple and sleek layout that can easily be customized and white-labeled. This platform is ideal for communities that are more focused on long-form written conversation and long-standing content. Circle has certainly gone after the the Creator Communities. These are communities that usually begin with an audience attained through a course, newsletter, or an event like masterminds. While they are clearly in hot pursuit of Creators implementing features like Courses and live video broadcasting, brands have started to pick up the platform for customer communities of all shapes and sizes. Find examples of communities in their showcase.

Heartbeat (this is an affiliate link) is a synchronous community platform that is similar to Circle, but where they are set apart is in their functionality around events. Heartbeat shines when hosting communities that need both public and private events (more on this in the next section). Heartbeat offers a broad range of dynamic features for your community including direct integrations with zoom and google calendar, a way affiliate links for members, and custom emojis. Heartbeat is leveraged by a variety of different communities, but we’ve noticed it’s especially popular with schools, cohort-based communities, solopreneur communities, and brands.

Both platforms are phenomenal, but if I had to distill to one architectural and practical difference it is this: Circle allows you to make their conversation/content spaces "public" or "private," but not events. Heartbeat allows you to make events public or private, but not conversation channels or docs. Let me explain.

Circle's platform is made up of "spaces" which you can customize. Where Circle users love the tool is that you can set up a space like this one that is open to the public. So people outside of your community can get a glimpse into the value being provided by the community, but when they pick another space on the left, they are prompted to join the community if they want more. Great upsell from free content that you can host right there in the platform.

Heartbeat, on the other hand, has the same upsell, only from events. When you set up an event, you can make it public. This will generate not only the landing page for the event that members of your private community will already see, it also generate a public link so that people outside of your community can RSVP to the event (get all the reminders, etc.) without needing to register to join your community.

And the opposite is not true for each of them. You cannot host a public event with Circle. Even though you can set up an events space to be public, anyone who tries to RSVP to that event will have to join your community first. Similarly, you cannot have public threads or docs in Heartbeat. In order to access, someone must be a member of your community.

TLDR: If public events are a tactic you use to get people to join your community, Heartbeat is your choice. If content like a blog is the tactic you use to get people to join your community, Circle is a better fit.

Notice information that's ready to be updated? Reach out to Bri at bri@emberconsulting.co

At the end of the day, the platform you choose matters less than how you design and implement your community. That being said, certain platforms can create way more barriers than necessary depending on the programming of your community. While it's important to plan ahead, try to make the decision about where to host your community based on where it is today and will be in a year, not what you anticipate it will look like in five years.

For a really practical approach, for each row in the table, rate how that platform’s features stack up based on what you need. Total each column up and make a quantitative decision. But we highly encourage you to get in and test each platform yourself (each has a free trial) to play around and get a feeling for it yourself.

If you want to fast-track the process and get on a call together, you can share what you need your platform to do for you and I can share what I know of each platform, things to watch out for, and where their strengths will help you shine.