Websites · Alternative
A Circle alternative for community and courses on your own site
Circle is a community platform with spaces, courses, events, live streams, paywalls and an optional Email Hub, from 89 USD a month on annual billing with a 2% transaction fee. OneCraft Sites has an AI agent build a members feed, groups and courses into your own website or app, with members, posts and payments kept in the site's own database.
Updated , competitor details checked . Circle is a trademark of its owner. OneCraft is an unrelated product and claims no affiliation with or endorsement by it.
Indunil Asanka · Co-founder
3 min read · Published
The short verdict
Circle is the better pick for a community business that wants spaces, live streams, events, AI moderation, email broadcasts and branded apps from one vendor, with unlimited members on every plan. OneCraft suits a smaller group whose community is one part of a business website or app, where the feed, groups, follows, reports and paid tiers are built into the site's own database at $8 to $125 a month.
| Feature | Circle | OneCraft |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Professional $89/mo, Business $199/mo, Scale $419/mo based on annual billing; Circle Plus custom pricing checked 2026-10-20 | Free $0 with 100 credits a month (build and preview, no publishing), Starter $8 with 500, Pro $25 with 1,500, Pro+ $125 with 7,500 |
| Transaction fees | 2% on Professional, 1% on Business and Scale, 0.5% on Circle Plus checked 2026-10-20 | Platform fee Starter 2%, Pro 1%, Pro+ 0.5% on a direct charge to your own Stripe account, Stripe fees on top |
| Spaces or groups | Spaces: 20 on Professional, 30 on Business, 100 on Scale checked 2026-10-20 | Groups as rows in the site's database, public or private with join requests; no set limit in the community guide |
| Posts and comments | Posts and comments with rich media checked 2026-10-20 | Posts with text and up to 4 photos, likes, comments with replies, and follows |
| Moderation | Basic moderation on all plans; AI moderation on Scale and Circle Plus checked 2026-10-20 | Reports, block, hide and ban in the admin; three open reports hide a post; 10 posts an hour a person |
| Paid membership | Support one-time purchases, memberships, or recurring subscriptions checked 2026-10-20 | Stripe Checkout on your own account: one off orders, subscriptions from a plans table, and the Stripe billing portal |
| Email Hub is an add-on on Professional, Business and Scale, +$99/mo for 10,000 contacts; 10K contacts included on Circle Plus checked 2026-10-20 | An admin newsletter to confirmed subscribers, 500 at most and 5 sends an hour, with an unsubscribe link | |
| Live streams | Live stream attendees: 100 on Professional, 200 on Business, 500 on Scale checked 2026-10-20 | None: the feed checks for new posts every 30 seconds and video is embedded from YouTube or Vimeo |
| Branded apps | Custom branded iOS and Android apps on Circle Plus only checked 2026-10-20 | An Expo app written by the agent; test or store builds 5 credits each on paid plans, submitted from your own store accounts |
| Custom domain | Custom domain included on Professional, Business, Scale and Circle Plus checked 2026-10-20 | Free 0, Starter 1, Pro 5, Pro+ and up no cap, with a managed certificate |
Where Circle is better
Live streams and live rooms
Circle includes live streams for 100 to 500 attendees by plan and live rooms for small groups. OneCraft has no live video of any kind.
Email marketing for the community
Circle's Email Hub sends broadcasts and automations to 10,000 contacts as an add on. OneCraft sends a plain newsletter to at most 500 confirmed subscribers per send, with no automations.
AI moderation and many spaces
Circle offers AI moderation on Scale and up, member directories and up to 100 spaces with ready layouts. OneCraft's moderation is rules in the database plus a person reviewing reports in the admin.
Where OneCraft is different
One site for the community and the business
The same agent builds the community next to the rest of a site from 65 capability guides: a shop catalog, bookings, classes, events or a blog. Members sign in once on your own domain instead of a separate community address.
Rules that hold in the database
Every table has row level security, and the agent checks posts as an anonymous visitor, as a signed in member trying to edit someone else's post, and reports as a member who must not read them, before the work can finish.
A price that fits a small group
OneCraft plans run from $8 to $125 a month, with a platform fee of 2%, 1% or 0.5% on payments taken through your own Stripe account. A small paid group does not start at a plan price in the high double digits.
Spaces and groups are not the same thing
Circle organises a community into spaces, each a feed, an event list, a course or a chat, with a set number per plan. The OneCraft community guide has one feed with Following, Groups and Everyone tabs, and groups that people join or request to join. Courses come from the memberships guide and events from the events guide, so a group of 120 members can still have a course area and an events page, built as separate parts of the same site.
What the costs look like for 120 members
At 20 dollars a month, 120 members bring in 2,400 dollars. Circle Professional is $89 a month on annual billing plus a 2% fee, 48 dollars. OneCraft Pro is $25 a month plus a 1% platform fee, 24 dollars, and like every plan includes a hosted site database. Both add card processing, and OneCraft adds credits for building and chat edits at 1 credit per US cent of model use; builds are free. Run the same sums at 500 members before deciding, because the fee per sale grows with the community while both plan prices stay fixed.
What you take on with your own site
On a platform, the vendor answers for the community software. On your own site, you are the owner: you decide what the agent builds, read the moderation reports, and handle members' privacy requests. The legal guide can add privacy and terms pages from your text, a consent banner, data export and account deletion, which a community that stores posts and photos will usually need. Expect to spend an hour a week reading reports in a community of this size.
Who should stay with Circle
Stay with Circle if your community runs on live sessions, email broadcasts and many spaces, or you want AI moderation and branded apps without building anything. Move if the community supports a business that already needs a website, your group is small to medium, and a feed, groups, follows and paid tiers on your own site will do.
Questions people ask
Can members follow each other on a OneCraft site?
Yes. The community guide builds follows, and the Following tab shows posts from people you follow, your groups and your own posts, newest first, 20 at a time. Profiles at their own address show a member's posts and a Follow button. Blocked members stop seeing each other's posts.
How does reporting work?
Any signed in member can report a post, comment or profile once with a reason. Three open reports hide a post automatically and the site's admins get a notification. Admins see open reports with their reasons and can hide, restore, delete, ban or dismiss from the admin area.
Can I run a course inside the community?
Yes, as a separate part of the same site. The memberships guide builds courses and lessons gated by plan, free previews and progress ticks, and lesson videos are YouTube or Vimeo links. There are no live cohorts, certificates or graded quizzes, which a course platform or Circle's courses may handle better.
Does a OneCraft community work on phones?
The website is checked at 375, 768 and 1280 pixels wide on every build, so it works in a phone browser. A separate Expo app with a Feed tab is also possible on a paid plan, built for 5 credits each time and submitted from your own Apple and Google accounts.
Is there a member limit?
The community guide sets none; members are rows in the site's own database. The practical limits are your hosted database or your own Supabase plan, and the feed's 30 second refresh. Circle lists unlimited members on every plan, so very large or very active communities may be better served there.
Try the website side of OneCraft
The button opens the generator with a starting prompt already filled in. Change the wording to match your own work before you run it.
Create a website with OneCraftMore comparisons
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- A Teachable alternative for courses and membershipsA Teachable alternative for courses and memberships: prices, transaction fees, quizzes, certificates, video storage and your own database compared, cited.
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What the module actually does, feature by feature: the AI website builder page, and the websites maker page.
Written and checked by the OneCraft team. Last checked .