We build Prolaud, so treat this as a competitor's account. Every Circle figure below is on Circle's public pricing page, and the section on where Circle wins is written straight.
We will be straight: Circle is the most polished product in this comparison. Spaces, courses, events, a website builder, gamification: it is well made and members enjoy it. Teachers leave over arithmetic, not quality. The Professional plan, at $89 a month billed annually, includes 10 live hours a month, 100 live-stream attendees and a live room of 15 participants (circle.so/pricing, as of October 2026). Two 90-minute classes a week is about 13 hours, so you are over the allowance before the month ends, and extra hours cost $50 a month per 10. Add a 2% transaction fee, and a live-teaching business pays the most for the thing it does most.
Circle
Today
Prolaud
From day one
The honest verdict
Prolaud is the stronger Circle alternative if you teach live for a living. Circle is an excellent product: the best-designed community tool in this comparison, with courses, events and a website builder in one place. The problem for teachers is the meter. On the Professional plan, at $89 a month billed annually, Circle includes 10 live hours a month, 100 live-stream attendees and a live room of 15 participants; extra hours cost $50 a month per 10, and the plan carries a 2% transaction fee (circle.so/pricing, as of October 2026). A teacher running two 90-minute classes a week needs about 13 hours. Prolaud's paid plans do not cap the number of live classes or sell hours as add-ons, a Pro room holds up to 100 people, and we take 0% of your sales, paid into your own Stripe or Razorpay account. Circle remains the better buy when the community is the product and live is occasional.
Cost example
Numbers below use public pricing — Circle’s figures are from its own pricing page, as of October 2026. Card processing is left out: on Prolaud you pay your payment processor’s standard fee, so check whether the rival’s rate already includes it. Plug in your own revenue on the payout calculator to run your own numbers against the other platforms.
Your Circle bill
Today$189
per month
Scales linearly with your sales
Double your revenue → roughly double the bill.
Your Prolaud bill
After switch$42
per month, Studio plan · flat
Stays flat regardless of sales
Sell ten times as much → still the same bill.
Your monthly swing
+$147
≈ $1,764 back in your pocket every year — at this revenue level.
Why teachers and creators move on
We've onboarded teachers from every category of platform. These are the same complaints, again and again.
Professional includes 10 live hours a month, Business 15 and Scale 20 (circle.so/pricing, as of October 2026). A teacher running two 90-minute sessions a week needs about 13. Extra hours are an add-on at $50 a month per 10, so the more you teach, the more the bill climbs.
On Professional a live room holds 15 participants; Business raises it to 20 and Scale to 50 (as of October 2026). Live streams reach more people but are broadcast-shaped. For a cohort of 30 who all need a camera and a microphone, that is a hard ceiling.
Professional covers 100 live-stream attendees and Business 200; beyond that it is $20 a month per extra 100 (as of October 2026). A growing audience becomes a line item.
Circle lists a 2% transaction fee on Professional, 1% on Business and Scale, and 0.5% on Circle Plus (as of October 2026). The rate falls as the plan gets bigger and never reaches zero.
Courses exist and are well built, but the teaching surface around them does not: no multiplayer whiteboard with grade-band templates, no test-prep quiz templates, no attendance feeding a score that shows who is about to drop out.
What you get instead
Circle bundles community, courses, events and a site, with live teaching metered inside it. Prolaud puts the classroom at the center: paid plans do not cap the number of classes or sell hours as add-ons, a class runs up to 4 hours, and the whiteboard, quizzes, certificates and engagement analytics sit on the same student record as the sale.
You connect your own Stripe or Razorpay account and your students pay you directly. Prolaud never holds the money and never takes a percentage, so the 2% Circle lists on its Professional plan has no equivalent here.
Members, courses, orders and certificates export to CSV or JSON on every plan, free Starter included. There is no upgrade-to-export gate.
Circle lists a transaction fee on every plan: 2% on Professional, 1% on Business and Scale, 0.5% on Circle Plus (circle.so/pricing, as of October 2026). The lower rate is something you buy with a bigger plan, and it never reaches zero. Prolaud takes 0% on every plan, including the free Starter plan. On $5,000 a month in sales, Circle's 2% is $100 a month that does not exist here.
Free Starter plan, no time limit · No credit card
Side by side
Each cell reflects the rival's public pricing and feature pages when this page was last reviewed; dated figures say when. Hover any “partial” row for the caveat.
| Feature | Circle | Prolaud |
|---|---|---|
Live teaching without an hourly meter How much live teaching the plan covers each month. | ||
Live room size How many people can join with a camera and a microphone. | ||
0% of your sales taken by the platform No per-sale cut by the platform. | ||
Community design + member experience Spaces, channels, gamification, member profiles. | ||
Website builder + custom domain A public site on your own URL. | ||
Multiplayer teaching whiteboard Grade-band templates, multi-cursor, saved per class. | ||
Quizzes built for test prep SAT, AP and GMAT practice templates, code review and essay rubrics. | ||
Attendance → score → at-risk list Live attendance feeds an overall score that shows who is slipping. | ||
Certificates with a public verifier A QR code that opens a verification page an employer can check. | ||
Free plan Launch and sell before paying anything. |
Free Starter plan, no time limit · No credit card
Straight talk
Pick Circle if your product is a community with occasional live events and not a teaching schedule. Circle's design quality, its spaces, its member experience and its website builder are better than ours, and 10 live hours a month is plenty for a weekly Q&A or a monthly workshop. It is also the stronger pick if you need workflow automation and API access on its higher plans. Where we win is narrow and specific: when live teaching is the product, and metering it by the hour is the wrong unit.
Other options worth a look
We compare honestly against each of these too — so you can hold Circle up against the whole field, not just against us.
How to switch
Most teams are fully migrated inside a weekend. You don't lose your roster, your courses, or your branding.
Step 1
Export your student roster from Circle (most platforms offer a CSV under "Students" or "Members"). Map the columns to name, email and phone.
Step 2
Bulk-import the CSV into /dashboard/students. The import matches on email, so running it again is safe.
Step 3
Recreate your courses. The curriculum builder lets you drag modules and lessons, paste video embed URLs and upload PDFs without a wizard. Most teachers move five courses in an afternoon.
Step 4
Apply your brand: logo, primary color, and a custom domain on any paid plan. The portal-template picker has 7 starting points if you want to refresh the look while you are at it.
Step 5
Tell your students you have moved, with the new portal URL. One announcement goes out in-app and by email, and reminders can be scheduled after it.
Stuck mid-migration? Email us — we'll walk through the CSV mapping or migration scripts with you on a call. No upsell.
The switching framework
Score each tool yourself, Circle and us included — these are the questions that actually decide it.
Questions to ask before you switch
Does it ship live cohort tooling that respects classroom dynamics?
Is my data exportable on every plan, including the free tier?
Will my bill stay flat as my sales grow, with no per-sale cut?
Am I paid into my own payment account, or does the platform hold the money?
Can I migrate over a weekend without losing my roster?
Start free — keep 100% of what you earn.
Launch your academy freeCommon questions
Circle runs live too, so the dividing line is the meter. On its Professional plan, at $89 a month billed annually, Circle includes 10 live hours a month, 100 live-stream attendees and a live room of 15 participants, and sells more hours at $50 a month per 10 (circle.so/pricing, as of October 2026). Two 90-minute classes a week is about 13 hours a month. Circle also lists a 2% transaction fee on that plan. Prolaud's paid plans put no cap on the number of live classes and sell no hour packs: a class runs up to 4 hours, a Pro room holds up to 100 people, and we take 0% of your sales, paid into your own Stripe or Razorpay account. See the whole loop at prolaud.com/loop. This page also spells out where Circle is genuinely the better buy.
Ten a month on the Professional plan, fifteen on Business and twenty on Scale, with extra hours sold at $50 a month per 10. Live rooms, where people join with a camera and a microphone, hold 15 participants on Professional, 20 on Business and 50 on Scale; live-stream attendees are capped at 100, 200 and 500, with a $20 a month per-100 add-on on the first two plans (circle.so/pricing, as of October 2026). For a weekly Q&A that is plenty. For two cohort classes a week it is not.
Not without limits, and here they are. On paid plans the number of live classes is not capped and there are no hour packs to buy. A class can run up to 4 hours, a room holds up to 100 people on Pro and 300 on Studio, and there is a monthly fair-use allowance on total participant time; passing it never cuts off a class that is running. The free Starter plan is smaller: 2 classes a week of up to 60 minutes each.
In community design, yes, and we would rather say so than pretend. Circle's spaces, member experience and site builder are the best in this comparison. What we are better at is teaching: a live room with a multiplayer whiteboard, test-prep quizzes, attendance that feeds a student's score and shows who is about to drop out, and certificates with a public verification page. Pick on which of those your business runs on.
Circle's pricing page lists a transaction fee of 2% on Professional, 1% on Business and Scale, and 0.5% on Circle Plus (as of October 2026). It never reaches zero; you buy a lower rate with a bigger plan. Prolaud takes 0% on every plan, including the free one, and your students pay into your own Stripe or Razorpay account.
Nothing to try. Open a free Starter workspace, rebuild a space or two and run both in parallel until you are confident. Members export from Circle as a CSV and bulk-import here; posts do not migrate, because no community platform exports a portable feed. Most teachers carry the roster, the courses and the calendar, and treat the feed as a fresh start.
Probably not, and we would rather tell you now. If live is a monthly workshop and the feed is what people renew for, Circle's included hours cover you and its community product is stronger than ours. The move makes sense when the teaching schedule becomes the product: when you are buying hour add-ons, hitting the 15-person room limit, or watching 2% of a growing revenue line leave every month.
Compare other alternatives
Each comparison is built the same way, so you can hold Circle up against the rest.
Live classes, a cohort community and your courses in one workspace, with 0% of your sales taken and payouts into your own account.
See comparisonThe all-in-one promise with a live classroom inside it, a free plan to start on, and payouts into your own account.
See comparisonA course builder with the live classroom, whiteboard and community in the same product, and 0% of your sales taken.
See comparisonPodia's simplicity with a real classroom behind it: live cohorts, a whiteboard and test-prep quizzes, at 0% of your sales.
See comparisonFor when you outgrow the checkout link and need courses, live classes, a community and a real student record.
See comparisonFor teachers who want the live cohort at the center: a built-in classroom and whiteboard, with 0% of your sales taken.
See comparisonSame creator-mobile-first focus — with the deeper teaching surface and zero-commission commitment Indian educators ask for.
See comparisonBoth India-built. Skolasti is course-hosting with strong content-DRM and a per-coach price; we add live teaching, community, a free tier, broader product types and flat 0%-commission pricing.
See comparisonClassWalla gives coaching institutes a branded Android/iOS app from ₹4,999/mo or revenue-share. We're the open-web alternative: a free tier, flat 0%-commission pricing, a cohort community and 8 product types — no app install to browse or buy.
See comparisonSkool is a strong paid community with live calls. Prolaud is for when the class is the product: a whiteboard, quizzes, certificates and a storefront, with 0% of your sales taken.
See comparisonMaven is built for live cohorts and keeps 10% of sales, with a marketplace attached. Prolaud runs the same cohort at 0%, on your own domain, for teachers who already have an audience.
See comparisonFree Starter forever. No credit card. Cancel any day. The export button still works.