Sooper vs CircleNo monthly fee, no add-ons, a shop built in

Sooper has no monthly fee. It takes 8% of revenue, and you pay Stripe's standard processing fees for your country on top, billed by Stripe to your own account. Circle's Professional plan is $89 a month and Business is $199 a month, both on annual billing and after a 14-day trial, plus a transaction fee of 2% on Professional, 1% on Business or 0.5% on Circle Plus. Stripe's fees come on top there too. In practice Sooper costs less while you earn under roughly $1,480 a month, because the 6 point difference in transaction fee is then smaller than Circle Professional's $89. Above that, Circle's fees are lower, as long as you stay within the plan limits and do not need paid add-ons.

On both platforms, to your own Stripe account. Sooper charges every payment directly on your connected Stripe account and Stripe pays it out to your bank on its normal schedule. Circle paywalls also run on a Stripe account that you own. Neither platform holds your funds, so this is not a reason to pick one over the other.

Sooper has one plan with no caps on members, co-creators, chat channels or storage, and nothing to buy on top. Circle allows unlimited members on every plan, and sets limits per plan on the rest: Professional includes 3 admins, 10 moderators, 20 spaces, 200GB of storage and 10 live hours a month. More is sold as add-ons, for example $10 a month per extra admin, $20 a month per 10 extra spaces and $50 a month per 10 extra live hours. Email broadcasts run through the separate Email Hub add-on, which is free up to 100 contacts and $99 a month at 10,000.

No, and if those are the heart of your community Circle is the better fit. Circle has courses with drip schedules and quizzes, live streams and live rooms, events with RSVPs, gamification and a member directory. On Sooper you organise posts and videos into ordered collections, members see what they have watched and videos resume where they stopped. Live sessions happen through bookable sessions with Google Meet or Zoom links, including recurring group sessions with seat limits. There is no course progress, no native live video and no gamification.

Members take part in chat channels and in threaded comments under posts, and they can message the creators of a community. Posts themselves are published by the creator and co-creators, and members cannot send each other direct messages. Circle lets members post in spaces and message each other directly.

Yes. Digital products, single posts, pay what you want, per-tier pricing and bookable sessions with seat limits, approval and meeting links all live next to your memberships with the same checkout. Circle sells access through paywalls with subscriptions, one-time payments and installments, plus paid events. For 1:1 bookings Circle's help center suggests embedding a scheduling tool such as Calendly, and we found no native digital product shop, single post sales or pay what you want in its documentation.

Yes. Export your members as a CSV from Circle, invite them to your Sooper community, and run both in parallel while people move over. Members start a new subscription on Sooper, and you can offer a coupon to make switching easy.