Skool vs Circle vs Mighty Networks: My Hands-on Review
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I have a weird rule I live by... It comes from 20 years of experience building Internet businesses. That rule is "Don't by software made by marketers." Let me explain... Unless you are hiding under a rock, you've probably heard every Internet marketing guru talk about a new course building software called Skool.
^^ I remember when this guy was just a rookie gym owner, props to all his success. Seems the gym worked well for him too! Sheeesh... Anyway, Skool is owned by Sam Ovens who not too long ago was teaching coaches how to coach coaches. Not a bad gig, he did well, the guy is a brilliant marketer. But that's where I go 🧐 He partnered with Andrew Kirby, a BRILLIANT Youtube strategist (marketer) who had a relationship with Hormozi (marketer) and now the three of them are teaming up like it's a Royal Rumble. Masterful salesmen all 3 of them! They could sell water to a bloated Camel! The issue for me is not a single one of them has a software development background. In my experience, and having checked out Skool for myself, when marketers sell software, the sales page is usually better than the product. If you catch my drift. The story goes deeper though... If you're the type that just wants to use whatever flavor of the month that gurus are using, read no further. But if you're the type who enjoys finding truly great products, keep reading... Around 2014 there was an explosion of course creation software.
For a guy like me it was paradise. Shiny new toys to play with everywhere. Tried them all. Left them all. Built my own thing, made $4.8 million with AdSkills on our own frankenstein platform loosely based on Wordpress. It worked, but it was a logistical nightmare. And then I found Circle. Circle was built by the VP of marketing and the VP of product that left Teachable, to build their own thing. I thought this was the promised land for course creators because it had community + course creation + event features all tied into one. I could run livestreams right from inside the software, sell access to them, instant deploy replays, host full courses, have discussion areas. It was great. Until all of a sudden it wasn't. It didn't take long for my Circle community to start growing too big for Circle. We were only at around 300 members, and it started having problems. Like, lets say you launch a course as a cohort course but then when it's all finished you want to change it to an evergreen course. Pretty standard workflow there, but Circle can't do that. You have to completely rebuild the course in a whole new "space." But that wasn't the killer for me. The killer for me was the livestream replays were garbage. Often times the audio would be slightly out of sync making our videos look like their were dubbed in english with moving lips that didn't match the sounds you were hearing. And then you couldn't add a discussion area to a course, they had to be in separate spaces. No matter what settings I would click when I invited new paying members they would always say "Hey it says I don't have access to such and such." Which meant my support team was constantly manually approving people. Using Circle created bad customer experience overall for my customers. And then... I met Gina! She was engaging with my Twitter posts and reaching out to me via DM. Finally, we got on a call and she showed me Mighty Networks. It's the same course & community platform that Tony Robbins uses. It all began to make sense. The VP of marketing at Teachable saw what Gina was up to over at Mighty Networks, and then they started Circle as a kind of knock off. Not in a bad way, not like aggressively, but they saw her vision and decided to build their version. Same with Sam Ovens, he saw what Circle was doing and decided to build his own version. At the root of all of this is Mighty Networks, the original founded in 2017. And Gina... She's a Silicon Valley veteran software developer. She's been doing software dev since 2004 and at the highest levels. She has a team of great developers with her, and while they are the bigger, better company they just aren't as great at marketing like Hormozi or Circle. Actually, that's what I love about them. I love that when you actually use their software it's even better than their sales pages described it. So many of the other solutions that I have tried were the opposite - amazing sales pages with sub-par software. Which is why I have that rule... "Never buy software made by marketers." In summary... Skool is trying to do what Circle is trying to do. Circle is trying to do what Mighty Networks is trying to do. Skool & Circle have better marketing teams and sales pages, but Mighty Networks has FAR better software. And you can get started on Mighty Networks for just $49/mo. Whereas Circle and Skool start at $99/mo. I'm now using Mighty Networks for all 3 of my companies, including setting it up for clients of FaithFunnels. Highly recommend it. Same features as Skool & Circle, but way better customer support, training, and the user experience is just smooth. Like a company who focuses first on product, second on marketing. Just the way I like it!
P.S. Gina made a free course where she studied the greatest online communities and teaches the 9 key lessons to building a $1m+ course or community business online. It's 100% free here. |
