Skool vs Competitors · Roast & Promote 🔥📢

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Skool vs Competitors

[ROAST MY LESSON]

This is going to be a straight to the point comparisson between Skool and 2 of it's big competitors that I worked with: Circle and Mighty Networks

Is Skool the best of the 3? Short answer: Yes! For the majorit of cases.

Long answer bellow:

--> Circle:

PROS:

Segregation: You can have different spaces for a lot of things. Different chat spaces, different spaces for sharing media, share photos. That allows you to have a lot of different things going on in the community in a organized way, and you can accomodate several niches.
Sharing Media is easy and it looks good: You can share media in a lot of different ways. Members can embed code, so they can for example post a spotify reproduction list that you can play without leaving the page. You can also have photo albums that look really good.
Stunning landing pages: In Circle you can create awesome landing pages, very easily and that look like professional websites. WIth these landing pages you can use your own custom domain. You can also have metrics like traffic and convertion rate.
Integrated CRM features, so you can have your own sales funnel and also manage mailmarketing
Support is great. You can have an answer from a real agent in 15 minutes.
Custom domain, without Circle in the name

CONS:

Complicated and expensive pricing model: The pricing model is a mess. Upgrades cost too much. LIke going from 89 dollars to 199 to access automations. And 419 to have AI agents. That's pretty salty, specially for solo entepreneurs.
Annoying limitations: Circle has limitations for number of moderators and admins even on the highest plans. Also unlike Mighty Networks, you have a limit to the number of spaces you can create. And the livestreams are also pretty limited in how many hours you can host per month.

Ideal for:

Businesses that want to sell courses, have multiple niches in the same place, but not too much because of the limitations and want to allow people to share media in a lot of different ways.

---> Mighty Networks

PROS:

Unlimited number of spaces and space groups: You can basically have a space for multiple niches without any limitation, multiple chats and even more space for customization than Circle
Unlimited number of moderators and admins
Pricing model makes more sense and is more affordable than Circle
Lot's of features, basically everything Circle offers and a little more, in a more affordable price comparing the highest subscriptions of both
Very customizable pricing model, with an unlimited number of tiers
Custom domain, just like Circle, without Mighty Networks in the name

CONS:

Very confusing and counter intuitive for users and specially for admins
Livestreams are problematic
Less ways for presenting media than Circle.
Landing pages are super ugly and very limited design wise

Ideal for:

Big enterprises who would need several pages and lots of people managing it. Would not recomend for small businesses or solo enterpreneurs.

---> Skool

PROS

The best for engagement. Gamification works very well
It's very popular and you can get a lot of traction without depending on outside marketing to grow
The best affiliate program, with lifetime compessations as long as your referrals keep paying
Skoolers community is awesome, and there is nothing like it in the other 2
The only limitation to livestreams is that you can't have more than 10 thousand people. That won't be a problem for 99.99% of people.
Easy to use both for users and for admins
Simple pricing model that is very straigh to the point
Cheapest of the 3

CONS

No custom URL: yeah you can have skool.com/yourdomain, but you can have yourdomain.com. And for some, that's a deal breaker.
No open API: so we depend on zapier for the automations, and they are very limited. You can count on automation wizards to do automations with methods like data scraping, but that's a very troublesome way to do things and it might be against Skool's terms and services. Fortunatelly, thid party tools like Panda or StickyHive are taking care of that.
Low customization and no landing page: I know the about page is supposed to be our landing page, but many people would want a bigger customization.
Only one chat feed: That is both a pro and a con. Having only one chat space might make people more engaged, but it makes it harder if you want to have a exclusive space for members in a specific program or niche. This might change with tiers in the future.
Very limited on ways to present media, most of it is treated as an attachement. No way to embed links besides some video providers like Loom or YouTube.
Lack of online course features: no way to require people to watch a video before unlocking the next. No quizes. No automatic certification emissions. All of these are very basic features for education platforms.

Ideal for:

I would recomend Skool for anyone who is more focused in community than [traditional] education, have a simple and straight to the point niche, don't really care about custom domains and is not counting too much on media presentation.

It's by far the best platform if you're focused on growing and nurturing a close relationship with your audience. And really, that's all that matters.

It looses when we compare overall number of features with other platforms, but wins for the stuff that really matters for most. And plenty of those lacking features are getting compensated with third party tools like Panda.

In fact, I had a client on Circle who quit because there was no engagement. And one client who is moving frrom Might to Skool right now.

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