Circle is a polished, hosted community platform aimed at creators and membership businesses. HumHub hosted by CUZY covers the same ground for organizations that want single sign-on from day one, no commission on payments, and the certainty that the platform and the data remain theirs.
Circle (circle.so) is a proprietary community platform with spaces, posts, events, courses and paid memberships, priced per community with a percentage fee on payments made through it. It is hosted by Circle only; there is no self-hosted version.
Facts about Circle come from the vendor's own pages, checked in September 2026: Circle pricing, Circle Knowledge Base: Set up custom SSO, Circle Knowledge Base: Export your community data. Prices are those published by the vendor (US dollars); they may have changed since. Tell us about an error on the contact page and we correct it.
An open-source social network and intranet platform (spaces, streams, wiki, files, calendar, tasks, polls, messaging, member directory, mobile app), extended by the HumHub marketplace and by every CUZY module, hosted by CUZY on dedicated servers in the region you choose, with a flat price and unlimited members.
The questions a buyer, an IT reviewer or a data-protection officer asks both vendors.
| Criterion | Circle.so | HumHub hosted by CUZY |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Billed annually: Professional $89/month (3 admins, 10 moderators), Business $199/month (5 admins, 15 moderators), Scale $419/month (10 admins, 100 moderators), Circle Plus on quote; unlimited members on every plan | Team €90/month or €900/year, Business €450/month or €4,500/year, unlimited members, 14-day free trial |
| Fees on payments | Transaction fee on payments made through the platform: 2% (Professional), 1% (Business and Scale), 0.5% (Plus), on top of the payment processor | None. Payments made with the eCommerce module go through your own Stripe account; CUZY takes no commission |
| Single sign-on | Professional and Business: sign-in through a fixed list of providers (Auth0, WordPress, Memberful, Memberstack, Teachable, Facebook, X and a few others). Custom SSO with your own identity provider (OAuth 2.0, self-serve setup) is a Circle Plus feature | On every plan, trial included, through OpenID Connect and OAuth modules (Keycloak, Microsoft Entra, Google, LinkedIn, GitHub) and SAML-capable identity providers |
| API | Headless member API and admin API from the Business plan | HumHub REST API module on every plan |
| Open source | Proprietary. The software cannot be installed elsewhere | Yes. HumHub under the AGPL, every CUZY module with public source code. 100% of the code can be taken away |
| Data ownership and exit | Members can be exported as CSV by administrators; a full export (members, spaces, posts, comments as four CSV files, without the uploaded media) is requested by email from Circle support | Complete export of the database and files from the dashboard, once a day, on every paid plan; recreate the same platform self-hosted or on HumHub's own hosting |
| Hosting region and isolation | Not published on the pricing or security pages (US company; SOC 2 certified, GDPR and CCPA compliant, 99.9% uptime claimed) | Dedicated servers in the region you choose, Germany (EU), the USA or Singapore (APAC); one isolated stack per community; encrypted backups with a second provider in the same region |
| Extensibility | Circle's own feature set, integrations (Zapier, Make) and API; no third-party module marketplace | The whole HumHub marketplace plus every CUZY module on every plan; custom modules and themes on Business after review |
| AI and your content | Circle AI (content co-pilot, transcriptions, agents and workflows on Plus) with monthly credits, run on Circle's infrastructure | No AI reads your members' content. CUZY uses AI only for its own operations (anonymized technical logs, support ticket text), as stated in the privacy policy |
Members sign in with the organization's identity provider (Keycloak, Entra ID, Google) on the trial and on every plan. On Circle, sign-in with your own identity provider is a Circle Plus feature sold on quote.
Memberships, tickets and products sold with the eCommerce module go through your own payment account; CUZY takes no percentage. Circle keeps 0.5% to 2%.
HumHub and every CUZY module are open source. Export the database and files yourself, once a day, with media included, and run the same platform on your own servers or at HumHub whenever you decide. On Circle, a full export is requested from support and comes as CSV files without the uploaded media.
Maps, surveys, LMS, mass notifications, eCommerce, Nextcloud, Keycloak: install what you need from the HumHub marketplace instead of waiting for a roadmap.
Isolated stack per community, encrypted backups with restore tests, a chosen hosting region and a processor agreement, all described on the security page.
Circle is the better fit when the core business is selling online courses and memberships to consumers with a very polished, creator-oriented experience out of the box, and when a percentage fee is acceptable in exchange for built-in payments, live streams and course tooling.
Start a free trial, import members and content with our help, connect your identity provider, and run both platforms side by side until you are ready. Subscribers can export everything from CUZY once a day, so the move is never a one-way door. Tell us about your current setup and we assess what can be carried over.
Yes, for organizations that need spaces, discussions, events, memberships and a mobile app under their own name. The main differences: single sign-on and the full module marketplace on every plan, no commission on payments, open-source code and a complete data export, hosting in Germany (EU), the USA or Singapore (APAC).
No. Payments made with the eCommerce module go through your own Stripe account; CUZY takes no percentage. Stripe's own fees apply.
Members, spaces and posts can be imported from Circle exports with CUZY's help during the trial; courses and payment histories need a case-by-case review. Ask on the contact page and we assess what can be carried over.
Yes. OpenID Connect and OAuth sign-in modules (Keycloak, Microsoft Entra, Google, LinkedIn, GitHub) are available on the trial and on Team and Business. On Circle, sign-in with your own identity provider needs the Circle Plus plan; Professional and Business offer a fixed list of providers such as Auth0 or WordPress.
Customer community platform
All-in-one business suite (CRM, tasks, intranet)
Employee experience platform
Open-source discussion forum
Creator and paid community platform
Microsoft 365 chat and enterprise social network
Team chat
Open-source community platform (Drupal)
WordPress community plugin
Open-source digital workplace
Two weeks with every module and single sign-on, no card asked. Keep everything when you subscribe, export everything if you leave.
