A reach drop, a policy change, or a suspended account is usually what starts the move. You decide the audience needs to live somewhere you control, you pick a community platform, and then a question stops you at the checkout page: if twenty thousand people follow the link in your bio over a single weekend, does the entry plan cut you off, throttle the signups, or force an upgrade mid-wave? It is a reasonable fear, because plenty of tooling this audience buys is metered exactly that way. For these three, it is the wrong thing to be afraid of.
The fear, and what checking the pricing pages directly turns up
On September 6, 2026, the current self-serve pricing pages for Circle, Mighty Networks, and Skool were fetched and read directly. None of the three caps total community members on any current paid plan. Circle’s plan comparison table lists Members as Unlimited on every tier it shows. Mighty Networks lists Members as Unlimited across Launch, Scale, Growth, and Mighty Pro, and its own documentation states that all plans support unlimited members. Skool’s pricing page prints “Unlimited members” as the first line of both of its plans.
That is a check of what those vendors publish today on their own self-serve pages, not a guarantee about every plan in existence. All three have restructured their lineups, and Mighty Networks maintains a public list of retired plans that legacy hosts may still be sitting on. If you are already a customer on an older plan, your billing screen is the authority on your limits, not this article and not the marketing page.
Circle: members are unlimited, seats and spaces are not
Circle’s page shows three tiers: Professional at $89 per month, Business at $199 per month, and Circle Plus at custom pricing. The comparison table’s first row under Community is Members, and it reads Unlimited across all three.
| Circle comparison table row | Professional ($89/mo) | Business ($199/mo) | Circle Plus (custom) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Members | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Admins | 3 | 5 | Unlimited |
| Moderators | 10 | 15 | Unlimited |
| Spaces | 20 | 30 | Flexible |
| Extra admins | $10/mo per admin | $10/mo per admin | Unlimited |
| Extra moderators | $20/mo per 10 moderators | $20/mo per 10 moderators | Unlimited |
| Extra spaces | $20/mo per 10 spaces | $20/mo per 10 spaces | Talk to sales |
Circle publishes a price for exceeding the seat and space allotments, so crossing them adds a billed line item rather than stopping anything. Going from three admins to five on Professional is $20 more per month. Ten more spaces is another $20. An add-on, not a wall.
One row on the same page does meter by usage, and it is easy to misread as a membership limit. Under API usage and limits, Circle lists included Headless API requests at 100 MAU and 500 MAU depending on tier, with extra requests at $0.5 per MAU and $0.3 per MAU. Monthly Active Users is the billing unit for the Headless API, a separate and optional product for teams building their own front end on top of Circle. It has no bearing on whether a person can join, log into, or post in a community you run on the normal Circle interface. If you are not building against that API, the meter never fires.
Mighty Networks prices by plan tier, not by headcount
Mighty Networks’ pricing page shows Launch at $79 per month, Scale at $179 per month, Growth at $354 per month, and Mighty Pro at custom pricing behind a quote. The comparison grid lists Members as Unlimited on all four, and Spaces as Unlimited on all four as well. What separates the tiers is host and moderator headroom (3 hosts and 10 moderators on Launch, 5 and 15 on Scale, 10 and 100 on Growth, unlimited on Mighty Pro), storage, streaming capacity, automation depth, integrations, and transaction fees that step down from 2% to 1% to 0.5%.
Mighty Networks’ own plan selection article lists unlimited members and unlimited Spaces among the things every plan includes. That article also describes an Explore plan, aimed at hosts just testing an idea, with one host, one moderator, and no upfront cost, which does not appear as a card on the main pricing page. The unlimited members line is written as applying to it too.
The one thing that could not be resolved is what legacy hosts are actually sitting on. Mighty Networks publishes a Legacy Plans page listing retired plans, among them several Community Plan vintages, a Brand Plan, an Indie Plan, a Starter Plan, a Creator Plan, and a Free Plan, and it explains that superior features carry over as overrides when you upgrade. It does not publish the limits of any of them. [EVIDENCE NEEDED: a Mighty Networks page or in-product billing screen stating a member ceiling for a specific named legacy plan.] If you are on one, read Admin then Your Plan rather than assuming the current unlimited language covers you.
Skool: two flat tiers, both unlimited
Skool is the simplest of the three to read, because there is almost nothing on the page. Two plans, monthly or yearly, with two months free on annual billing. Hobby is $9 per month, Pro is $99 per month, and both list “Unlimited members,” “Unlimited courses,” “Unlimited videos,” and “Unlimited live calls.” The only difference printed on the page is the transaction fee, 10% on Hobby against 2.9% on Pro. The page’s own description offers a 14-day free trial, and no permanently free tier is shown.
Since member count is identical language on both plans, growth cannot push you from Hobby to Pro by itself. The transaction fee can. The $90 monthly price gap is covered once roughly $1,270 a month runs through the platform, which is where the 7.1 percentage point fee difference cancels it out. That calculation turns on revenue, not on how many people joined.
So what actually breaks when a signup wave lands
- Circle: the trigger is staffing, not signups. A spike means more posts to moderate and probably more spaces to organize them into, and crossing the admin, moderator, or space allotment adds a billed line at the published add-on rate. New members keep joining while that happens.
- Mighty Networks: a spike inside a tier does not change your bill at all. The forcing function is wanting something gated higher up, more automation depth, a bigger stream, a lower transaction fee, or the host and moderator headroom a suddenly larger community needs.
- Skool: a spike changes nothing about eligibility, because both tiers are already unlimited on members. The only question is whether Hobby’s feature set and 10% fee still fit the community you now have.
- The contrast worth holding onto: compare it with the QR code tools that do throttle hard at a scan count, or with form tools metered by response volume, where hitting the number really does stop the thing working. Community platforms are priced as software seats. Those tools are priced as usage.
Before you move the audience, check the number that actually costs money
If you are migrating onto Circle, write down your current admin count, moderator count, and space count against the allotment on your tier. Those three numbers are what turn into an invoice line during a spike. Decide in advance whether you would rather pay $10 per extra admin or run the wave with the seats you have.
On Mighty Networks and Skool, the pre-migration audit is a feature audit instead. List what you will want in week two, more automations, a bigger livestream, a lower transaction fee, and check which tier it sits behind. That is your upgrade trigger. Headcount is not. The free-tier caps on other tools this audience runs are worth a look on the same pass, since the metering there is less forgiving.
And re-check the vendor’s page on the day you move. All three lineups have been restructured before, and Mighty Networks maintains a public list of its own retired plans, which is about as clear a signal as a vendor can give that plan structures here are not permanent.
Prices, plan tiers, and limits in this article were verified on September 6, 2026 by fetching each vendor’s own pricing page directly. This is not Watchdog data and it is not on the re-verification schedule, so treat every number above as accurate to that date and nothing later. followedapp is published by the team behind RecurPost, and RecurPost is covered vendor #34 under the same rules as every other vendor.
FAQ
Does Circle cap the number of community members?
No. Circle’s plan comparison table lists Members as Unlimited on Professional, Business, and Circle Plus as of September 6, 2026. What each tier caps is admins, moderators, and spaces, and Circle publishes add-on prices for exceeding those rather than blocking new members from joining.
What actually costs more as a community platform grows?
On Circle, crossing your plan’s admin, moderator, or space allotment adds a billed add-on. On Mighty Networks, wanting a higher tier’s features, storage, or lower transaction fee is the trigger, not member count. On Skool, both tiers already say unlimited members, so growth alone changes nothing about eligibility, though the 10% transaction fee on Hobby against 2.9% on Pro becomes the deciding number as revenue climbs.
Sources
- Circle pricing and plan comparison table, fetched September 6, 2026.
- Mighty Networks pricing and Compare Plan Features grid, fetched September 6, 2026.
- Mighty Networks documentation, Which Mighty Network Plan is Right For You?, fetched September 6, 2026.
- Mighty Networks documentation, Legacy Plans, fetched September 6, 2026.
- Skool pricing, fetched September 6, 2026.