How to Move Your Community from Circle to WordPress Without Losing Members

You can migrate from Circle to WordPress without losing members if you export your data first, import members with the same email addresses, set up new billing before cancelling Circle, and run both sites side by side. Subscriptions do not transfer on their own, so billing continuity decides how many paying members you keep.

Quick Summary

• TrueCommunity is a community and LMS plugin for WordPress, so one install covers your feed, groups, messages and courses on a site you own.
• Plan for members, spaces, posts and comments to be exportable from Circle. Treat DMs, events, reactions and billing relationships as non-portable.
• Do not cancel Circle until the new billing is live and tested with real members.
• TrueCommunity Pro costs $119, $199 or $299 per year at the same price on renewal. The free TrueCommunity plugin on WordPress.org lets you test the setup first.
• Paid memberships and subscription billing are not shipped in TrueCommunity yet. Course sales work through WooCommerce or Easy Digital Downloads.

Why Circle owners start looking at WordPress

Circle’s pricing page lists Professional at $89 per month, Business at $199 and Scale at $419, all based on annual billing and before taxes. Transaction fees on those plans are 2%, 1% and 1%, and Circle Plus is 0.5%.

Those fees sit on top of your payment processor’s own charges. The optional Email Hub is billed separately: the page shows $99 per month for 10,000 or more contacts, charged on top of your community plan.

The result is a cost that grows with your revenue and a platform you do not control. A WordPress site changes the shape of that bill. You pay for hosting and a plugin, and your members and data live in your own database.

That is the main reason to move, but it should not be the only one. A migration costs real hours, so move only if ownership, predictable cost or one system for community and courses matters to you.

What the transaction fee costs you

The table below is simple arithmetic on Circle’s published fee rates. It covers only the Circle fee on paywall sales, not Stripe’s fees or the plan price.

Monthly paywall revenue	Professional (2%)	Business or Scale (1%)
$2,000	$40	$20
$5,000	$100	$50
$10,000	$200	$100

Rates from circle.so/pricing, checked October 15, 2026. On WordPress, TrueCommunity takes no cut of your sales. Your store and payment gateway still charge their own fees.

Cost check: The platform fee is only one line. Add the plan price, payment processor fees and any Email Hub charge before you compare it with your WordPress costs.

Before you migrate from Circle to WordPress: decide what must survive

List what your members actually use every week. For most communities that is the member list, a handful of spaces, the course content and the recurring payment. Old threads and reactions matter less than owners expect.

Sort everything into three groups:

• Must move: member emails, course content, paid-member status and access.
• Nice to move: posts, comments and the space structure.
• Will not move: DMs, events, reactions and live-event history.

Key takeaway: Members stay for the people and the habit, not the archive. Protect login, access and billing first, and treat the discussion history as a bonus.

Also decide who owns each task. Someone has to export data, someone has to build the site, and someone has to talk to members. On a small team that is often the same person, which is a reason to stretch the timeline rather than compress it.

Step 1: Export everything from Circle

Start with an export before you change anything. Check in your own Circle admin what each export contains, because options can differ by plan and change over time. Plan on getting files for members, spaces, posts and comments, then download everything else you can by hand.

1. Export the member list with emails, names and join dates.
2. Export spaces, posts and comments so you have an archive.
3. Copy course lessons, videos and files into your own folders.
4. Download payment history from Stripe and note which members pay, on which plan and when they renew.
5. Screenshot your spaces, settings and rules so you can rebuild the structure.

Third-party exporters exist, including paid ones that also pull your own DMs. Treat those as an optional backup, not a plan. Posts and comments will not land in WordPress as native community posts through a one-click importer, so decide whether to re-post key threads by hand or keep a static archive.

What exports and what does not

Data	Moves cleanly?	What to do
Member emails and names	Yes, via CSV	Create WordPress accounts, then import
Course content	Copy manually	Rebuild as lessons and quizzes
Posts and comments	Export as files, no native import	Archive, or re-post the best threads
Spaces	Structure only	Recreate as groups
DMs, events, reactions	No	Tell members in advance
Subscriptions and cards	No	Set up new billing, then switch

Step 2: Build the WordPress side while Circle stays live

Install WordPress on hosting you trust, then install the free TrueCommunity plugin. The install guide lists the requirements: WordPress 6.3 or later, PHP 8.0 or later and pretty permalinks.

Run the quick setup to name the community, set the URL, add logos and choose your modules. The modules page explains how to switch features on and off without deleting anything.

Now rebuild the structure:

• Create groups for each Circle space. Choose public, private or locked using the group privacy options.
• Rebuild courses with sections and lessons and quizzes. The free plugin includes seven quiz question types.
• Set email sender, logo and per-event toggles in the mail settings.

Only site administrators can create groups and courses in TrueCommunity, so members cannot spin up their own spaces. If your Circle members create spaces freely today, tell them this changes.

The community runs on its own pages with its own layout, by default at yoursite.com/community, and works with any theme. That means you can build it on a staging copy or a quiet URL while your public site stays as it is.

Step 3: Import members without a notification flood

The member list is where you can lose people. TrueCommunity uses existing WordPress accounts, so anyone who can log in is a member and there is no separate sign-up. Create WordPress users from your Circle CSV using a user-import tool of your choice, with the same email addresses members use today.

The migrate existing users feature then brings those WordPress users into the community. It processes them in batches of 100, with background batches every 15 minutes. Note that it moves WordPress users, not Circle data, so the CSV-to-WordPress-user step is yours to do.

Before you run it, review the notification settings so you know which events send email. Likes, reactions, poll votes and new posts never send email, which keeps the noise down.

1. Create accounts with the same email as Circle, so members log in with the identity they already know.
2. Test with five trusted members before you touch the full list.
3. Send one planned announcement yourself, rather than letting the system send many messages.
4. Check that password-reset emails arrive. An SMTP plugin is recommended for reliable delivery.

Quick tip: Ask five active members to log in and post before launch day. A community that is not empty on day one makes it easier for everyone else to join in.

Step 4: Keep billing continuous

This is the step to get right. Card subscriptions do not move from Circle to WordPress by themselves, and members should not be asked to re-enter cards on short notice.

Circle’s own payment migration service is aimed at moving subscriptions into Circle, so do not count on it for the way out. Plan your own billing setup.

What you sell	How it works on WordPress
One-time course purchases	TrueCommunity Pro with WooCommerce or Easy Digital Downloads; the course must be Private and the buyer is enrolled automatically
Recurring membership access	A separate billing layer on WordPress; TrueCommunity does not run subscription billing yet
Free community with paid courses	Open or locked community, with paid Private courses sold through your store

The safe order is:

1. Decide how you will charge. TrueCommunity does not process payments itself, and paid memberships are planned, not shipped.
2. For courses, set up the store and read the sell a course doc. Fees come from your store and payment gateway.
3. For recurring membership billing, choose and price a separate billing layer before you commit to a date.
4. Run the new checkout with a handful of real members while Circle still bills everyone else.
5. Only then ask everyone to move, and cancel Circle after the last member has switched.

Cancelling usually leaves a plan active until the end of the paid period, after which access ends. Confirm the exact terms in your own Circle account before you set a date, and give paying members clear notice and one deadline.

Watch out: Never turn off Circle on the day you launch the new site. Overlap the two for at least one full billing cycle, so nobody falls into a gap where they have paid but cannot get in.

Step 5: Run both systems in parallel, then cut over

A parallel run lets you fix surprises while the old community still works. Keep Circle open and read-only if you can, or keep it live while members move.

The schedule below is a planning guide for a small community, not a benchmark. Larger ones take longer, mainly because of course rebuilding and billing tests.

• Week 1: export, build the site, set up groups and courses.
• Week 2: import members, test email and billing with a small group.
• Weeks 3 and 4: invite everyone, post a welcome thread, answer questions fast.
• After: switch Circle to read-only, then cancel once billing has run cleanly.

Keep a rollback plan. If login or payments fail, point members back to Circle and fix the problem without pressure. That is only possible while you have not cancelled yet.

How to tell members about the move

Announce early, explain the reason in a sentence and say what stays the same. Tell people what will not carry over: DMs, events and old reactions. Give one date and one link.

• Send the first message several weeks before the cutover.
• Show a screenshot of the new community so it feels familiar.
• Explain how to log in with the same email and reset a password.
• Pin a welcome post in the new feed and use posts with polls and mentions to start conversations.

Members can also add each other through friend requests and the member directory, which helps people find familiar faces on day one.

If you run gamification, the Pro points, ranks and badges give early movers a reason to show up. Points do not carry over from Circle, so start everyone fresh and say so.

Mobile and feature gaps to plan for

Circle includes iOS, Android and desktop apps on every plan, and Circle Plus adds custom branded apps. TrueCommunity has no dedicated mobile app yet.

It works in phone browsers, and members can use dark mode if they prefer it. If most of your members live in an app, tell them what changes before you commit.

Area	Circle	TrueCommunity on WordPress
Mobile	iOS, Android and desktop apps on every plan	Works in phone browsers; no dedicated app yet
Hosting and updates	Handled by Circle	Yours: hosting, updates and backups
Who creates groups or spaces	Set by plan limits	Site administrators only
Recurring paid access	Built-in paywall	Separate billing layer; paid memberships planned
Data location	Circle’s platform	Your own WordPress database

What the cost looks like after the move

Circle’s plans are priced per month and charge a transaction fee on paywall sales. TrueCommunity Pro is a flat yearly or one-time price with every feature in every plan. Hosting, email delivery and any billing plugin are separate costs you carry.

Plan	Sites	Yearly	Lifetime
TrueCommunity Solo	1	$119	$249
TrueCommunity Studio	5	$199	$399
TrueCommunity Agency	30	$299	$599
Circle Professional	1 community	$89 per month, billed annually ($1,068 per 12 months)	None listed

Prices checked on October 15, 2026, from truecommunitypro.com/pricing and circle.so/pricing. Circle Professional at $89 per month comes to $1,068 over 12 months, against $119 for TrueCommunity Solo, before hosting and billing tools on the WordPress side. See the pricing page for current plans.

A lapsed yearly TrueCommunity license does not shut your site down: the plugin keeps working, and only updates and support stop until you renew. The Free vs Pro comparison shows what you get without paying.

The free plugin already has the feed, groups, messages and basic courses, so you can build and test the whole community before buying anything. Every Pro payment has a 14-day refund under the refund policy.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Cancelling too early. Keep Circle until billing has run cleanly on the new site.
• Surprising members with new logins. Use the same email, test password resets and announce the date.
• Importing before mail works. Fix sending and reply-to settings first, so reset emails reach inboxes.
• Promising the archive. Say clearly that DMs and reactions will not come across.
• Ignoring admin-only creation. If members used to start their own spaces, explain how to request one.

When TrueCommunity fits (and when it does not)

It fits when you want your community and courses on a site you own, with a flat price and no platform cut. It suits coaches, course creators, associations and brands that already live on WordPress or are ready to.

It is not the best choice in these cases:

• You need a native mobile app. TrueCommunity has none yet. It works in phone browsers, while Circle includes iOS, Android and desktop apps on every plan.
• You need recurring membership billing built in. Paid memberships and subscription billing are planned, not shipped.
• You want certificates, SCORM or enterprise reporting. These are not offered.
• You want members to create their own groups. Group and course creation is admin-only.
• You do not want to manage a website. WordPress means hosting, updates and backups are yours.

There is also no one-click Circle importer, so budget your own time or a freelancer for the member and content move. If you decide to migrate from Circle to WordPress, start with the free plugin and a staging copy, and treat the pricing and refund terms as a safety net rather than a reason to rush.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I migrate from Circle to WordPress without losing members?

Yes, if you keep Circle running until the new site and billing are tested. Use the same email addresses so members log in with the identity they already know. Expect some drop-off among people who rarely logged in, and limit it among active members by announcing early.

What data can I export from Circle, and what can’t I?

Plan on exporting files for members, spaces, posts and comments, and copy course content and payment history yourself. DMs, events, reactions and subscription relationships should be treated as non-portable. Check the export options in your own Circle account, and take screenshots of anything structural so you can rebuild it.

How do I move paying subscribers without them re-entering cards?

You should not assume you can. Subscriptions set up in Circle do not move into a new WordPress billing setup by themselves, and Circle’s payment migration service is aimed at moving into Circle. Plan for members to re-subscribe through the new checkout with a clear date and a single link, and ask your payment processor’s support whether any customer data transfer is possible for your account.

How long does a Circle to WordPress migration take?

For a small community with a few courses, plan for several weeks including a parallel run. Larger communities with many spaces and recorded lessons take longer, mostly because of rebuilding courses and testing billing. The member import itself is the quick part.

Do I lose my discussion history and DMs when leaving Circle?

DMs do not move. Posts and comments can be exported but there is no native import into TrueCommunity, so keep them as an archive or re-post the threads that still matter. Warn members about DMs before the cutover so they can save anything important.

How much does it cost to run a community on WordPress compared with Circle?

TrueCommunity Pro starts at $119 per year and renews at the same price, versus $89 per month for Circle Professional billed annually, which is $1,068 over 12 months. Add hosting, email delivery and any billing plugin to your side of the sum. Course sales run through WooCommerce or Easy Digital Downloads, so gateway fees still apply.

Which WordPress plugin is the best Circle alternative?

It depends on what you need. TrueCommunity is built for owners who want a community and LMS plugin in one install, with courses, quizzes and gamification sharing the same members. If a native mobile app is a must, weigh that first, since TrueCommunity does not have one.