Circle.so is one of the top online community builders. It’s easy to use and has all the features you need to build a thriving online community.

And if courses are your thing, Circle lets you add them to your community as well.

In this guide, we’ll explain the Circle.so Courses feature and everything it has to offer. And to help you build a course on the platform, we’ve prepared a step-by-step tutorial.

Let’s jump right in, shall we?

What Is Circle Courses?

Circle Courses allows you to create and share an online course.

With this feature, you can host your course material, organize it into modules and lessons, and deliver it through the web course player or Circle’s mobile apps.

 

However, you must keep in mind that the course experience in Circle is quite different from standard online course platforms.

It takes a community-first approach, which puts your online community at the front and center of the member experience. So when someone enrolls in your course, they first join your community and can then access the course from there.

So, Circle may not be the best option if you’re looking for a course platform that’s geared solely toward selling courses. However, it can work perfectly in certain scenarios:

• Courses to engage your community members
• Courses for your membership site
• Live cohort courses where the members take the course together

Now that we’ve given you an overview of the course feature, let’s explore in more detail what it has to offer.

A Closer Look at Circle Courses

Circle has a range of features to help you create, host, and deliver online courses.

Circle’s course builder is incredibly easy to use, allowing you to quickly set up your course structure with sections and lessons.

You can divide your course material into different sections and nest lessons under each of them.

 

The course builder supports drag-and-drop functionality, which makes it easy to move lessons and sections and change their position in the curriculum.

Circle also makes it easy to add content to your lessons. The content editor allows you to add formatted text content, images, video, audio, PDFs, and even embeds.

Moreover, Circle’s AI tool—content co-pilot—is integrated into the lesson editor, so you can effortlessly write and edit text-based content.

Finally, Circle takes care of all content hosting so you can upload videos (and other content) directly to the platform.

When it comes to learning and engagement tools, Circle supports content dripping. The dripping feature allows releasing sections on specific dates or after certain days of student enrollment.

 

Besides that, there’s lesson order enforcement, which makes it compulsory for students to complete each lesson before moving to the next one. There’s also an option for enforcing video completion, ensuring that students watch at least 90% of the video before moving on.

However, there are a few important features that are still missing from Circle’s course platform. For example, you can’t create quizzes, assignments, and certificates.

On the plus side, you can integrate Circle’s community features into your course, making it a good option for cohort courses.

So you can attach a separate discussion space, an event space, or a group chat area to your course, allowing for more interactive learning.

Regarding end-user experience, the course player is intuitive, allowing students to easily watch lessons and navigate the course.

 

Additionally, your students can watch courses on Circle’s mobile app, which translates to higher engagement and course completion rates. Circle also allows you to track student progress, even though the course reporting tools are very basic.

One feature worth mentioning here is Circle Workflows. Although its main purpose isn’t directly connected to creating courses, you can still use it to drive engagement by creating workflows to send a welcome message or congratulate them on completing a course.

 

Overall, Circle has a decent set of features for creating courses and engaging your members, and it’s ideal for creating community-powered courses.

The Courses feature is available on Circle’s Professional plan ($99/month) and above. While there’s no direct limit on the number of courses you can create, it’s still subject to the plan’s limits on spaces.

Finally, the platform doesn’t restrict you to its own course builder. You can also integrate the platform with popular course builders, such as Thinkific and Teachable, thanks to Circle’s SSO integrations.

Steps to Create an Online Course in Circle

Now, let’s show you how to create a course on Circle.

To get started, you first need to create a community space where you’ll add your course. To do that, hover over the space group where you want to add a space, click the Plus icon, and select Add Space.

 

This will open a pop-up window where you can select the type of space you want to create. And in this case, you should select Course.

 

In the next step, you need to select the type of course you want to create—a self-paced, structured, or scheduled course.

Structured and scheduled courses are nothing but different content dripping options. When you create a structured course, modules are released certain days after enrollment. In the case of a scheduled course, the modules become available on a specific date.

 

You can change this later if you want to switch between the three options.

Next, add an icon and name for the space, choose the appropriate space group, and set access permissions. You’ll then be directed to the course dashboard.

Now, click on the Edit Lesson button on the top right corner and it will open the curriculum editor.

Here you can add sections and lessons to your course.

 

Before you can add lessons, create a section that you’ll use to group your lessons. After that, you can create a lesson and enter the lesson editor by hovering over the lesson and clicking on the Edit option.

Now, let’s add some content to our first lesson.

The Lesson editor has two sections: the Featured Media box and the HTML editor.

• In the Featured Media section, you can upload audio and video files or even embed one. To upload your video, just drag it from your local device and drop it into the media box.
• The HTML editor allows you to add text-based content, images, embeds, and files to your lessons. Just type the forward slash in the editor to access all content types and formatting options.

 

Once you’re done adding content to your lesson, you can also enable or disable comments and attach lesson files from the menu on the left. You can also enforce video completion and enable auto-advance to the next lesson after completion.

Click Save, and repeat this process until you’ve added all your course material.

You can stop here, configure the course access settings, and publish it. Or you can add engagement-focused features to your course. And while they can’t be turned on and off with a click of a button, the process is straightforward.

To add a discussion feed to your course, hover over the space group where your course is, click on the Plus sign, and then Add Space. On the next screen, select Posts as the type of space you want to create.

 

Repeat the same steps to create a space for group chats, members, and events. For a comprehensive overview of these steps and more, refer to our detailed Circle tutorial.

At this point, your course is still in draft, so let’s go through some settings you need to configure before you can publish it.

From the left-side menu, click on the name of your course, and then, from the top of the page, click on it again.

 

This will open available course settings, including customization options, paywalls, and lock screens, among other options.

As far as payments go, Circle allows you to receive payments via Stripe, so before you can create a paywall, you should connect your Stripe account.

To do that, go to Paywall → Connect with Stripe, and follow the instructions.

Once you complete this step, you can create your first Paywall by entering the paywall settings and then clicking New Paywall.

 

Each time you create a paywall, you’re adding a pricing plan to your online courses.

On the next screen, you’ll have the following options:

• Add pricing plan details: Add a plan name and description, and set a currency.
• Set pricing details: Select the pricing type (one-time payment, subscription, free plan), billing cycle (monthly, yearly, quarterly, etc.), and the price amount.
• Allow access to a space: Select the spaces you want to include in your pricing plan.

Apart from these settings, you can also customize and send a post-purchase email and redirect students to a thank you page.

Now, let’s customize your Lock Screen page, which will be shown to all non-paying members.

From the course settings, select Lock Screen, and you’ll enter the page builder.

 

It includes the following elements:

• Banner: Add an image
• Description: Describe what a course is about and how to access it
• Lessons: An overview of course lessons
• Call to action: Add a clickable button to redirect users to the checkout page

You can customize each of these elements and decide which will be visible and which you want to hide.

You’re now ready to share your course with your audience.

If you need inspiration for setting up your own course on the platform, you can explore this ultimate list of Circle course examples.

Final Thoughts on Circle Courses

All in all, Circle.so Courses is a flexible tool for adding a learning component to your online community and boosting engagement. The platform’s community-first approach makes its course builder an excellent fit for cohort courses.

If you don’t have a Circle account yet, sign up for a 14-day free trial by clicking the button below.