Mighty Networks Killed Its $49 Plan. Circle Killed Its Cheap Tier. One $9 Door Is Still Open.

The cheapest legitimate way into the paid-community business used to cost $49 a month. That door is now bricked up, and most people running a membership haven't noticed the bill move underneath them.

Mighty Networks removed its entry-level Community Plan, which cost $49 per month, when it restructured in 2025. The new entry point became the Launch plan at $79 a month. Mighty's own developer docs now list Community Plan (2025), Community Plan (2024), Community Plan (Legacy), Brand, Indie, Starter, Creator and Free Plan as no longer available.

That's eight retired price points in one list. It reads like an archaeology site.

What the floor costs now

Mighty's Launch plan costs $95 month-to-month or $79 per month billed annually, and carries a 2% platform transaction fee. Scale is $179 and Growth is $354 on annual billing, with the fee stepping down to 1% and 0.5%.

The detail that matters more than the sticker: unlike most platforms, Mighty Networks never removes the transaction fee entirely. Even the top tier charges 0.5%. There is no plan you can buy your way onto where the meter stops running.

Circle's floor moved the same direction. The old Basic plan at $39–49 a month was retired, so the entry point is now $89. That's $89 on annual billing and $99 if you pay monthly, per Circle's pricing page as of October 2026. Transaction fees run 2% on Professional, 1% on Business and Scale, and 0.5% on Circle Plus, charged on top of Stripe's 2.9% + $0.30. There is no free plan.

So the two most recommended community platforms in the creator economy both start just under a hundred dollars a month before anyone has paid you a cent.

The last $9 plan

Skool costs $9 a month plus a 10% fee per sale on Hobby, or $99 a month plus 2.9% + 30 cents per sale on Pro. Both plans carry an identical feature list — unlimited members, courses, videos, live calls, custom URL, affiliates. Nothing is held back for the higher plan. The only thing that changes is the fee.

That 10% is the catch, and it's a big one. A 10% platform fee on an entry plan is unusually high for the creator-platform category in 2026.

It's also irrelevant if nobody is paying you yet. A free community on Hobby pays nothing beyond the $9, because the 10% only applies to payments you actually take. That is genuinely the cheapest validation lab in the category right now.

The crossover number

Here's the arithmetic almost nobody has run.

Hobby is $9 plus 10% of revenue. Pro is $99 plus 2.9%. Divide the $90 plan difference by the 7.1-point fee gap and you get about $1,268 a month in member payments. Past that, the cheap plan is the expensive plan.

What it looks like with real money: a community earning $3,000 a month pays about $300 in fees on Hobby, while Pro costs about $87 in fees plus the $99 plan. Same community, same features, roughly $114 a month in difference. Fourteen hundred dollars a year for not checking a box.

The same logic runs up the other ladders. On Circle, once payment volume passes about $11,000 a month, the 1% fee on Business outweighs its higher subscription cost. On Mighty, the gap between Launch and Scale is $100 a month on annual billing against one percentage point of fee, which puts the switch at roughly $10,000 a month in sales.

The formula is the same everywhere: plan difference divided by fee difference.

The part that keeps getting ignored

Transaction fees are the only line on your software bill that grows while you sleep. A $79 plan looks cheap until you sell $20,000 in a month and the 2% costs $400. Your total cost rises as you grow, which is the opposite of how most platforms reward scale.

And the sticker price is rarely the price. A Circle Professional plan advertised at $89 routinely lands between $188 and $277 a month once real features are added.

One more thing worth knowing before you build a business on any of these: the floor can move again. A host writing in r/CommunityManager described Mighty's free tier being cut in a way that broke a half-built community, and noted that even on the free plan "they still take a 2% fee on all payments." Their conclusion was that building somewhere prices could jump overnight felt too risky.

Go look at last month's member payments. Then go look at which plan you're on.