Delivery stack and costs
Circle Professional plus Stripe, about £412 a month at the base case's month six, roughly 4.9% of revenueS29. Everything else is Sam's time, and the time budget at the bottom of this chapter is the number that actually decides whether this works.
Every option, priced
| Platform | Price | Transaction fee | Limits that matter | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Circle Professional | $89/mo | 2% | 3 admins, unlimited members, courses, live streams, paywall, custom domainS19 | Chosen. Community plus courses plus events plus paywall in one place, and the default in this category, which matters when Sam needs to search how to do something at nine at night. |
| Circle Business | $199/mo | 1% | 5 admins, workflows, branded emails, transcriptionS19 | Later. The 1% fee saves $110 of the $110 extra at about $11,000 of monthly platform revenue. Budget the switch at roughly £10,000 MRRS33. |
| Kajabi Basic / Growth / Pro | $179 / $249 / $499 monthly; $143 / $199 / $399 annual | 2.9% + $0.30 own payments; 2% / 1% / 0.5% third party | 5 / 50 / unlimited products; 2,500 / 25,000 / 100,000 contactsS20 | No. Twice the price for a marketing automation suite Sam will not use in year one. Reconsider only if the email list passes 5,000. |
| Mighty Networks Launch / Scale / Growth | $79 / $179 / $354; Launch $950/yr | 2% / 1% / 0.5% | 20 / 30 / 40 streaming hours a month; 3 / 5 / 10 hostsS21 | Close second. $10 a month cheaper than Circle. Loses on the course builder and on how much help exists online when something breaks. |
| Podia Mover / Shaker / Earthquaker | $42 / $84 / $150 | 5% / 0% / 0% | 100 / 500 / 1,000 email subscribersS22 | No. Mover's 100-subscriber cap is hit in week three and its 5% fee is worse than Circle's 2%. Shaker at $84 is priced level with Circle and weaker as a community. |
| Teachable Starter / Builder / Growth | $39 / $89 / $189 monthly; $29 / $69 / $139 annual | 7.5% / 0% / 0% | 5 / 10 / 50 products; 1 / 1 / 5 adminsS23 | No. A course platform with a community bolted on. This product is a community with a course bolted on. |
| Substack | Free to publish | 10% of paid subscriptions plus StripeS24 | No members' area, no course structure, no events | Yes, but for the free list only. Sam should start a free Substack in week one and never charge on it. It is the owned audience and it costs nothing. |
| Stripe | No setup or monthly fee | 1.5% + 20p UK; 2.5% + 20p EEA; 3.15% + 20p non-EEA; +2% FX; Billing pay-as-you-go 0.7%S25 | £20 per dispute | Chosen. Note that a French or German member costs 2.5% + 20p, not 1.5%, and the French channel is a real part of this plan. |
The monthly bill, worked
| Line | Month 6, base case | Month 12, base case | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Circle Professional | £71 | £71 | $89 at 1.25S19, S26 |
| Circle transaction fee, 2% | £168 | £295 | On platform revenue of about £8,400 and £14,800S27 |
| Stripe, about 1.7% blended plus 20p | £143 | £252 | Blended because roughly a fifth of members are expected to be EEA cardsS25 |
| Zoom, email tool, domain, a microphone amortised | £30 | £30 | EstimateS28 |
| Total | £412 | £648 | 4.9% and 4.4% of that month's revenueS29 |
The hidden cost is the transaction fee, not the plan fee. At month twelve Circle's 2% is £295 a month, more than four times the plan itself. Moving to Business at $199 with a 1% fee saves about £147 a month at that volume and costs about £88 more in plan fee, so it pays from roughly £10,000 of monthly platform revenue onwardS33. Put a reminder in the calendar rather than discovering it on a statement.
Setup, in order, in about two working days
Stripe first, before anything else
UK business account, bank details, identity verification. It takes a day or two to clear and everything else waits on it.
A Substack, free, publishing weekly from week one
Before the product exists. The free list is the asset that makes launch day work, and it costs nothing to startS24.
Circle Professional, on a 14-day trial
Three spaces to start: The Brief, The Clinic, The Media List. Do not build twelve spaces for sixty people.
Connect Stripe to Circle and create three paywalls
£49 monthly, £499 one-off, £299 monthly, £2,990 annual, £199 founding monthly, £1,500 monthly. Test each one with a real card and refund it.
The media list as a living document inside Circle
Not a PDF and not a downloadable spreadsheet. A page that visibly changes each month is a subscription; a file that can be downloaded and forwarded is a one-off sale that also leaks.
Modules 1 to 4 recorded and uploaded
Written first, then recorded. Two days, booked in the diary.
The sales page, on Sam's own domain
Not on Circle. It links to Circle. The HTML is in Chapter 14 and is ready to publish.
A calendar with the monthly rhythm in it, for twelve months
Brief on day one, reviews on the 6th to 12th, clinic on the third Tuesday, list update in the last week. Recurring entries, made now.
The time budget
| Activity | Hours a week | Fixed or variable |
|---|---|---|
| The monthly brief, written and posted | 0.2 | Fixed |
| Media list maintenance | 0.7 | Fixed |
| Clinic, including prep | 0.5 | Fixed |
| Members' room moderation | 0.5 | Fixed |
| Content: the Substack, the column, social | 2.0 | Fixed |
| Selling: outreach, calls, partnerships | 1.5 | Fixed |
| Admin, platform, payments, scheduling | 0.6 | Fixed |
| Fixed subtotal | 6.0 | Whether there are 5 members or 60 |
| Monthly reviews | 0.05 per member | Variable. 60 members is 3 hours a week |
| Annual campaign plans | included above | Variable |
| Each Campaign Partner place | 1.5 | Variable. Four places is 6 hours a week |
| Each converted full-service client | 4.0 | Variable, and it is agency work, not membership work |