FluentCommunity: A Full Review For 2025
Is FluentCommunity worth it in 2025? Our in-depth review explores the platform’s effectiveness, user experience, and value for money.
In this comprehensive review of FluentCommunity for 2025, we delve into its latest features, user experience, and the benefits it offers to language learners. Discover how this platform stands out in a competitive landscape and what makes it a go-to resource for mastering new languages. Whether you’re a beginner or looking to refine your skills, this video provides valuable insights. Don’t miss out—watch now to learn more.
Host of The Membership Machine Show Jonathan Denwood & Kurt von Ahnen
Jonathan Denwood
Kurt von Ahnen
https://manananomas.com
This Week’s Show Sponsors
LifterLMS: LifterLMS
Convesio: Convesio
Omnisend: Omnisend
The Show’s Main Transcript
[00:00:01.110] – Jonathan Denwood
Welcome back, folks, to the Membership Machine Show. This is episode 117. We’re going to be talking about the Fluent Community. It’s a tremendous, semi-new product in the WordPress platform. It’s a fantastic new solution if you’re looking to build a community on WordPress. We will also look at some of the other SaaS-based solutions and compare them to those of Fluent Community. It should be a fantastic show. Me and my beloved co-host, Kirk, and I have had quite a day already, so this should finish it well. So, Kirk, would you like to introduce yourself to the listeners and viewers?
[00:01:26.360] – Kurt von Ahnen
Jonathan. My name is Kirt von Annen. I own a company called Mañana Nomás. We focus largely on learning and membership websites and do some business consulting. Also, I work with Jonathan directly at WP Tonic.
[00:01:38.570] – Jonathan Denwood
Sometimes he wonders if that was a good choice, but I think you’ve done okay. Yeah, so let’s start. Before we do that, we’ve got a great message from one of the show’s major sponsors. We will be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. I also want to point out that we’ve got a great resource. If you’re looking to build your membership community website on WordPress and Kirk and think you should, we’ve got a great course that shows you how to make it from beginning to end. Also, we’ve got a great discount on this course and some great deals from the sponsors. You can get all these goodies by going over to Wp-tonic. Com/deals. Wp-tonic. For com/deals, you can get the course at a discounted rate. Plus some great offers are all there. What more could you ask for? Me Kirk and wonder what else you could offer. But there we go. You find all the goodies there. So, let’s go straight into Fluent Community. So it’s from a great support of the show and a great plugin shop that produces Fluent CRM, Fluent Forms, and several other great solutions, and they make this Fluent Community.
[00:03:25.460] – Jonathan Denwood
So if you were trying to explain what Fluent Community was to a potential in a situation of some consultation, how would you describe it to somebody, Kirk?
[00:03:41.310] – Kurt von Ahnen
Jonathan, I use a term when I talk to my clients that might seem a little strange to somebody, but I’d say decentralized social media. I’m like, decentralized social media is one of the big buzzings coming up in sites. They say, what does that mean? And I go, your social media platform where you own it, you control it, you can host it wherever you want, and you’re not entirely dependent upon big tech like Facebook or X or some of these other platforms. And I’m particular about the way I phrase it. You’re not entirely dependent because most people still have some presence on those platforms. But if you can take the bulk of your conversation and community and move it to your property, you’re not dependent on these other sources for shutdowns, outages, or changes in how they go or strategy. You’ve got your own thing.
[00:04:37.820] – Jonathan Denwood
The way I explain it is that it is designed to be very… If you’re used to Facebook groups, you’ll be very at home with Fluent Community because it has a very Facebook-group feel, plus a live chat element of forum mixed with Facebook social groups, all combined in what I think is a straightforward interface. It hasn’t got all the swings and roundabouts of something like Buddy Boss, Mighty Networks, or Circle CEO. But I don’t think, and I don’t have any inside information here, but I think Jules and his team don’t want to develop or embrace a solution because there’s a suite. When we talk about Mighty Networks or Circle in the second half of this show, it will be… Hopefully, it will become very apparent that if you try to build something that offers every option that the top-tier power user would want, the automatic consequence is that you will end up with a complicated and a semi-bloated system. So every platform, every software platform, decides between ease of use and every option a top-tier power user would want.
[00:06:46.570] – Jonathan Denwood
Is that making sense, Kurt?
[00:06:48.760] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah. And again, when you’re talking to clients, an excellent phrase is, Our job is to reduce friction. These bigger, more bloated platforms do not reduce friction. They create friction for your users. And I think- and let’s be blunt at the beginning of the show here- that running a community is a job for people that haven’t really considered it yet. It takes effort. You have to promote it. You have to moderate it. It takes a lot of work. So you want a platform to manipulate and move around in. You had mentioned Buddy. I think Buddy Boss is a great platform. It has many features, but you’re locked into their theme to use it. You don’t have a lot of freedom and flexibility the way you want, design-wise or usage-wise. It’s heavy. So most of my customers are also on LMSs and have Woocommerce for e-commerce things. When you add these big platforms to one site, they become very server-thirsty. And so I like the way Fluent Community put this out.
[00:08:04.440] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I see where you’re coming from, but I don’t agree. Well, it’s not that I disagree with you. It’s just that I’ve done an intense dive on it, and I’ve come to this conclusion. It is much, much lighter in resources than BuddyBoss because BuddyBoss is a great platform, but we don’t offer it at WP with our starter plan anymore because it’s in the name of the plan, Starter. I wanted to provide an affordable introduction, but the problem is that people expect it to be top-notch immediately. So we only offer it on our middle plan now, Buddy Boss, because I couldn’t explain. But I thought it was in the name of that plan. So starter. But with my dive, yes, you get about two-thirds of the power of Buddy Boss in a much lighter platform. But it is the way they have developed it, and in a plugin, the way that they have set it up is that you would be better off having it on a subdomain because it does… I’m not saying… It’s layout, the layout of spaces. Many of these platforms use a metaphor of spaces that gives you that Facebook feel.
[00:09:51.460] – Jonathan Denwood
If you try and put fluent community with a page builder, with a theme, you’re going to have to spend a lot of time with minor conflicts and changes, because the world of page builders in WordPress is so diverse now, from Alimator to Bricks to Gutenberg-based solutions like Cadence WP, which we love, to Ashtra to full-site editing, with a theme that comes from Lifter LMS. It’s so diverse. I think you would be better to have this on a subdomain on its own. It does have some course functionality. It’s very basic. It’s very similar to school in the level of course functionality. I wouldn’t use it for the course. I would use Lifter LMS on the main domain, and then I would utilize something like Fluent CRM. So when somebody signed up, if you were doing courses, when they sign up, they would be automatically enrolled on the subdomain in the Fluent community. And that’s how I would do it, because I think it really is best to leave the styling apart from color changes, leave the layout. They might change this because they might introduce a library of Gutenberg blocks that would enable you just to move.
[00:11:53.970] – Jonathan Denwood
They might go down that road, but they haven’t at the present moment. They might never do that because Because that would increase their support tickets enormously, Kirk, if they went down that road, because then they would have to support every type of page builder under the sun. Can you see where I’m coming from? And what’s your response to what I’ve just outlined?
[00:12:28.720] – Kurt von Ahnen
When you install Install it, you get the choice. You can put it on a subdomain or it does that subfolder thing like, slash portal, right? And it loads everything as slash portal, and then it builds all that in. And it does have its own look and feel, but it has a customization menu. And then I believe a snapshot of an interview you’ll be doing shortly. I think WP Launchify actually has a customization product for Fluent Community, which isn’t part of our conversation today, but there are tools where you can start to play with the look a little bit.
[00:13:07.290] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, and I don’t think you should waste time on that unless it’s really that that is aimed at the semi the now user or the WordPress professional, in my opinion. But I see where it comes, and they might introduce their own, but I think they’ve done this deliberately. I think for the average person, which show is aimed at, it’s best to have it on a subdomain.
[00:13:34.180] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, and I want to go one step further, and this is a great question that I’ve learned from another peer in the WordPress space. And that question is, why? So many times you’re working with a client and they’re like, well, this needs to be this and this needs to be that. And this is unacceptable and it has to be. And it’s got to be customized this way and that way. And you just go, why? The whole idea is your choices Send them to a Facebook page, send them to a Facebook group, and you’ve got no control over anything and how meta is going to run their program, right? Or have a similar interface in your own website that you manage and host. And so the answer, then the question very simply just becomes, why? What are you in competition with? Why do you think everything has to be super high level branded and super high level customized? Can you even grow the community? So that’s the thing. A lot of people think they need community and they really don’t even need it yet. So to me, it comes down to timing, and then it comes down to tool choice.
[00:14:41.070] – Kurt von Ahnen
And then what’s there. You had mentioned buddy boss. I really like the buddy boss theme and the way it shows off blog posts and courses and lessons with the LMSs and stuff that it integrates with. That’s great. To me, Lifter LMS is like the first, with their social learning, that’s like the first level of community. To me, Fluent is like right in between those two.
[00:15:01.790] – Jonathan Denwood
Yes, I would agree.
[00:15:03.270] – Kurt von Ahnen
You got Lifter, Fluent, and then Buddy Boss.
[00:15:06.110] – Jonathan Denwood
Now, if you ever been involved with Buddy Boss, you can take the starter theme, which is really embedded with their plugin, and you can adapt it, but it soon gets expensive and it soon gets very complicated. When I quote When we quote WP tonic, we just get a gasp. But we’re not prepared to do it on the cheap because it is so time-consuming and it needs constant support. It’s better to go with a subdomain and set it up the way that Buddy Boss has on their demo. I have the same feelings at the present moment with Fluent Community, but it’s much, much lighter. It’s a much more manageable environment with not every feature of the leading SaaS or Budgie Boss solutions, folks. Now, the other area that I want to point out in the first half of this show is that I’ve had already a couple of conversations with people saying, We need a app. We are looking at Mighty Network or we’re looking at Circle, and we’re looking at a white-labeled app, and that’s all you can get with Circle, and that’s great. And they haven’t even got one paying student or one paying community member, folks.
[00:16:48.530] – Jonathan Denwood
I think that’s semi-bonkers. Based on my experience, nobody’s joining your community because you’ve got an app. Nobody’s even… It won’t encourage one person to join your community. They might say it, but what they’re really interested in is the value they get from the community. And don’t take me wrong, folks, at the right stage, I think having the app will benefit your community, but it will make absolutely no difference to the average person that’s looking to start a community community and build it into something that could necessitate an app. Obviously, straight away, I’m getting the person, Well, I’ve got a vibrant community on Facebook, on Discord, on Slack. I’ve got a thousand members already. Well, you’re in a totally different position. You’re not the person that I’m focused in this particular part, the first half, too. What’s your thoughts What’s about this, Kurt?
[00:18:01.250] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, it drives you right back to the starter plan, doesn’t it? Getting people in community is very, very difficult. Even switching people from one social plan to another. For example, Facebook groups seem to do pretty dang good. Facebook groups, Facebook pages, they tend to get traffic and followers. But if you’ve been in business for any length of time and you’ve tried to migrate that group or try to get them to also sign up for a LinkedIn group, you are in for a new experience. There’s LinkedIn groups, people just don’t migrate from one platform to another. They all have a very different vibe. It’s like people that love TikTok versus Instagram. You’re not going to see a bunch of people bail off a TikTok and go to Instagram. That’s why people freaked out so much when they were going to shut TikTok down. It is very, very difficult. And so when Jonathan says they want to have community and a purpose-built white label and they don’t have a paying member yet, that is a giant red flag. To me, the app comes long after the need for an app because it’s a large financial investment. It’s capitalized and you got to make sure you have the flow for it.
[00:19:14.940] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I’ll give you an example. I was talking to a possible client, and they had recently approached Circle and Mighty Network. Mighty Network started from $20,000 to $30,000. Circle started from $15,000 to $20,000. For a white label app. That’s some serious money. I would argue that it’s better to build something on fluent community, and then you could look at migrating the data and the users. It’s still going to be a process. But it’s going to be a lot simpler to migrate because it’s based on WordPress, then to look at Buddy Boss. To be fair, it is still the deal of the century to have a white-labeled app on Buddyboss, which might initially cost you a couple of thousand dollars. Then they’re offering two plans now, but I would still go with their upper plan, which is just under… If you pay month to month, I think it’s I think it’s about 220, and I think it’s 179 for the year. I still think that’s the still of the century when you compare to 20 or 30,000, there’s no contest, really, in my opinion. What do you reckon, Gert?
[00:20:37.900] – Kurt von Ahnen
No, you’re right. Because time and time again, I have had people come to me and say they want to have an app developed for a Lifter LMS website and some custom thing done. And when we quote that out, it’s $25,000 to $30,000 to start playing in that ballpark. And people, for an enterprise, for a large corporation, Yeah, that’s a conversation to have. But for a startup that needs to pinch pennies and reduce spending, the quickest way to make money is to save money when you’re starting up, right? Keep your expenses low. So the app is a thing for me to avoid. And what’s interesting is you can show a lot of people, well, hey, you can save any website as an app on your phone and get that real estate on the phone. You just don’t get push notifications. So which is it you’re really looking for? And they may default and say push notifications, but realistically, they want the space on the phone. They think that real estate has value to it. And you can do that with a standard website.
[00:21:40.910] – Jonathan Denwood
And it’s going to be much, much harder to persuade people to download the app and get that real estate that people just don’t realize, do they?
[00:21:53.850] – Kurt von Ahnen
My wife works for Kroger, and I don’t have the Dylan’s Kroger app in my phone. I’m like, I’m not I had another piece of junk in my phone. I just don’t need that. Like I said, my wife even works there, but I’m not… I don’t care. You can keep the five cents a pound on beef. I’ll pay the five cents a pound. I’m not putting the app in my phone and dealing with the nonsense.
[00:22:15.320] – Jonathan Denwood
I think we’ve had a good first half. I’ve lost total track of time because we started a bit late, but I think we’ve come to a good middle point. We’re going to go for a middle break, and then in the second half, we’re going to be talking about some of the obvious competitors, the fluent community, my own review. I’m going to be a bit spicy in the second half. I’ve got a few things to say about some of the reviews I’ve watched. It should be interesting second half. We will be back in a few moments, folks. We’re coming back. We’ve had a good first half. I think we’ve given some excellent results and done a fair review and fluent community, which I really like what the team have done with it. But before we go into the second half, I want to point out we got a great free resource that is It’s a Facebook group. I like to add that I started it before Fluent Community. It wasn’t available when I started my Facebook group, but we got a great Facebook group. It’s the Membership Machine Show. If you want any advice about any of the subjects that we’ve discussed, you can ask a question there and I will get back to you, I promise.
[00:23:45.390] – Jonathan Denwood
And it’s also got some great other members, WordPress people, people like you trying to build a membership or community. It’s just a great resource, and I’m always posting stuff on there. It’s totally free. So go over to Facebook and I’ll put in the Membership Machine Show and put it in there, and I’m sure you’ll find it a useful free resource. So let’s go on to the second half. Let’s look at Fluent Community and Facebook groups. So it was well. The big problem with Facebook, there’s a couple of major problems with Facebook, is that it’s on a platform I utilize it, I have a group on it, but I also despise. I despise the founder. I think he’s a creep myself, this is my opinion. I’m not all that warm and fuzzy about the managerial team, past or present. And you just don’t own it. And if they ever change, and you’ve seen this on LinkedIn, you’ve seen this on a multitude of different social media platforms. They can change, especially what you saw at LinkedIn, because a lot of people invested a lot of time and energy on their LinkedIn groups. And overnight, it was just decimated and destroyed, wasn’t it?
[00:25:24.610] – Jonathan Denwood
And that’s just put me off. But at the time, it was the right solution because I had problems with Slack as well, because unless you got people that are very in the tech field, Slack isn’t the most easiest. I think I probably would have been better off on Discord, but that’s not the most easiest platform to use either. But there wasn’t nothing like Flune at the time. And the other thing is, it is not designed to sell subscriptions. You can’t do it. So it’s got some major negatives where I think Flune community really fills that gap. What do you think?
[00:26:15.100] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, I definitely agree with that because every time someone gives me a Discord link, now I don’t even try. I don’t even try. I think I’m just too old. I’m too old for it. I’m thinking kids. Slack is very similar to me. I use it when I have to for business, but I am not in there floating around Slack channels trying to socialize. I’m getting messages from employers and contractors that tell me what to do next, and then I delegate that work and execute on the next thing. So there’s a use case there that makes sense. From a social perspective where people want to come and hang out and be social and share things and all of that, I’m not seeing that in Slack. I know that young people like this Discord Mastodon is a big name. People talk about Mastodon a ton, not seeing it. I’m going to go back to the big tech thing that you started out with. During the COVID crisis and the amount of censorship and stuff during the election campaigns, as that stuff came out with the Twitter files and all of that stuff, it really just bubbled to the top for me.
[00:27:27.030] – Kurt von Ahnen
As an entrepreneur, as a business owner, I can’t rely on them to be a platform for me. Because you don’t know where the ebbs and flows are going to go in the future. You don’t know who’s going to be in control of that censorship arm the next time. You don’t know if you’re going to be on the favorable side or on the negative side. And so if you’re depending on big tech to carry your message for you and to be your marketing arm, I don’t think that’s a very smart decision. So yeah, Fluent really scratches that itch, gets it done.
[00:27:57.310] – Jonathan Denwood
Now, you’re the master of LinkedIn You’ve written a whole course. He’s got a course on OMMI about LinkedIn, and it’s a great value course. Can you explain what happened to LinkedIn around groups? You got an insight what led to them, actually. I’ve got to say, I can’t use the word, it begins with S, on LinkedIn groups, basically. Do you know the story behind it for their decision, Annette?
[00:28:29.560] – Kurt von Ahnen
I think, and you have to go to human nature and people being prideful and judgmental. And those are both negative things, but that’s the way that I think LinkedIn suffers sometimes. People, like someone will post something that’s not business-oriented, they’ll say, this isn’t the space for that. Linkedin isn’t the space for that. Go post this on Facebook or something. And I think when people tried, even in a professional way, to have some social social interaction or integration with community inside LinkedIn, I just don’t think it was very well received because people were trying to use it to pump out their latest CV or resume or publish something business-wise. And I think that’s what happened. I think they built a culture that just was anti-fund community, right? But when I look at what I can do with LinkedIn with direct messaging, having a properly set up profile and using their Boolean search features to network with others, it’s a very, very strong platform. But it’s not good for… That said, there’s still a couple of really big success successful groups there, but they are very much professional groups, work-oriented, and focused on growth or development.
[00:29:54.460] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, that’s my strategy on LinkedIn. I just post educational content, and I post a fair bit, but I do not. I should really ramp up with advice through the comments, and that I might do a bit more. I do with Twitter, I’m still Twitter. I post content on there and I use the lists. I do not engage in the general feed. If I am going to I have a list of people in a list that I follow. I am not interested in the general feed. I might look at it a little bit, but I generally go into about three lists that I have. It’s the same with Facebook. I am not really interested in the general feeds of these platforms because I consider pretty toxic. I have some rough days as it is, and I’m English, so I need to brighten myself up, not get myself additionally depressed about the level of stupidity that is mostly on these platforms.
[00:31:18.260] – Kurt von Ahnen
But everything that you just said very strongly edifies the core message we’re talking about today. When you look at the amount of bots and fake accounts and propaganda and foolishness that is on big tech social media channels, for a lot of the population, that constant distraction and dopamine hit thing, maybe that’s what keeps a lot of people going with the doomscrolling. But If you have your own social account, your own social community within a site that you manage, that you host, you’re in control of that. So you don’t have all this trolling, you don’t have all this bot nonsense, you don’t have all this propaganda. You have people that are focused on whatever your niche is and focusing on that. And that is what’s going to create that stickiness for you. And if people can get a like or a share in something that they’re really committed to, that’s within a niche that they love, that dopamine hits a lot stronger and that creates that stickiness for your own web project.
[00:32:21.370] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m going to look at the next one, but I’m going to swap it around. I’m going to start with Fluent Community with Mighty Networks. Okay. Mighty Networks is one of the more mature platforms. It’s had a revamp. I forgot what they call it, Their Starter Plan, which is around $39. It’s one of the cheaper solutions. The problem with it is, I wouldn’t say it’s totally crippled, but it’s missing some major elements in this plan. I think it’s their community plan. You could say, yeah, it’s in the name, community, because they’ve disabled all the membership subscription elements in that community. Anybody that’s thinking of using Mighty Networks, there might be the odd internal company, but most people are going to want some paid subscription to it, and it’s not available in That plan. So you got to look at the next one up, which if you pay the years, around just under $100 a month, plus they’ve got transitional fees on top, fixed fees that they put on top of the Stripe fee, which you got to dig down. Finally, they’ve done a revamp, and they have They’ve approved it. They left it for a very long time.
[00:34:04.390] – Jonathan Denwood
I think they were feeding the heat from some other platforms that drove them, and it’s a lot better. It’s a lot better, but it’s still, in my opinion, a bit of a hot mess when you actually go in. It’s a bit like JARBI. Yeah, it offers the kitchen sink. And there’s only so far through good UX and usability development that you can make something reasonably easy to use if you’re offering everything. And they offer a lot, but you get They’ve made it better, but it’s still a bit of a hot mess, in my opinion. What do you think?
[00:34:52.960] – Kurt von Ahnen
I tried mining networks a couple of times before the revamp, and I lost my patience I couldn’t… It wasn’t worth, to me, it wasn’t worth the mental commitment to figure out what the heck I was supposed to be figuring out in there. To be honest, I felt that way in Kajabi, too. Kajabi looks like this easy It’s easy to use, plug and play.
[00:35:16.390] – Jonathan Denwood
It isn’t. That’s why they have a whole… Well, and it’s the same… Sorry to interrupt, but Kajabi has a whole army of consultants and mighty networks as an army of consultants, and that should tell you something, shouldn’t it?
[00:35:30.680] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, I had really struggled with it. I haven’t been to the revamp idea of it. I don’t like the pricing structure. When you start looking at something that’s going to cost you 12, 13, 14, $1,500 a year, and they’re taking a cut of your subscriptions on top of that, it’s weird because you don’t own it. It’s not yours. And that platform is the way they do it.
[00:35:58.900] – Jonathan Denwood
There’s no way of the data, is there?
[00:36:01.700] – Kurt von Ahnen
And when they have a change of heart or change direction on something, you don’t have a say in the matter. It’s just the way that it is. I’m not a big fan of it, which makes me a hypocrite because the next one you’re going to bring up, I actually have positive things to say.
[00:36:20.470] – Jonathan Denwood
I have, but also I’ve got some critical things to say, and especially I’ve got some critical things to say about some of the main social social media influencer pushers and what they say. I’m not going to name some names. So let’s go on to circle. Now, circle, the other thing is that Mighty Networks does offer… You can build a publicly-facing marketing website with Mighty Networks and have the community elements logged in. Now, with Circle, you can’t… You do get a website, but it’s a bit like what we said about Fluent Community and about Buddy Boss. It’s best as a subdomain. Really, you’d be better off using something like Squarespace, Wix, or WordPress, and we suggest WordPress, for your publicly facing marketing website. You have the circle on a subdomain, so you can’t quite do. They both on their homepage, it says you get a website, and technically you’re correct. But Mighty Networks is a bit more like Kajabi in that element. I don’t actually like much of the templates in Mighty Networks. I think Kajabi does a much better job. But that’s my opinion. But when it comes to the actual interface, circle, still, it’s much more superior than Mighty Networks, even with the update.
[00:38:18.390] – Jonathan Denwood
They have improved Mighty Networks, but compared to circle, it’s still what we would say in London, a bit of a dog’s breakfast, in my opinion. But, and this is the but, they also charge transactional fees, and their pricing, they only offer the yearly pricing up front. They do offer month to month, but you’ve got to search for it. They’re pushing the year. And the marketing optimization, they want to charge extra fee on top. It gets expensive pretty quick. It gets more pricey. I would say the starter plan, when you end up, it’s the same as the middle plan, the Mighty Networks, you’re going to end up coughing up 1,500, $1,500, $1,500, aren’t you?
[00:39:23.930] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, because their next level, up business level, puts you at like 24 So it’s $2,400, right? So it’s $2,400 for business level, which to me would be the plan that people would go to because the starter plan always gets you going. But usually you need to expand, get into the workflows and and some of the branded email notifications and stuff that come with the business version. So I don’t know, man. The marketing thing, when I looked at that, it was like for $600 a year, I could market to 3,000 people. Said, how many contacts do you have? 3,000 people was 50 bucks a month. So that’s $600 a month on top of this to email people, right?
[00:40:12.850] – Jonathan Denwood
A year, you said a month, a year.
[00:40:14.330] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, for the year. That seems pricey.
[00:40:19.920] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, and they got these transactional fees. Now, this is my opinion, folks. There’s a couple of influencers I watch. I thought the worst one was because he knows better. He pushes this hard, and he pushes some other courses, some other solutions like divvy and some other stuff. It’s up to him. This is just my personal opinion. He doesn’t really make it clear that he’s a big affiliate of circle, and I have a problem with that. Some of his His videos about circle, in my opinion, are a bit misleading, and he doesn’t make it clear that he’s a major affiliate of circle, and I have a personal problem. You, listeners and viewers, might not have a problem with that, but I do. He’s all over YouTube with his reviews on circle, and My personal belief is that they’re a bit biased, to say the least. Another major influencer from Australia is Kate McKibben. She’s a major, and she’s the same all over YouTube. She is more fairer, more balanced on the reasons why she moved to circles circle, and she does a real knife attack on Mighty Networks. But the reasons why she moved and didn’t choose Mighty Networks are very case-heavy, very pacific to her very pacific needs.
[00:42:24.200] – Jonathan Denwood
And she’s also a big affiliate of Circle. And this doesn’t affect Circle. It affects Kajabi. One of the problems with YouTube is affiliate marketing. I’ve got nothing fundamentally wrong with it because we are WordPress, but I clarify my biases. I’ve got nothing fundamentally wrong with affiliate marketing as long as they explain at the beginning that they are a significant affiliate of the software they are reviewing. Do you think I’ve been too harsh here, Kurt?
[00:43:06.440] – Kurt von Ahnen
You follow the money. Follow the money, right? When I compare the cost of Circle to what I could do with Fluentcommunity on my site. You and I go down the WordPress road, so we are biased. But I look at the dollars, and I look at the result. I go, I would much rather have my own WordPress website hosted where I want to host it and have the tools that I want to have and be able to add plugins and augment the site and create that flexibility than going with somebody’s paid platform. That said, I’m going to throw his name out again. Kevin Geary’s whole thing is on Circle. When you- Oh, yeah.
[00:43:52.070] – Jonathan Denwood
I was a gas that he goes on my podcast, and he’s trying to build a WordPress business, and I’m on the Circle. I wasn’t fundamentally a gas, but part of me thought, Do you realize how you’re coming across, Kevin? Do you understand what you’re saying. But people have to make their own choices, don’t they?
[00:44:20.680] – Kurt von Ahnen
They do. Here was my thinking on that. I have seen a thousand WordPress professionals jump into that circle platform and talk, use it, and share ideas, critiques, and comments. And it’s working. And the user experience as a user, not a manager, has not been largely disappointing. It seems to work. Sometimes, the sign-in gets funky. For example, I got to sign in multiple times, but it’s working. The thing that I found incredibly insightful, and take this for what it’s worth, is that we see what he does on his YouTube channel. He’s the WordPress guy. You’re going to be a professional; be a professional. If you’re doing this, you’re a jump. And then we sign in, and he’s got a circle. And at first I was like, that doesn’t make any sense. Something is grossly misaligned here. But then reality hit, and it was like, wait a minute. He thinks that Circle is a complete enough platform that he can use effectively, without worrying or having the mental baggage of running a community site while building the other things he creates. Now, he can focus on what he needs to focus on and not worry about babysitting some other site.
[00:45:36.960] – Kurt von Ahnen
But I don’t think that’s… I still think it’s a weird disconnect.
[00:45:41.520] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s a difficult one, but you understand it. So we’re going to finish. We’re going to finish up now. What’s the best way for people to learn more about you, Kurt?
[00:45:51.960] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, manana nomas, manana nomas. Com, manana nomas on X, manana nomas on Facebook, or hit me up on LinkedIn, Kurt von Annen on LinkedIn. I’m the only one there that’s called Kurt von Ahnen. When you find me, you know you got the right guy.
[00:46:06.850] – Jonathan Denwood
We’re wrapping it up. We’ll return next week with another great show on marketing or review. We’ll see you soon, folks. Bye.
[00:46:15.510] – Kurt von Ahnen
Bye-bye.
[00:46:19.020] – Jonathan Denwood
I’ve got to go to the.
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