If your school runs its alumni network on Hivebrite, keep it. This post has no case for switching. It answers something smaller. Say the next exec-ed cohort flies in for a five-day residency in March, 140 people spread over six hotels, and somebody asks whether the community platform can show who is staying where. Hivebrite, Circle and Mighty Networks each have a feature that sounds like it might. We read their pages, pricing and contracts on 18 October 2026 to find out.
What each one is
Hivebrite is a Paris company that has sold private community platforms since 2015, mostly to universities, alumni associations and professional bodies, and it counts more than 2,000 customers. A 2021 announcement listed Harvard Business School, Columbia Business School and Henley among them. You get a branded site with a member directory, chapters, news, jobs, mentoring, donations and an event module with ticket types and QR check-in.
Circle and Mighty Networks grew up on the creator side, where coaches and course sellers run paid memberships with courses, live streams, chat and events. Cohorts use them as well. Neither names a business school among its customers, and the nearest we found were Augment Business School, an online programme for founders, on Circle, and the Harvard Black Alumni Society on Mighty.
heer(ish) is a link for one event. An attendee opens it on a phone and adds a card. Name, photo, hotel, the days they're in town. Then they see a map of the hotels the cohort is in and a list of plans anyone can put up, like dinner at eight or a run before the first session. There's no feed and no jobs board. Two weeks after the last day, all of it is deleted.
| Hivebrite | Circle | Mighty Networks | heer(ish) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | From $10,740 a year. $895 a month, billed annually. The mobile app costs extra. The contract renews every year, needs 90 days' notice and rises 6% a year. | From $1,068 a year. $89 a month, billed annually, plus 2% of payments. A branded app needs Circle Plus, priced by sales. | From $950 a year. $79 a month, plus 2% of payments. Branded apps and a signed DPA need Mighty Pro, priced by sales. | Free up to 50 attendees. Larger events pay once per event, never a subscription. For now the price is agreed with us. |
| Joining | Request, then approval. On the alumni sites we looked at, an admin approves each request to join, unless the school uses single sign-on. | An account. A password or an emailed code. Free events take RSVPs from guests with a name and an email. | An account, always. Whatever the privacy setting, with a separate profile in each network. | The link. Then whatever the organiser chose: a shared passphrase, a link by email, or Google, LinkedIn, Apple or the cohort's Mighty community. Nothing to install. |
| Location | Home city. A world map from each profile, and "Who's around me" in the app. | Home city. A city-level map from each profile since March 2026, on every plan, web and desktop only. | Within 300 km. No map. "Members Near You" groups people by their profile location. | This week's hotel. With arrival and departure days. Never a distance. |
| Attendee plans | Group leaders. Leaders and volunteers create events. We found nothing that lets every member do it. | If an admin allows it. Switched on per space. Members see how many are going, not who. | If the host allows it. Switched on per space. | Anyone. A card is all it takes, and everyone sees who's coming. |
| Beyond the event | Most of an alumni office. Ticketing, chapters, jobs, mentoring, donations, Salesforce and HubSpot. | A creator business. Courses, live streams, paid memberships, ticketed events, an API. | Courses and memberships. Cohort courses, live streams, paid memberships. | Nothing. |
| Data after the event | Kept for the contract. Deleted 30 to 90 days after it ends. Hosted in the EU, US, Switzerland or Australia. | Kept for the contract. Deleted 30 days after it ends. US hosting only. | Kept while the network exists. Hosts "may retain" a member's data after they leave. US hosting. | Deleted after the event. 14 days after the last day for an EU or UK event, 30 for a US one, with a deletion receipt. |
| Time to launch | 8 to 12 weeks. For an enterprise setup, by Hivebrite's own estimate. | Days. A 14-day trial with no card. | Days. A 14-day trial with no card. | An afternoon. Above 50 attendees, once the price is agreed. |
Where they win
An alumni office wants a directory of 20,000 graduates that still works in 2036, plus mentoring, fundraising, chapters in 40 cities with their own admins and a sync with Salesforce. That is Hivebrite's job, and nothing in heer(ish) touches it. Hivebrite's paperwork is also what a procurement office asks for: ISO 27001, a published DPA and sub-processor list, and a choice of four hosting regions. Reviewers on G2 and Capterra keep coming back to its support team. Its map earns its keep between residencies too, when a graduate lands in Singapore for work and wants to know who lives there.
Between modules the cohort needs somewhere to keep talking, and Circle and Mighty are built for that, with cohort courses, live sessions and a feed people open on a Tuesday night. Circle puts its member map on the $89 plan, which is cheap for a permanent network.
heer(ish) has no SAML, no CRM sync and no security certification. It's also new: the first event it served was a cohort gathering in Chicago.
Where heer(ish) wins
A profile location is a home city. During a residency it's wrong for everybody at the same moment, because 140 people who live in 30 countries are all in Barcelona. What they ask each other is which hotel, and who is still around on Saturday. None of the three stores a hotel or the days someone is in town, and heer(ish) by choice never shows a distance (here's why).
An exec-ed cohort arriving for its first module often has no alumni record yet, so it isn't in the alumni community, and a request that waits for approval loses people on the first day. In Chicago the link came from a participant and nobody promoted it. Of the 300-plus who travelled, a little under half put a card up.
Which hotel someone sleeps in on which nights is sensitive, and in a community platform it stays for the life of the contract unless an admin goes back and cleans it up. On heer(ish) the purge date is set when the event is created, and it can be brought forward but never pushed back. After it passes, cards, photos and plans are gone from live systems within 24 hours, and backups are overwritten within 30 days.
Use both
Post the heer(ish) link in the cohort's Hivebrite group a week before arrival, next to the agenda. People find each other at the hotels. The ones who get on keep talking in Hivebrite long after the map is gone, which is where an alumni office wants them anyway. On Circle, the link goes into a space. Mighty Networks goes a step further, because attendees can sign in to heer(ish) with their account in the cohort's own Mighty community, so every card belongs to someone the community already knows. That needs Mighty's Scale plan or higher, the tier where a network can create an OAuth app.