Most Circle communities ask new members three things. Your name, your email, and maybe a bio that nobody fills out.
And then we wonder why we don’t know who’s actually in the room. Who’s just getting started and who’s been doing this for ten years. Who’s building a membership and who’s running a course. Who found you through a podcast and who came from a referral.
Circle gives you a way to ask. Circle custom profile fields are the feature most people either don’t know exists or don’t realize how much it can do.
Here’s how to set one up, which field type to choose, and how to turn what members tell you into filters, tags, workflows, and broadcasts that run without you.
What Are Circle Custom Profile Fields?
Questions you add to a member’s Circle profile on top of the built-in name, headline, bio, and location. They do three jobs at once.
They help members find each other. A public field like “what are you building” shows up on someone’s profile, so the right people can find each other without you making introductions.
They tell you who’s in your community. Some fields can be internal, which means only admins see them. Members never do.
They power everything else. Every answer becomes something you can filter by, build a workflow around, or use to send a broadcast to exactly the right people.
One note before you go looking for them: custom profile fields are included on Circle’s Business plan and above. On Professional, you can add them on.
They’re also the other half of a pair. Member tags are how you label people. Profile fields are how members tell you about themselves.
Where Do You Set Up Profile Fields in Circle?
Under Audience, then Profile Fields. From there you can add a new field or manage the ones you already have, including where each one shows up.
Choose Manage and you’ll see your fields across three views: the sign-up form, edit profile, and view profile. You can change the visibility of any field you’ve added, including Circle’s built-in ones like headline, bio, and location. The only ones you can’t hide are things like name and time zone.
Choose Add Field and you’ll set:
- Name. The question as members see it.
- Type. Short text, long text, dropdown, link, number, or checkbox.
- Key. Only if you need it for an API call.
- Placeholder and description. A hint about what you want there.
- Preferences. Mark this field required, and internal field.
- Form locations. Sign-up form, edit profile, and visible on full profile view.
That last one is where most people get confused, so let’s slow down on it.
Which Form Should a Profile Field Appear On?
All three are separate decisions and you can mix them. A field can be on one, two, or all three, and that combination decides who answers it and who sees the answer.
The sign-up form
What someone fills out when they join. It’s the only moment you have every new member’s full attention, so it’s where you ask what you need on day one.
The edit profile form
Where members update their profile any time after they join. It’s also how existing members answer any new questions you add later.
The full profile view
What everyone else sees when they click someone’s profile. This is the one that decides whether an answer is public.
Here’s why mixing them matters. A field can be on the sign-up form and edit profile but not visible on the profile, so the member answers it and can update it, but nobody else sees it. That’s ideal for things like goals or budget, where you want the information and it doesn’t need to be on display. A field can be on edit profile and visible on the profile but not on sign-up, which is perfect for nice-to-have things like a website or a LinkedIn link. Members add those when they’re ready without slowing down signup.
Required works wherever the field appears. On the sign-up form they can’t finish joining without it. On edit profile they can’t save their profile without completing it.
So here’s my rule:
- Sign-up gets two or three questions, the ones you’ll act on right away, and those are the only ones I make required
- Edit profile gets everything else
- View profile shows only what helps members find each other
Every question you add at signup is one more step between someone and getting inside.
Which Field Type Should You Choose?
Choose based on what you’ll do with the answer. If you ever want to filter by it, don’t make it a text field. Make it a dropdown or a checkbox.
Ask “what stage is your business in” as a text field and you’ll get 40 different answers. Just starting. Year one. New-ish. You can’t filter that. Give people a dropdown with four clear options and you can see everyone in each stage in two clicks.
Text fields are for self-expression. Dropdowns and checkboxes are for anything you want to act on.
The second rule is the same test I give for tags: only ask what you’ll use. Before you add a field, ask yourself whether you’ll filter by it, message that group, or automate something with it. For public fields, ask whether it helps members find each other. If the answer is no, skip it.
What Can You Do With the Answers?
Filter, message, and automate. Every field becomes a filter on Manage Audience, an audience rule in broadcasts, and both a rule and a trigger in workflows.
On the Manage Audience page you can filter members by any profile field, so you can pull up everyone who said they’re running a membership in about five seconds. In broadcasts, you use profile fields to choose who gets an email, so the note about your course creator workshop goes to course creators and not to everyone.
Workflows are where this gets good, because there’s a Profile field updated trigger. When a member answers a question, Circle can act on it.
Here’s the one I set up in almost every community. Say you have a dropdown asking what are you building, with options like membership, course, and coaching program. Build a workflow on the Profile field updated trigger, and when someone picks membership, Circle adds a membership tag. If the tag is public it shows up on their profile so other membership builders can find them. If it’s private, you now have a clean group you can filter, message, and automate around.
The member answered one question. Circle did the rest. Nobody tagged a single person by hand, which is the whole point, because hand-tagging is the first thing to fall apart the week you get busy.
You can take the same answer further:
- Add the member to a space built for people like them
- Send a welcome message pointing at the right resources, so someone who picks “just getting started” gets your starter material and someone who picks “scaling” gets something else entirely
- Use internal fields for things like how someone heard about you or which program they came from. Members never see them, and you can filter and automate with them like any other field.
One last thing. If you add a new field to a community that already has members, Circle won’t tell anyone it’s there. Post about it in your announcement space or send a quick email asking members to update their profile.
Try This Prompt
Use this when you’re deciding which questions to ask, before you build anything in Circle.
“I run a [type of community] for [who it serves]. The main ways I serve members differently are [describe, for example beginners vs. advanced, or membership builders vs. course creators]. Give me three profile field questions worth asking on my sign-up form, with the field type for each and the exact dropdown options where a dropdown makes sense. For each one, tell me what I’d actually do with the answer: filter, broadcast, workflow, or help members find each other. Then list the questions that belong on edit profile instead, and flag any I should make internal.”
It drafts the questions. You decide which three earn a spot at signup.
Stop Guessing Who’s in the Room
The simple version: pick two or three questions that would change how you serve your members. Make the ones you’ll act on dropdowns or checkboxes. Put those on your sign-up form and keep everything else on edit profile. Show only what helps people connect, then build one workflow that turns an answer into a tag.
Tags are how you label members. Profile fields are how they tell you who they are. Connect the two with a workflow and you know exactly who’s in your community without lifting a finger.
That’s also the difference between a community you run on memory and one you can actually see. Guessing who’s in the room is what makes a membership feel heavy, and it’s usually the reason the first week lands flat for a brand new member.
Ask better questions at the door, and everything downstream gets easier.
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If you would rather not do this part alone, Rachel and the team build, migrate, and run communities for founders who need it done properly the first time. Talk to the team
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