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The Community Platform industry is not innovating and they have not been for years. I bet they are listening now with ChatGPT and BARD.
Chris Detzel
Customer Marketing- Online Community- Customer Advisor Board
List of Top Online Community Vendor Platforms
Hivebrite
Higher Logic
Higher Logic
Facilitate value creation within your community
Engage your network, drive collaboration, stay up-to-date, and share best practices.
Capture new business leads, accelerate your recruitment, and manage your brand
Boost your alumni placement statistics, foster a sense of belonging and facilitate fundraising
Higher Logic
Higher Logic
Higher Logic
Online Community Engagement
Creating a vibrant community that delivers on business goals takes more than forum software or social media tools. Our robust community solution is designed to keep your users coming back. They can find support, best practices, peer-to-peer connections, resources, events, and networking, all in one destination.
Khoros
Higher Logic
Higher Logic Vanilla
Khoros is your award-winning, AI-powered partner for today's digital-first CX world
We help brands harness the power of human connection across every digital interaction to stay all-ways connected.
Higher Logic Vanilla
Higher Logic Vanilla
Higher Logic Vanilla
Fuel Growth and Scale with Community
Achieve uniform outcomes throughout various departments by utilizing the leading community software from Higher Logic Vanilla. Establishing and nurturing an active online community demands careful planning and concentration. Begin and expand your community with a software provider that possesses extensive expertise and an exclusive emphasis on community.
INSIDED
Higher Logic Vanilla
INSIDED
Build Community. Grow efficiency. Beat uncertainty.
Get on the path to durable, community-led growth.
Drive customer engagement
Increase customer self-service
Product feedback & updates
Increase customer advocacy
Recommendations From Richard Millington at FeverBee
Higher Logic Vanilla: The Pros and Cons of this Community Platform
Online communities have become a vital part of the digital landscape, bringing people together. Vanilla, a community platform since 2006, is explored in this blog. Vanilla initially offered forums, but it now focuses on serving big enterprise communities. The platform offers deep permissioning capabilities, strong moderation functionality, and analytics that are filtered by categories and allow deep analysis at a granular level. Vanilla scales well as your community grows and is easy to work with, according to its customers.
However, customers have noted some issues with Vanilla. One common complaint is encountering bugs even with new releases. The platform is missing a few standard features found in other community platforms, such as community digests and blogs/articles. While Vanilla offers many of the same features as other platforms, it's not always able to match the quality of them. Vanilla communities can suffer from design issues, according to some users.
Vanilla is a strong community platform that offers great granularity, scalability, and analytics. While there are some areas for improvement, such as bug fixing and missing features, it's still a popular choice for large enterprise communities. If you're looking for a platform that is user-friendly, easy to scale, and offers deep permissioning capabilities, then Vanilla is definitely worth considering. However, if you're looking for a platform with cutting-edge features and design, then other options might be better.
Should you build your online community platform with Verint?
Verint Community Platform is one of the most customizable community platforms available, and its APIs allow users to create a unique experience. Its native blogs and articles feature, along with custom page creation tools, make it easy for members to share long-form advice and reviews. Additionally, Verint offers a broader range of features than most platforms, making it a suitable option for organizations that need a variety of functions.
One of the most significant benefits of Verint Community Platform is its robust security features. It is SOC 2 and ISO 27001 compliant and complies with GDPR, HIPAA, and other standards. Organizations can integrate management systems such as Okta, SailPoint, and multi-factor authentication. The platform also has a supportive community, making it easier for customers to get started with the platform.
However, some users have reported issues with Verint' design, which can appear outdated or poorly designed. The admin experience can also be complicated, with an infinite number of things that can be customized and changed. Additionally, Verint communities can be slow to load, which can be frustrating for users.
Overall, Verint Community Platform is a great option for organizations that need a customizable and secure community platform. While it has some drawbacks, the benefits, including its native blogs and articles, robust security features, and supportive community, make it a platform worth considering.
Should You Build Your Brand's Community On Khoros?
As businesses increasingly seek to connect and engage with customers, community platforms have gained popularity. Khoros, a community platform that has been in existence since 2001 and has undergone changes over the years, including a merger with Spreadfast in 2017. This article explores the advantages and disadvantages of Khoros as a community platform.
The Benefits of Khoros
Khoros provides businesses with a range of advantages, including:
Khoros is easy to use, with a user-friendly interface that makes it easy for users to navigate and engage with content.
Customizable Design: Unlike other community platforms, Khoros allows for a high level of customization, enabling businesses to create a unique user experience. Mobile Compatibility: Khoros has a strong mobile interface, allowing users to access content on-the-go. SEO
Optimization: Khoros pages are optimized for search engines, making it easier for users to find content. Reliable Performance: Khoros has a strong track record of uptime, ensuring that communities are always accessible to users. Ideation and
Gamification: Khoros offers a high level of flexibility in setting up gamification features, and external partners can be used to augment ideation. Accessibility: Khoros complies with high levels of accessibility standards, making it a desirable option in regions where this is law. API Integration: Khoros offers useful APIs that can be used to automate actions within the community, including content syndication.
The Drawbacks of Khoros Despite the many benefits that Khoros offers, there are also some drawbacks to consider, such as:
Khoros has been slow to launch new features, taking years to release groups, and its latest user experience project, Aurora, has experienced several delays. Customization Challenges:
Customizing Khoros can be difficult, requiring expertise in design and template scripting, and relying on the Professional Services team, which may not always meet clients' needs. Professional Services Team: The Professional Services team has been criticized for being slow, difficult to work with, and unable to work in an agile way, which can be frustrating for clients who require customizations.
Staff Turnover: Khoros has had high levels of staff turnover since its merger with Spreadfast, resulting in some clients being passed from one customer success manager to another. Premium Pricing: Khoros is priced at the higher end of the market, making it unaffordable for some organizations.
As a platform that has been in existence for many years, Khoros has transformed from a gaming community platform to a high-volume customer support community platform. While Khoros offers many benefits, including a strong user experience, flexible design and customization, and a good mobile interface, it is important to consider its drawbacks, such as a lack of innovation, customization challenges, and high pricing, when choosing a community platform.
Should You Build Your Community On Insided?
Insided, an Enterprise Community platform founded in 2010, offers a unique set of features that make it stand out from its competitors. With a strong presence in Europe, Insided initially attracted European clients due to its competitive pricing compared to other platforms. However, over the years, the platform has expanded globally and now competes with bigger rivals in North America.
Insided offers a comprehensive range of features, including forums, articles, knowledge bases, ideation, gamification, groups, events, newsletters, product updates, and more. But what sets Insided apart from other platforms is its ease of use, competitive pricing, pre-built automations and APIs, moderation tools, and unique features.
Insided's drag-and-drop interface makes it easy for community professionals to set up, use, and customize their platforms without relying on third-party implementation partners. The pricing structure is competitive, and customers appreciate that they don't have to pay huge fees for professional services or add-on features. Insided's pre-built automations and APIs enable users to do more without custom development using webhooks, and the platform's moderation console is easy to use and provides a range of tools for managing user-generated content.
Insided's unique features include the phrasing tool, which allows users to rename modules and components to suit their brand and approach to their community, and embeddable widgets that let users see related content from the community and the Help Center within the product app.
Overall, Insided provides a user-friendly and robust platform that is a great option for businesses looking to build and engage with their online communities. Insided's customers are generally satisfied with the platform and appreciate its ease of use, competitive pricing, and unique features.
Should You Build Your Community On Salesforce Community Cloud?
Salesforce Community Cloud is a customer relationship management platform with an integrated Community product. Although Salesforce communities are popular among top brands, the article aims to compare it to other community platforms.
Salesforce Community Cloud is a tool that helps businesses manage and analyze customer interactions throughout the customer life cycle. It is a comprehensive platform with features for sales, customer support, marketing, and commerce. The platform has seen a period of rapid growth since its launch in 2013 by leveraging its existing customer base.
Compared to other community platforms, Salesforce stands out for its excellent integration and high-security requirements. It provides a seamless experience for users on the same system and ensures data is stored securely.
However, there are some drawbacks to using Salesforce as a community platform. Customization can be complex and limited, which requires significant time and financial investment. Additionally, the platform has poor analytics and reporting, subpar SEO, outdated user experience, slow loading times, and a primitive knowledge base.
In conclusion, while Salesforce Community Cloud is widely used by top brands, it is primarily a CRM platform, and the community is just a small part of what it offers. It is essential to weigh the pros and cons before choosing Salesforce as your community platform.
Online Community Vendor Selection
When selecting top or best Online Community Vendor Platforms, I use some of these requirements below. I think this tool should be useful when you start looking at online community vendors. Note, the Community Platform Industry is lacking innovation. They have not innovated for years. Here are some of my thoughts on how they can start thinking about innovation. Revolutionizing Online Community Platforms with AI and ChatGPT
Read my blog here on Online Community Vendor Platform Selection. I go into detail on why I chose the Online Community Vendor for my companies as a B2B Software vendor.
Note: If you scroll all the way down, I have added some of the elite Online Community Vendors to this page.
Listen to this podcast around how I selected a Vendor here. I share an inside look at how I chose a online community platform vendor, best practices for evaluating platform vendors, and an in-depth look at the process of standing up a brand new community program.
Here are some crucial things to look at when selection an online community platform.
Online Community Vendor selection criteria:
Hosting
Hosted and provided as "software-as-a-service" (where hosted? Amazon?)
System Integration and Single Sign-On (SSO)
- Fully integrated with Salesforce including ability to write back individual community engagement to Salesforce.
- Integration supports; individual profile creation/updates, group/community creation, group/community security and group/community auto-population.
- Allows for members to access permitted content within the application with a login integrated with main site authentication.
- Fully integrated with Salesforce to show support case info and status
- Fully integrated with Salesforce to show entitlements and renewal timing/status
- Fully integrated with LMS to show training class info and status
- Fully integrated with Gainsight - Need the ability to look at health scores depending on their activity. So this would be a feed into the GS
- Social media marketing and management integrations (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest)
- Digital Customer Service Integrations (Google Business Messages, Apple Business Chat, WhatsApp, email)
Branding
- Ability to customize design elements such as logos, fonts, colors, borders, link behaviors, etc.
Accessibility
- End-user interface meets accessibility standards for use via screen readers.
Mobile Capabilities
- Fully Responsive Interface automatically adjusts display to function on any device such as desktop, smartphone, tablet, etc.
- Online Community mobile app
Community Content Management
- Full control over community navigation/structure and naming conventions.
- WYSIWYG and HTML editor for page creation/editing.
- Multi-lingual content support.
- Ability to create links to any other internal or external web pages.
- Ability to upload and/or embed multiple images (JPEG, GIF, etc.)
- Ability to edit style sheets directly.
Customer Profile Administration
- Ability to customize fields in member profile from the CRM or specific to community profile.
Customer Profile Self-Management
- Ability for member to create and manage their own profile
- Ability for member to manage data privacy
- Display a list of all emails sent by member.
- Display a list of all groups of which a member is a member, including permissions attributed to each group.
Member Communication
- Ability for members to send each other "personal messages" or PMs
- Ability for members to access PM mailbox to read new, saved, and sent PMs.
- Ability for administrator to send mass email or mass PM to all members.
- Ability for administrator to display messages on the login page, site homepage, member personal pages, application homepages (e.g. discussion board), group home pages, or any forms.
Groups/Communities
- Ability to show content either public or private
- Ability to create unlimited groups/communities.
- Groups/Communities can be automatically created based on CRM integration or manually.
- Ability to restrict community access based on client defined security groups.
- Each group can have its own homepage, participant list, discussion, calendar blog, and library.
- A group can be made private so that its existence is not visible to members other than invited members of the group.
- Each group is capable of having one or more administrators/moderators.
- Communities can be auto populated based on CRM data, can be open for users with appropriate security to join, or both.
Discussion Management
- Discussions permit member to use multiple email addresses.
- Discussion permits member to select delivery mechanism on a group-by-group basis.
- Ability to view, create, edit, archive, delete, threads (based on permissions.)
- Ability to stick/unstick a post so that it appears at the beginning of a thread (based on permissions.)
- Auto filter for SPAM Ability to quarantine discussions/posts and approve for posting
Discussion Post/Reply
- Both real-time and daily digest notifications support reply via email.
- Ability for members to see forums/threads that have new posts since their last visit.
- Ability to subscribe to discussion with multiple options; real time, daily, weekly, and including consolidated options.
- Discussion posts can be created via email by sending a message to the groups email address. This includes support for attachments.
- Ability for members to rate (up/down) best answers/replies
- Automated ranking - Top 10 FAQ’s/product based on likes or views
Libraries
- Includes a community library for each group or separate stand-alone libraries. (Knowledge base?) Automated ranking - Top 10 FAQ’s/product based on likes or views
- Allows for upload of all types of documents images, video, and audio files.
- Rating/Recommend, "favoriting", and commenting are available for all library items
- Administrators can manage/add folders and folders can be nested.
Blogs
- Blog capabilities, including ability for members to leave comments for blog entries, WYSIWYG editor for blogs, ability to link to blog, and to create categories and assign specific blog to a category.
Community Directory
- Recognize from Salesforce members who have indicated that they would like to opt out of being listed in the directory.
- Lapsed & terminated members are automatically excluded from the membership section of the directory.
Search
- Search is community wide and is executed on the entire object, including title, body of attachments, and metadata.
- Search results based on group permissions of searcher.
- Taxonomy based search
- Search results are presented with drill down "facets". (what facets?)
Polling
- Ability to use polling for management of feature requests
Automation Rules
- Automation Rules and corresponding emails/ribbons are pre-configured but can also be added/edited by non technical administrators.
- Community actions can trigger additional actions like badging or separate messages.
- Automation Rules can be combined to create campaigns, such as new member onboarding or advocacy engagement journey.
Ad/Sponsorship Support
- Ad space is available within community pages and discussions. (ads - not third party - or tech partners?)
Reporting
- Reporting should demonstrate items like participation, engagement, and topic trends from discussions
- Individual engagement data can be written back to the CRM
Events
- Management of community events and meetups
- Create and manage your in-person or virtual events in a dedicated space complete with event branding and customizable design.
- Integrate registration and payment information with your CRM for consistent tracking.
- Leverage an online network of industry leaders, speakers, and subject matter experts for
customers to connect with before, during, and after the event. - Host Q&As and post a library of resources
Customer Advocacy
- Ability to offer gamification (up/down voting, polls, competitions)
- Recognize and reward top contributors (ability to feature and raise profile of most prolific posters)
Ideation
- Allow customers to upvote ideas from other customers
- Jira integration with platform to write back customer ideas, votes etc..
Keep in mind the below as well from an internal Legal and Security Audit standpoint.
What do I need to think about for an internal vendor Security for Vendor?
1. The vendor name and the product(s) you are interested in- what Company or Customer information will be accessible, managed, processed in the proposed product(s)
2. Is any of that information personally identifiable or sensitive?
3. Will the proposed product(s) integrate with any Company systems
- e.g., the Salesforce instance or business systems
4. What is the deployment/access model: will company leverage / connect to their cloud hosted platform, or would their product be dropped (like a client install) inside Company's cloud environment or another Company instance like Salesforce?
5. If you know the licensing model at this point (e.g., payment frequency and who inside Company owns that…)
Once an NDA is in place with them, they will need you to request the vendors most recent SOC 2 Type II report and also any reports or findings resulting from a 3rd party penetration / vulnerability test they may subscribe to.
Online Community Vendor Selection - The Legal Stuff
- Get an NDA
- Obtain a copy of the Master Subscription Agreement in a Word editable format so that legal can propose redlined edits
- Will vendor have access to Customer Data?
- Legal will redline a lot of stuff and then get back to you.
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