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.  

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

1. Get an NDA 
2. Obtain a copy of the Master Subscription Agreement in a Word editable format so that legal can propose redlined edits
3. Will vendor have access to Customer Data? 
4. Legal will redline a lot of stuff and then get back to you.