Online community software comparison

Brilliant Directories Brilliant Directories is an all-in-one directory platform designed to help businesses design and launch online communities. OnSemble FrontRunners OnSemble is more than an employee intranet that keeps everyone connected — it's a digital workplace that makes employees feel valued. Website Toolbox FrontRunners Website Toolbox is a community management platform that helps businesses create discussion forums to resolve prospects' queries, receive feedback and facilitate collaboration among customers.

NiceJob NiceJob is a cloud-based reputation management solution that helps organizations manage reviews, referrals and sales. Centercode Centercode is a cloud-based customer validation solution that helps businesses manage processes for capturing client feedback using alpha, beta and delta tests. Connect Space Mobile Connect Space is an event management platform that streamlines the process. View all products. Popular Comparisons. Buyers guide Last Updated: October 3, Here's what we'll cover: What Is Community Software?

Businesses and associations build online communities to achieve several goals: Increase brand awareness Grow their customer base Support customers throughout the entire customer life cycle i.

Often includes search functionality or a directory. Can include membership dues management works with merchant account platforms to manage paid memberships. Content management Create web content and track how users interact with different types of content. Can include process documentation, wikis, articles and more. Set up online and emailed content alerts for when content is added or updated.

Forums and discussion boards Facilitate communication and collaboration among users, allowing them to follow threads, share ideas, post questions and respond to inquires.

Often includes the ability to send private messages as well. Blog creation and management Set up blogs for your business, employees or individual members. Allow users to create and share content, organize content using tags and other classifications and subscribe to blogs. Includes security settings, user permissions and the ability to turn commenting on or off. Invite users to post scores on their profile or share to their social networks. Media libraries Upload and store files in a centralized, searchable location.

Enlist users in library maintenance by allowing them to tag out of date files, broken links etc. Event management Showcase events and conferences and work with your partners to cultivate sponsorships and your customers to build out your attendees. Reporting and analytics Includes dashboards and reports for several metrics, including member activity, site interactions, content shares and many more. Schedule one-off or recurring reports, view data in various graphical displays and export data to Excel.

Create custom reports to track trends unique to your business or industry. Types of Community Software: Community software can create and manage several types of communities. These can generally be grouped as follows: Internal business tools. Key Considerations for Community Software Buyers Keep the following purchase considerations in mind as you compare solutions: Open-source community software.

Learn how products are chosen. Reviews analysis period: The reviews analysis period spans two years and ends on the 15th of the month prior to publication. Create web content and track how users interact with different types of content. Facilitate communication and collaboration among users, allowing them to follow threads, share ideas, post questions and respond to inquires. Set up blogs for your business, employees or individual members. It even has an iOS app, which makes it easy for your iPhone-using members to access your community.

Finally, Circle offers direct integration with WordPress, as well as with popular membership platforms like Memberful and MemberSpace. While Circle is a relatively new option in the market, it is already being used by some big names in the industry.

It will work great for all types of users including course creators, membership site owners, online coaches, SaaS product brands, etc. You can create events inside your community or sub-groups and you can also host live events through the native Zoom integration.

The first such feature is for gamifying your community and boosting engagement. BuddyBoss makes use of GamiPress, a free plugin that lets you recognize members with points, ranks, rewards and badges based on their activity in the community.

Moreover, you can sell access to your community and courses through LearnDash, WooCommerce or popular membership plugins.

Finally, BuddyBoss gives you the option to get your own branded mobile apps for iOS and Android devices. Your members can access your community and courses through the app and it also supports features for push notifications, in-app purchases, etc. The biggest advantage of using a WordPress-based community plugin is the extendability of functionality. Even if native support is lacking for certain features, you can find another plugin or add-on that allows you to add what you need.

Tribe makes it possible to create a fully white-label experience and customize everything from the logo and widgets to colors and domain. When it comes to content creation, Tribe allows you to write articles, post images and videos, and to ask questions and submit answers. It also allows you to categorize content and offers seamless discovery through a personalized activity feed. What I like about Tribe is the fact that it supports native gamification features to drive community engagement, including badges, points, virtual currency and a leaderboard system.

Another great thing about Tribe is the fact that it has a library of apps and integrations which can be used to extend the functionality of your community. For example, it has a SSO app which facilitates integration with other platforms like WordPress and provides easy access for users with their existing credentials.

Having said that, there are a couple of important features missing from the platform. The first is the lack of native live stream functionality or even the ability to integrate with live streaming solutions like Zoom.

As far as pricing is concerned, Tribe has a Free plan which gives you access to all the essential features including the ability to use a custom domain. Even if a customer is less eager to popularize your brand, you can extract valuable information from his feedback, and build a long-lasting relationship of trust and commitment.

The surveys, discussions, and stand-alone open-end questions may not exactly produce quantitative data, but they can certainly reveal the competitive advantages and downsides of your product.

Pricing details are an important consideration when you evaluate SaaS vendors. Ask the provider if they offer price safeguards and contractual flexibility. Plus, to get pricing predictability, consumers are forced to subscribe to long-term contracts.

Ask about easy exit policies that enable you to migrate to another provider if you are not happy with the services offered by the current one. Select a vendor that offers a handy standard annual termination facility as well as long-term price protection.

Another crucial aspect to consider is whether the cloud vendor meets compliance and security requirements. Your firm is answerable to staff members, consumers, business partners, and regulators. Therefore, you should select a provider that has implemented a technically sound and comprehensive security system.

Ask the potential vendor about the practices and systems they use to protect your private data. Do they meet general as well as industry-specific compliance and security standards? Do they provide special measures to meet the unique security needs of your particular industry?

Get satisfactory answers to these questions before you make the investment. The best online community software is Wrike. It gives you tools to moderate and manage an entire team a la online community, with shareable dashboards, talk and discuss with your team, prioritize tasks, and monitor the overall status of a project and your goals. Her decision to focus on these two industries was spurred by their explosive growth in the last decade, much of it she attributes to the emergence of disruptive technologies and the quick adoption by businesses that were quick to recognize their values to their organizations.

She has covered all the major developments in SaaS and B2B software solutions, from the introduction of massive ERPs to small business platforms to help startups on their way to success. Updated December 13, FinancesOnline is available for free for all business professionals interested in an efficient way to find top-notch SaaS solutions.

We are able to keep our service free of charge thanks to cooperation with some of the vendors, who are willing to pay us for traffic and sales opportunities provided by our website. Home Online Community Software. Why is FinancesOnline free. What is Online Community Software? Show less How was this ranking made? Select more products to compare.

Wrike Our score: 9. Zimbra Our score: 8. Vanilla Forums Our score: 8. Workplace by Facebook Our score: 8. Zoho Discussions Our score: 8. Magentrix Our score: 8. Zoho Connect Our score: 8. IBM Connections Our score: 8. Cliqtalk Our score: 8. Table of contents. What Is Online Community Software? The unexpected facts The way we have put it so far, running your own community platform sounds like a reasonable solution, but the thing with reasonable solutions is that they are never easy to make.

Get to Know Each Product with Free Trial You can start your search for the best online community tools by signing up for the free trials or demo offered by leading online community software providers to do a comparison of the different features. Targeted Businesses B2B companies use online community software to get closer to their customers. Small and medium-sized businesses use the solution to help customers get more value from their services and products.

Much easier han lots of Stick posts in Facebook. About Eleyo : Make life easier for administrations and parents with Eleyo; it is cloud-based program management solution for the schools offers childcare feature where families can manage all of their childcare activities, enrichment feature for registration, preschool feature, facilities management feature and much more.

The support is the best. About Mobilize : Empower the community with the best membership community platform; Mobilize offers a modern experience where the user can get intuitive interface combining beautiful themes; the user can only focus on member-driven professionals networks through the software. The user can also find personalized membership community, member directory, outreach tools and much more through Mobilize.

The software is also available for iOS and Android devices. Community Software uses tools and methodologies to create platforms that help businesses manage all work programs from one location and also give easy access to all employees. It provides a great community experience to millions of people all over the world.

Also known as Social software, Collaboration Software or Groupware, Community Software helps in building valuable online communities on a digital collaboration platform where users can team up on projects, share knowledge, give ideas and drive innovations leading to a boost in productivity. Best Community Software have transcended the physical barriers and built community-powered robust platforms where interactive communication and information sharing takes place in ways like never before.

Let delve into some features that a Community Software must-have for your online community-. Loyal customers and members can improve participation and enrich user experience. Your Community Software should provide scope for creating virtual hangouts for people to share knowledge and innovative ideas start discussions and even seek out experts in their field.

Content is the king. Your customers visit and re-visit your site in the hope of getting an engaging and valuable content. Today, people access social media platforms and online community sites through various devices. Your community software should be compatible with all devices to offer your online community the flexibility to read, search and share ideas from any device.

This way they actively contribute, share and help increase engagement, leading to a more active community. Within your online community, you should have a foolproof security system that allows interactions strictly between the members only.

Every aspect right from accessing the content to making connections to attending events and accessing modules should have well-defined privacy options and safety guidelines.

People love to present themselves in a profile that showcases their best personality traits. Community Software should provide your users with rich user profiles with a high level of customization.

Single sign-on or SSO is a tool which helps one see the user-profile with a single step login. Such a profile will include details like name, social profile, photo, organization name, designation, email, contact details, DOB, gender and areas of interest. The online community software should provide advanced custom reports to track down the most popular searches.

Community Software helps your brand connect with your customers to create dynamic human networks. This, in turn, transforms all inputs of search, evaluation, purchase, and support-interactions into valuable learning experiences which can be constructively used to boost your brand value.

Online community software has become a hotspot for finding and instantly adding value to prospects by hosting conversations in your community. With innovative features, you can even add relevant content to each domain of the customer journey. Studies have shown that mature communities draw 70 percent of traffic from search engines, on an average.

Community platform software helps reduce service costs. According to the latest reports, by , almost 85 percent of all customer interactions will be self-service based.

The online community provides a trusted and self-guided knowledge base where customers can find answers for themselves. Support is also provided for customers, by customers peer-to-peer help in an interactive environment.

Many times, customers who know your brand best generate creative ideas.