Great community platforms

nickwo

Hi all!  New to the community, and curious about.....communities.  What platforms are best?  I know of a few, but not too familiar with the space just yet.  What would you recommend?

Brian O'Keeffe

I used Salesforce for years. Very easy, if you are already using Salesforce. I reviewed a bunch over the past year. Insided was one I liked a lot. (I do not work for them or get a kickback!)

Heather Wendt

Hi @nickwo! Thanks for your question...this is definitely a topic that is increasing in relevance for CS.

Richard Millington (a well-known community thought leader) is beginning to go through various community platforms and talk about their strengths and weaknesses.

So far he has reviewed SalesForce and Khoros on his Youtube channel. He appears to be reviewing 1 per week although it is a new overview, so that might not be consistent.

What I like about it is that he is not doing this FOR any company, simply looking at what makes the platform good and what to look out for as far as weaknesses go from a strong understanding of community and the technology aspect.

There are a variety of options, and the best advice I can give is to begin looking at what you would like the community platform to do (integrations, knoweldge base, ideation, development resources, etc.) so that when you begin to do your research you will automatically be able to eliminate some options that are not a good fit.

Would love to hear from others who are currently using community in CS!

Sabhar Jain

Hey @nickwo : I have tried : rocketlane, teamwork they work seamless.

Suggest to try them out, they have trials as well.

Mikael Blaisdell

There are 18 vendors listed for the Online Discussion Groups category on the CustomerSuccessTechMap.com page of the CSA site.

I definitely agree with Heather that the starting point is to define what you want that online community to do in alignment with your company's global strategy for its corporate ecosystem.

Katherine Olivier

Hi @nickwo, the best community platform is the one that will be most effective for achieving your goals :)

It's impossible to answer without knowing what kind of community you are building, who your audience is, what the desired outcomes are, etc.

If it's a B2C Q&A community where the ROI is high SEO and a reduction in support calls, a forum might be best. If it's a B2B networking community than something more private and chat based might be better.

Good news is there are a lot of options out there!

Second @Heather Wendt above that Richard Millington has a ton of really insightful content on choosing a platform and his channel is well worth checking out. 😊