Toolset: Community platforms

Alissa Wilczynski

I'm planning to implement a new community tool to replace our sad, outdated forums. We'll use the new community both for customer success, technical support, and marketing outcomes. I'm debating between inSided and Higher Logic. If anyone in the community has already gone through a similar debate or has familiarity with either product, I'd be very grateful to hear your feedback! Feel free to PM me on this topic if you're reluctant to share publicly. Thanks in advance!

Scott Hopper

Well, talk about how you will use the platforms to achieve each end goal.  This is a Higher Logic community so if there are things you don't like about it then you have one set of cons defined.  I'm not familiar with the other platform.  My question would also be what makes your current forum SAD!.

Alissa Wilczynski

My current tool is sad because it is just a static list of threads and posts. It takes about 9 seconds to even load the first page, and it's not easy enough to mark something as an answer to a question, so all the threads appear unanswered.

I will say that the major use of the platform will be to communicate between my company and our users. Some users will communicate with one another, but it's not nearly as much of a community as GGR is, for example. One goal will be to make questions & answers available for future customers to learn from rather than sharing everything in 1:1 communications. Another is to create an opt-in informational stream that customers can use to stay connected with us, rather than blasting everything out via emails.

Alissa Wilczynski

Oh, I'd say we'll also use the community for finding customers to participate in (and provide feedback on) alpha/beta programs for upcoming software releases and polling customers to find out hot topics for product development or discussion/educational topics to cover.