Which Community Forums Software / Platform

[Pato]

We are trying to start Community Forums in our company. The company makes high-tech products and wants to use forums to support customers. We could use help in suggestions on which forum software or platform we should use. Among the candidates are:
Vanilla, Khoros, Discourse, Verint, Zendesk, XenForo, WordPress using bbPress.

Can you please take a look at this list and share your thoughts and impressions. We want it to be suitable for a professional engineering audience of a high-tech company. It should be configurable so that our corporate brand look-and-feel styles are reflected in there. We want it to be friendly for those seeking coding help (ability to post code, connect wtih Github etc.) Which are the good ones? Is there any forums software that is missing from my list and we should be looking at it?

I noticed that many of these forums software have other features (blogs, articles, media, ideation etc.). We just need forums for now, but should we use this as a criteria for evaluation since we may need them in future?

We are leaning towards using SaaS hosting, but I could use some advice on this front.

I understand that this must be a question that has been asked very frequently, but I could use your advice. We are looking for a modern and good forum software.

 

[LeadCrow]

How significant is your budget for the entire stack and its ongoing upkeep?
Do you need the software integrating with an intranet or active directory?
Prefer to manage it inhouse or as SaaS?

 

[Pato]

How significant is your budget for the entire stack and its ongoing upkeep?
Do you need the software integrating with an intranet or active directory?
Prefer to manage it inhouse or as SaaS?

We've got a little flexibility in budget. It is hard to put a number but anything less than $40,000-$60,000/yr. might be acceptable.

We *do* need Single-Sign-On (SSO) for making our customer experience good. We would like customers to post software code and ask questions about it. So some kind of a integration with GitHub would be nice (is it even possible?).

Integration with other features is not important for now but in future we may want integration with some enterprise apps. I am not sure which ones that would be, honestly.

 

[LeadCrow]

You might find Invisionpower's IPB suite suitable. Naturally do check wether it suits your purposes and future plans.

- higher priority entreprise support.
- SaaS + budget-effective selfhosted edition
- several apps and features available in the suite, all covered by company support (removes dependency on 3rd-party addons whose support policies might not suit companies).

 

[Pato]

You might find Invisionpower's IPB suite suitable. Naturally do check wether it suits your purposes and future plans.

- higher priority entreprise support.
- SaaS + budget-effective selfhosted edition
- several apps and features available in the suite, all covered by company support (removes dependency on 3rd-party addons whose support policies might not suit companies).

Thanks for the suggestion. I have sent several emails to them but they haven't bothered to respond. Sent one again today.

Is it in active development? Does it have modern features and look-and-feel?

 

[LeadCrow]

The company forum runs a roughly vanilla installation you can browse. If you need firsthand trial after that, you may generate a free demo instance.

 

[Pato]

Are there any commercial companies using XenForo? I am trying to see example hosting of forums for a large enterprise company and looked at this thread on XenForo https://xenforo.com/community/threads/the-large-xenforo-forums-list.87974/ but couldn't find any relevant examples.

 

[Jura]

Invision Power Board for strong selection of out of the box features. Some nice official and third-party add-on stuff like blogs, link directory, gallery, etc.

Discourse is free, but mostly focuses on tags instead of forum sections. Very modern looking for a forum to accompany a website.

Make sure you look at if the forum software can be converted to other software if you change your mind.

 

[Joel R]

Thanks for the suggestion. I have sent several emails to them but they haven't bothered to respond. Sent one again today.

Is it in active development? Does it have modern features and look-and-feel?

Hi, I'm a community advocate for Invision Community and I've escalated your request in case Sales doesn't respond.

Invision Community (sometimes called IPBoard) can be a very appropriate solution for your company:
- They offer SaaS hosting on their cloud so you don't need to worry about server administration or configuration. You can also self host, so you have both choices.
- They're one of the few on your list that has a true platform approach, with multiple apps where you can start with forums and grow into other apps like blogs, gallery, calendars, clubs, and pages over time. (Ask about the Pages app, which is a very powerful and customizable app for building and organizing content. Most forums don't have anything close to this, and it's the secret weapon of Invision communities)
- It's very modern with active releases. They literally just released 4.4.10 beta 3 this morning, and they're preparing for 4.5 major release in the coming weeks. You can read the company blog for highlights of their new features.
- The Editor includes a code button, which can used to copy and paste code.
- They offer multiple login methods, and can custom develop an SSO if needed.
- They're at a price point much cheaper than some of your enterprise-level choices (Khoros and Lithium) with a lot more features.
- You could do something like .. traditional forums for peer support, Q&A for technical support, use the permissions and rank system to designate certified technicians or advocates, Clubs for special interest groups, and Page databases for forum posts and answers that you convert into reference materials. All within your one suite.
- They're also more modern than some of your legacy forum choices, with recent announcements for innovative features like a mobile app, search insights, and social media promotion that legacy platforms just don't provide.

One final thing to keep in mind ( and I know you didn't ask about this, but I think it's worthwhile to know) is that they've been in business for 18 years. That's longer than Facebook or Twitter or YouTube or most / all of your choices. This is important because it gives you stability and trust of an organization that understands community building for the long run, a development team that's been together for a long time, and an exposure to hundreds of thousands of communities over the years.

Good luck with your search ?

 

[Deleted member 3691]

Hi Pato. I’m from Invision Community. I’m very concerned that we didn’t receive your emails. May I ask which email address you used?

 

[Pato]

Thanks for your reply Matt, Joel.

I would have loved to have considered Invision as an option. They haven't responded to email and to the on-site form that I filled. I got a Zendesk response promising me that they will get back, but after a reminder I haven't still heard back. I also emailed 'sales@invisioncommunity.com' but I didn't hear back.

 

[Pato]

Anyways, back to my original questions. Has anyone any views on WordPress + bbPress plugin for forums? Is it a viable option for a big enterprise? Are there any large forums you know using this platform?

 

[Pato]

Are there any commercial companies using XenForo? I am trying to see example hosting of forums for a large enterprise company and looked at this thread on XenForo https://xenforo.com/community/threads/the-large-xenforo-forums-list.87974/ but couldn't find any relevant examples.

Any inputs on this topic?

 

[Alpha1]

XenForo currently does not have SSO. So if you need to decide in the very near future then XF is a no go.
SSO is the most popular new suggestion and XF tends to implement based upon popularity.

Implemented - Single Sign On (Connect XF with XF, WordPress, etc)

It would be really awesome if we would be able to connect multiple XF installs. Or a XF install with Wordpress, Magento, MediaWiki, etc. Members would be able to use multiple sites and scripts with the same login or while they keep being logged in. XF 2.1 has a REST API. Please extend this to...

xenforo.com

Chances are high it will be in XF 2.2 but until we see it we cannot be sure.

XF does not have SAAS hosting. But there are capable hosts. XF is modern and good. It can hold large busy forums without problem. Its easy to style or get a style that suits your company branding. There are a lot of good addons, but make sure to audit any 3rd party code you install. If you need addon development then bring in your own developers.

Do you need multilingual features? Does your company cater to multiple countries / languages? If yes, then also look into Burning Board. Asides WordPress based forums, Burning Board is the only forum solution that supports multilingual content. (AFAIK)

If you need group forums, then IPS, BuddyBoss and PeepSo are solutions to consider.

Khoros, Discourse, Verint, Zendesk

I would not consider these for your forum if you want your audience to be able to easily post & find answers.

WordPress using bbPress

Consider BuddyBoss instead of bbpress.

 

[zappaDPJ]

Any inputs on this topic?

I think IGN are still running a huge board on XenForo: https://www.ignboards.com/

Sony also had quite a number of forums running on XenForo but they seem to have vanished. I have come across others but I don't recall the URLs. If they come to mind I'll post them.

I run and/or manage a number of corporate support forums and my main concerns are security and privacy. While the majority of platforms offer the necessary level of functionality which to be honest is usually quite basic for corporate support, not all are equal when it comes to security.

I can't really recommend anything without knowing more about your end objectives but XenForo, Invision Community and possibly SMF (if finances are a consideration) would be on my list. WordPress and vBulletin would not be something I'd consider because they both have a history of poor security.

If SaaS is a must and you have very deep pockets I'd recommend Lithium. I think GitHub is now running on Lithium.

 

[Deleted member 3691]

Thanks for your reply Matt, Joel.

I would have loved to have considered Invision as an option. They haven't responded to email and to the on-site form that I filled. I got a Zendesk response promising me that they will get back, but after a reminder I haven't still heard back. I also emailed 'sales@invisioncommunity.com' but I didn't hear back.

Thanks for the reply. May I ask which on site form your completed and did you get a ticket ID from zendesk?

We genuinely don’t ignore emails and sales questions so I’m concerned that there is an issue somewhere and I’d love to figure it out.

You’re very welcome to email me at mmecham@invisionpower.com.

In terms of what Invision Community can offer, we have SSO built in (OAuth, custom, etc) and have a robust SaaS platform.

We also do brand match along with any custom requests you may have. We have integrations for Zendesk, Helpscout and more.

We have recently launched communities for LEGO, Squarespace, Jenny Craig, Trip Advisor which used custom SSO.

We pride ourselves on our level of partnership, attention to detail and support.

 

[overcast]

Xenforo or IPB either one would do. I'd go with IPB if I had money for the addons. If you just want forum and have theme in mind for Xenforo then go for it.

 

[gConverter]

I noticed that many of these forums software have other features (blogs, articles, media, ideation etc.). We just need forums for now, but should we use this as a criteria for evaluation since we may need them in future?

In this case you should go for WordPress + WordPress Forum Plugin option. There are many forum plugins and the bbPress is not the best option anymore. bbPress is a poor discussion board with minimal set of functions. Based on dozens of feedback and by migration rate I can say current best option is wpForo forum plugin.

Again, the both are ready to use plugins. bbPress is an easy and light plugin for simple discussions, it also can be used for any kind of discussions but it requires more customization and additional plugin installation. wpForo is full-fledged platform. It’s like an “all in one forum pack” for small and large forums and communities.

Anyways, back to my original questions. Has anyone any views on WordPress + bbPress plugin for forums? Is it a viable option for a big enterprise? Are there any large forums you know using this platform?

Here is my exhaustive answer on this question: https://www.theadminzone.com/thread...forum-ips-vb-or-xf.152440/page-2#post-1151048

 

[Oedipus]

How about Lithium?

 

[zappaDPJ]

How about Lithium?

Lithium no longer exists. It merged with Spredfast to form Khoros: https://khoros.com/