Best Online Community Platforms in 2023

For good or bad, social media is already dictating communication and exchange of information, and it is not going away at any point in the near future. Some of you may think their business doesn’t need to shake hands with social networks since they’re only doing retail, but they’d be neglecting one very important circumstance: social networking adds a whole new dimension to the ‘Like it? Buy it!’ process, one where customers discuss, bargain, rate, review, tip each other, and share expectations. That takes us to the very first point of the article: for good, or bad, your online business is socially exposed.

Best online community platforms are in fact customer portals where people can discuss your products, namely: rate them, review them, share them, and participate in events. Having one obviously fosters the sense of community, reinforces customer loyalty, and has a considerably positive impact on trust.

When thinking of gathering customers under one roof, the first thing that pops in our minds is to use an established social provider (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.). The idea is fairly reasonable, knowing that such platforms could run cost-free and unsupervised, but why would anyone then opt for an alternative community platform? Most of the time, it will be because to complement their channels with exclusive and branded communication experiences, and strengthening the relationship with loyal customers.

Choosing solid online community platforms for enterprises or SMBs can improve the communal experience of current customers and random visitors, and may end up popularizing your brand on social networks even more than running groups and pages on them. Let’s check how.

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. Translated to social communication terms, this means that you have to know your audience quite well, to count on already established relationships, to develop an appropriate resource strategy, and only then pay attention to the social technology that can make it happen. Thereof, let us dismiss some common myths and misconceptions that can hinder your choice:

Online communities are not all about social networking

Yes, you will have a place to ‘receive guests and strengthen friendships’, but you’ll be doing that with a purpose. The idea behind every successful online community is to provide useful content to customers and to trigger discussions that can help.

The question ‘why’ refers to your customers, not to you

When asked why they need an online community of their own, most business owners would say that they want to boost sales and engage customers, but the #1 driver for enhancing social communication is to add value for customers and to make them want to return.

Launching the community won’t be enough, you have to maintain it

‘You build it, and they will come’ is the worst possible approach towards your online community: you need to plan your content in advance and to develop a growth strategy managed by a person who will actually monitor the work of the platform and will be there to provide information.

It is not ‘just another expense’

Online communities are obviously not for free, but they require significantly less expenses for planning, management, and implementation than traditional advertising.

It empowers measurable ROI

You may be told that keeping customers engaged is an abstract strategy and that it doesn’t produce tangible results, but that’s a huge misconception. The community’s impact can be measured and compared to your business objectives—it suffices to plan it in advance and to consider the metrics that need to be followed/adjusted.

You can start your search for the best platform to build online community by signing up for the free trials or demo offered by leading online community platforms providers to do a comparison of the different features. Here is a list of the apps that have received the highest SmartScore rankings and Customer Satisfaction Rating in our online community platforms reviews that can help you discover the best online community platforms for your business: eXo Platform reviews, Magentrix,  Cliqtalk, Jive, Zoho Connect, and PlushForums.

• B2B companies use online community software platforms 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.
• Large enterprises like IBM, SAP, LexisNexis, and Palladium Group make use of the system to gain a competitive edge.

• eXo Platform: eXo Platform is designed as a social application and integrated with social tools to make work-related processes fast and easy.
• Jive: Jive is a social collaboration platform for both small businesses and large organizations, linking their team members, upper management employees, and others.
• Magentrix: Magentrix is designed to help businesses collaborate with their communities without the need for long setup times or complex coding.
• Zoho Connect: Zoho Connect functions as a company’s private social network where employees can collaborate and convert concepts into reality.
• PlushForums: PlushForums is a cloud-based forum platform that offers useful features to make conversations more engaging, vibrant, and productive.

There are five main types of online community platforms:

• Public blogs are used to grow reach and awareness
• Public social networks are used to build relationship and boost awareness
• Public owned online communities are utilized to reduce support expenses and generate leads
• Private online communities are used for customer retention and to boost sales
• Hybrid online communities can be used to improve lead generation, customer retention, and sales.

How to choose the right online community platform: Have in mind that your platform will directly affect the quality of your users’ engagement experience, and it will become the core of your retaining strategy. Therefore, it is imperative to look for one whose format is somehow familiar, and to create a welcoming first experience that would motivate customers to return.

As you can notice, the process is not exactly easy, and requires plenty of targeted research.  Before you are sold on a particular platform, do educated comparisons and make sure you choose:

• A product that fits your strategy: Recommendations from experienced users are good, but conduct your own research first. Set a list of expectations and priorities, and narrow the choice to few reliable providers that can respond to the specific needs of your industry. Look for an unlimited scenario to involve maximum number of users, and avoid advanced features that are of no use to you.
• A product for your audience: Choosing the right platform is not about what you need, but about what customers would expect from it. Therefore, if the audience is interested in email discussions or Q&A sections, make sure you can offer those in some form.
• A functional product: There is no such thing as two identical online communities, and the reason is specific sets of features are meant to serve the needs of chosen industries and sectors. Still, all of them are supposed to have a certain degree of basic functionality without which customer engagement wouldn’t even be possible. For instance, there should be an interactive forum, ratings, reviews, crowd-sourcing space, a Q & A section, a publicly available knowledge base, blogs, contests, gamification, grouping, report analytics, and so on.
• An integrated product: The fact that you have your own community shouldn’t stop you from engaging and reporting on social networks. Your presence in out-of-community conversations may bring value to your business, so consider integrating with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and so on. Mobile SDK and integrations with data management systems are also welcomed.
• A mobile-responsive product: We all know how customers are nowadays, and that they need to be engaged on the move more than at home or in the office. Therefore, give them a platform they can access via mobile devices, enabling them to perform practically every operation or to follow every discussion on the go. Alerts and notifications are an even better idea.
• A regularly updated product: Once again: a community platform is not something you launch and forget about, but a ‘living’ segment of your business that needs to be maintained. Failing to respond to functionality concerns may put an end to customers’ engagement, so make sure you’re following trends and keeping up with your audience’s expectations.
• An affordable product: Depending on deployment expectations, you can choose to host your online community yourself, or to use it as a SaaS application. The later will obviously cost more, but it is only because they diminish implementation and maintenance costs from the very beginning. The vendor’s reputation, the features, and the size of your business will be decisive for the price, but expect to pay a sum between $200 and $5,000 per month.

Quick and reliable results: Together with the fact that you get your product’s performance rated on dot, you will rate ad hoc projects with lengthy frameworks long before an actual report has been generated. The more members you’ve engaged, the faster your question would be answered (needless to say, it will be answered by genuine users, instead of random spammers gaining momentum on social networks).

Lower expenses: Implementing community tools and hiring people to maintain them is an investment at stake, but you have to consider the fact that it can be used for multiple other projects and purposes.

Familiarizing with customers: The way to benefit the most from your online community is to create and explore demographic profiles, and develop your product in accordance with the data you’ve obtained. You will be dealing with loyal customers and random visitors, which can give you an insight on many critical valuables, and will help you target audience the right way.

Instant connection with customers: Your customer is your most important resource, especially if he’s a brand loyalist who likes your work and wants to share his satisfaction. 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.

Depending on the size and purpose of your online community, it can be your worthy ‘why and because’ resource. 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.

• Moderation automation. Community management involves a lot of repetitive tasks, like pruning discussions, moderating posts, cleaning up members, and more. This is why many online communities are also using chatbots, famously used for customer support, to help community managers perform their administrative functions efficiently.
• Ideation. Ideation means discussions among groups of people to come up with innovative ways of doing things or at least new ideas. This empowers online communities to be more than just places to discuss or talk to people but more as collaborative spaces, where the organization can even crowdsource ideas from their userbase.
• Multichannel to omnichannel. A lot of organizations with web presence use multiple tools to reach out to customers—social networks, email, instant messaging, and so on. These are confusing and risk communicating vastly different, even conflicting, messages to consumers. Instead, these platforms will converge into one solution to serve all customers in many channels all at once, such as an online community.

• Unclear goals or no compelling reason. Successful online communities have a reason people frequent them. If your business doesn’t have a reason for the online community to be there and you’ve only put it in just because, no one will go there and discuss with other users. Develop a value proposition for a space where customers can discuss their experiences with your products before you make an online community.
• No sense of exclusivity. Part of the allure of joining an online community is the sense of exclusivity it brings, of “belonging.” If yours is too open, it defeats the purpose of being part of an exclusive group. Therefore, it’s a good idea to give your members an incentive to be part of the online community by making some content and discussions available to them only.
• It’s all about you. Customers are repeat customers only if the brand or the organization reflects their life story or their lifestyle. If the community is too much about you or your organization, it will turn them off. The idea is to make the community feel that it’s about them and it serves their needs.