Community Software: a list of about 20 tools
Table of Contents
Community Software are trendy tools today. In this article, we want to give you an overview of the best tools available on the market if you need to find out a Community Software that matches your needs. Please note that each business has different characteristics, therefore you need to analyse each one in more detail. This is just a starting point to orientate you in the fantastic world of Community Software. Good luck!
What is Community Software and what are the benefits?
Community software allows businesses to connect with customers and create a space to share ideas, collect opinions, store Q&A data, and interact with fellow customers and business representatives. It is, indeed, a tool that helps businesses build and manage virtual spaces to connect individuals with shared interests, goals, or activities. It automates the administrative processes in maintaining forums and helps manage and measure the effectiveness of online communities. Community software is also known as social software, collaboration software, or groupware.
Community solutions enabled with technologies such as AI and machine learning can help community managers use enormous volumes of conversation threads to draw valuable insights. AI technology can also automate notifications across the community and offer chatbots and virtual assistants to help customers find answers quickly.
Community software can benefit businesses in many ways, including:
- Greater customer experience and brand visibility
- Direct customer feedback results in better decision making
- Efficient marketing opportunity
- Improved customer engagement
Typical features of community software are:
- Discussion boards: Create threads, post, and respond to questions, ask questions, and share ideas in online forums/groups.
- Group management: Manage groups of community members by assigning categories and tags to the groups and edit policies related to adding/deleting/removing members to/from the group.
- Membership management: Create, track, and manage profiles of community members.
- Member directory: Store key information about community members in an online or printable list/directory.
- Access controls/permissions: Define levels of authorization for accessing specific files/folders.
- Alerts/notifications: Notify community members about updates, events, issue resolution, etc.
- Content management: Create, update, and monitor web content and ensure brand consistency for all written materials that are distributed to stakeholders.
- Ideation: Create, develop, share, and store new ideas.
- Knowledge base management: Create, store, and share information and support articles from a centralized database.
Most tools in this market are priced on a “per month” basis. The starting price range is $21 – $58+.
Below, there are some considerations that you must do when purchasing a community software:
- Integration with existing applications: You would need to track the details of all the members of your community. For that, it’s essential that the community software connects with the applications you’re already using, such as CRM, marketing automation, help desk and social media management, if you have any.
- Scalability: It is important to double check if the Community management software will allow you to handle the growing number of members in your community.
- Customizability: Community platform need to align with your brand, you’ll need to model your community to reflect what is unique about your brand and it depends by how much customizable the community software
- Analytics, insights, and metrics: A community system that offers analytics capabilities, will help you to program your content as per customer requirements.
- Total cost: make sure to perform an accurate and complete comparative analysis of the various tools, not only in terms of features but also in terms of costs.
Community Software: our shortlist of 6 tools
Below, you will find the best 6 tools in our opinion with a summary of the main characteristics and a pricing overview for each one.
Blink
Blink is the best community app for frontline workers in different type of industries, such as healthcare, transport, and facilities management. It allows them to be connected, productive and informed when on the move.
It is an easy platform that with a simple click gives access to everything the team might need – from updates to must-knows, forms to timetables, conversations to stories.
Over 1.000 organizations have chosen Blink, wrapping into one secure portal, turning frontline organizations into strong communities with engaged, committed staff, energizing workforce and powering operations.
Pricing Overview
- It starts at $3.40 per user per month.
- They do not have a free version, but they offer a free trial.
- Find out additional pricing details on the website.
Flock
With Flock it is simple doing task management, having less emails and getting more work done. It is possible to find features from instant messaging to creating channels to integrating with external apps like Google, MailChimp, Dropbox, Jira, Trello and more, organizing all work.
Some built-in features included in this powerful tool are Shared To-Dos, Reminders, Notes, Polls and more.
Flock is used by teams of all sizes and serves over 25,000 companies worldwide.
Pricing Overview
- It starts at $6.00 per feature, per month.
- There is a free version and a free trial.
- Find out additional pricing details on the website.
Mighty Networks
Mighty Network is one of the best Community Software worldwide. It brings together your community, offers online courses, sales pages, and more, all in one place. Mighty Network connects members to make your brand more valuable for every member who joins.
It is designed for entrepreneurs and creators who want or need to bring together their community, online courses, website, events, and memberships under their own brand, on web, iOS, and Android.
Pricing Overview
- It starts at $23.00 per feature, per month.
- They do not have a free version, but they offer a free trial.
- Find out additional pricing details on the website.
Slack
Slack is a collaboration hub that puts people together to help them get their work done. Whether your team need to finish a project, hire new employees, deploy some code, review sales contracts, finalize next year’s budget, measure A/B tests, plan your next office opening, and more, Slack is always there for you.
Slack’s customers range is from small startups to Fortune 100 companies. In fact, 77% of the Fortune 100 companies uses it.
Pricing Overview
- It starts at $8.00 per user, per month.
- There is a free version and a free trial.
- Find out additional pricing details on the website.
If you want to know more, please read also: Business communication platforms: review of Slack tool
Socio
Built for virtual events – not webinars, Socio powers virtual event success for thousands of marketers and event organizers in more than 70 countries worldwide. Socio’s virtual event platform enables drag-and-drop technology and pairs registration, streaming, engagement, sponsorship, and networking for an event experience that you have never seen before.
It is the right tool for enterprises, tech companies, third-party planners, event companies, media companies, associations, universities, and more!
Pricing Overview
Not provided but there is a free trial.
Tribe
Tribe is a Community Software designed to empower customer communities.
You will be able to fully customize and white-label online community with activity feed, spaces, and gamification tools to connect, engage, and retain customers.
Most people use Tribe to manage content, discussions / forums, and events.
It is the ideal tool for companies of 2 to 1000+ employees.
Pricing Overview
It starts at $49.00 per month and it also offers a free trial.
Community Software: comparative table of the top 6 tools with key features
Community Software: the full list
Are you looking for an alternative? Explore alternatives and compare software that include similar features. Check out our full list with more top options!
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Conclusions
Be curious! Do not limit yourself and do not stop at our proposal of tools! Check out our article Software Discovery platforms: the top 9 for us to find the one that best suits your needs.