---
title: Higher Logic Vanilla Reviews
meta_title: 'Higher Logic Vanilla Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2'
meta_description: Filter 99 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to
  find out how Higher Logic Vanilla works for a business like yours.
aggregate_rating:
  rating_value: 4.3
  review_count: 99
  scale: '5'
date_modified: '2026-07-13'
parent_category:
  name: Marketing
  url: https://www.g2.com/categories/marketing
---

# Higher Logic Vanilla Reviews
**Vendor:** Higher Logic  
**Category:** [Online Community Management Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/online-community-management)  
**Average Rating:** 4.3/5.0  
**Total Reviews:** 99
## About Higher Logic Vanilla
Higher Logic Vanilla is a customer community platform from Higher Logic, a global leader in engagement software headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. Backed by the largest community software organization—with 15+ years of experience and more than 3,000 customers worldwide—Vanilla delivers the scale, stability, and focus enterprise organizations expect, while remaining fully dedicated to driving stronger community outcomes. Vanilla brings together discussion forums, Q&amp;A, knowledge base, ideation, gamification, and advanced moderation in one flexible platform. Organizations can manage multiple products, regions, or sub-communities within a single instance, with full control over branding and permissions. The platform integrates seamlessly across the tech stack, includes advanced analytics and dashboards, and supports workflow automation. Admin teams get intuitive no-code tools for everyday management, while developers can extend capabilities with APIs, theming, and a fully integrated development environment. Personalization, accessibility, SEO, and mobile responsiveness are built in from the start. Organizations use Vanilla to lower support costs, engage advocates, and capture product feedback. Peer-to-peer discussions and Q&amp;A create a living knowledge base that deflects tickets. Gamification, reputation systems, and sentiment analysis surface customer champions who can drive advocacy and engagement. Structured ideation channels provide product teams with direct, actionable insights. Beyond technology, Vanilla offers program-level expertise with practitioner-led guidance, dedicated community success managers, and responsive technical support to help communities grow, scale, and deliver measurable business impact.



## Higher Logic Vanilla Pros & Cons
**What users like:**

- Users value the **ease of attendee engagement** with Higher Logic Vanilla, appreciating straightforward setup and helpful features. (2 reviews)
- Users appreciate the **responsive customer support** of Higher Logic Vanilla, ensuring smooth engagement and setup processes. (2 reviews)
- Users find the **ease of use** of Higher Logic Vanilla exceptional, facilitating engagement and customization effortlessly. (2 reviews)
- Users value the **easy setup** of Higher Logic Vanilla, making community engagement straightforward and efficient. (2 reviews)
- Users praise the **helpful implementation team** and user-friendly platform, enhancing overall experience and success. (2 reviews)
- Intuitive (2 reviews)
- Automation (1 reviews)
- Customization (1 reviews)
- Users appreciate the **easy integrations** with various platforms like ChurnZero, enhancing their community-building efforts. (1 reviews)
- Users praise the **user-friendly implementation** process and customization options, facilitating a smooth community-building experience. (1 reviews)

**What users dislike:**

- Users find the **knowledge base buggy** and the search functionality lacking, affecting overall satisfaction with Higher Logic Vanilla. (1 reviews)
- Users find **email communication issues** with Higher Logic Vanilla frustrating, impacting the overall effectiveness of community engagement. (1 reviews)
- Users express a desire for **inadequate analytics** features, seeking improved user-friendliness and navigation capabilities. (1 reviews)
- Users desire greater **customization options** for the homepage, feeling constrained by the existing widget structure. (1 reviews)
- Users find the **missing features** in Higher Logic Vanilla limit customization and hinder interaction within the community. (1 reviews)
- Poor Customer Support (1 reviews)
- Poor Navigation (1 reviews)
- Search Functionality (1 reviews)
- UX Issues (1 reviews)

## Higher Logic Vanilla Reviews
  ### 1. Vanilla Forums has given us the best solution for building communities

**Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Juan V. | Project Manager, Information Technology and Services, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** October 19, 2017

**What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

Vanilla Forums has brought me and the company I work for the best experience and solution for our clients´needs in terms of building communities and connecting people to the brands.

I also really like the customer experience since everyone I have spoken with in Vanilla has been extremely nice, helpful and polite. 

**What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

No dislikes! so far our experience has been whole

**What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?**

Vanilla Forums has brought me and the company I work for the best experience and solution for our clients´needs in terms of building communities and connecting people to the brands. Thanks to vanilla we have easily implemented many types of contests, tolls, brand activities and so on... but most importantly we have found a great solution for data bases management. 

  ### 2. Outstanding features and service

**Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Catherine C. | Senior Digital Project Manager/ Agile Lead, Publishing, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** October 19, 2017

**What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

Our teams love the fast deployment, customization options and easy management for non-technical admins.  The audience loves Vanilla for its simple yet comprehensive community tools that enable them to share and engage with the sports writers they follow every day.

**What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

No complaints: we have enjoyed reliable service, easy integration and look forward to implementing advanced features in the next calendar year.

**Recommendations to others considering Higher Logic Vanilla:**

If you need a stable, simple-to-implement forum or community solution, Vanilla Forums will exceed your expectations.

**What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?**

We utilize Vanilla Forums to power communities for fans of specific college sports teams.  The communities are moderated by our sports writers and a few trusted colleagues.  The conversations enable the fans to look to our websites as the ultimate sources not only for college sports news but also to engage with fellow "diehards" in an environment we control.  Overall, the communities give us unparalleled ability to connect with our audience.

  ### 3. Migrating over to Vanilla Forums was a great decision 

**Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Ryan O. | Community Manager/Public Relations, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** October 11, 2017

**What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

The unique features and customer support are top notch. The gamification, design, countless add-ons and ability to create forums and ranks with special permissions are among my favorite features. I also really like the detailed profiles, embedded videos, polls and Q&As. In terms of gamifications, the ranking system and badges are a lot of fun. One of the newest features I have discovered and think is really cool is the automated email integration with MailChimp based on RSS feed. I like the reaction bar and social log-in and sharing capabilities as well. There are many other features I like, but too many to name. 

**What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

I wish I had instant access to data, I dislike the fact they we can only access our database of users once per month. My company does enjoy about a 10 percent, but I do wish the product was cheaper. I also really wish the announcements were more "global" and would show at the top of each forum topic. The view count on discussions often seems inaccurate, as a post may say it only has three views, yet somehow has seven comments. I wish there the ability to edit what the transactional emails say as well. I also wish there were more reporting features in terms of analytics. 

**Recommendations to others considering Higher Logic Vanilla:**

Yes, I would recommend it. Pros include great support, features and integrations. Cons include price and not being able to access your database in a spreadsheet more than once per month (for the corporate version at least). But pros outweigh cons. And Vanilla worked out a nice discount for us. 

**What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?**

Vanilla enables StartupNation to connect with entrepreneurs, small business owners and startups. It provides a space for these like-minded folks to share knowledge, ask questions, build relationships and foster small business. This is perfectly in-line with the StartupNation brand as an online media group and premier small business platform. 

Benefits included with Vanilla that I didn't have with my previous forums platform: 
-A smooth, clean-cut interface
-Fun features for users such as ranking system, badges, tagging and bookmarking
-Easy-to-navigate backend/settings
-Ability to create forums with special permissions 
-Detailed profiles/bios 
-Social log-ins and sharing
-Embedded videos 
-Automated RSS feed emails with MailChimp
-Polls, Q&A and add-ons
-Auto-systems that help fight spam 
-Pockets for ads and promotions

 

  ### 4. Great forum software

**Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Daniel A. | IT Coordinator, Computer Software, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** October 20, 2017

**What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

Vanilla features a very powerful theming system enabling me to easily customize my forum's appearance without having to touch PHP. It's also very easy for end users to understand and use.

**What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

The entry price seems a bit high for the entry level hosted option. It has made me consider switching to self hosting the open source version for smaller projects.

**What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?**

It has enabled our clients to have better engagement with their own customers, giving them a space to communicate directly with little or no development effort on our side.

  ### 5. A strong product with great support

**Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Verified User in Gambling & Casinos | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** October 11, 2017

**What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

So far it's the responsiveness of the staff that's been most important to us. In terms of functionality I like the power and flexibility of the post tool (as a user) and the configurability of user roles (as an administrator).

**What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

We're embedding the forum using their jsConnect model, and I'd like to see more around configuration for hiding login/registration features when using Connect-only registration, or being able to configure them to make JavaScript function calls.

**What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?**

We're currently migrating our reasonably large forum (1m posts, 300k users) over to Vanilla from another provider. It's a big task and Vanilla have really helped us at every step, from handling the import procedure to creating custom plugins to help redirect from the old system

  ### 6. A must have for any Software Company

**Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** October 18, 2017

**What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

Ideation and gamification, customers can now tell us and vote on what they want to see in our product line. They can also share customizations to inspire other customers to help build brand advocacy. 

**What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

Better API integrations would allow us to automate and a lot of manual steps, as well as pull richer data. I believe this is a work in progress currently though.

**Recommendations to others considering Higher Logic Vanilla:**

Best bang for buck

**What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?**

Ticket Deflection & End User Self Service. No longer is support asked the same questions over and over again. Vanilla SOE means our issues are googleable, people can stumble into the right thread to find answers quickly without having to wait for a response to a support ticket.

  ### 7. Good experience with an amazing CSM!

**Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Samyutha R. | Head of Corporate Marketing, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** October 12, 2017

**What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

I appreciate the attention given to our account by our CSM, Brendan. As this is my first time organizing, moderating, and launching a community, he has been critical to my success in this project. Not only does he help with implementation and training but also with optimization in terms of categories, design, and anything else we may ask of him. 

**What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

I don't have experience with another platform to compare it to. 

**What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?**

We are further engaging our customers with an external community that will allow them to connect with one another, have a centralized hub for all content, and interact with the WalkMe community as a whole to learn and ask questions. 

  ### 8. Successful migration from vBulletin to Vanilla

**Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Games | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** October 27, 2017

**What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

Vanilla's analytics tools are light years ahead of what we had available to us on vBulletin. 

**What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

I think the primary issue that most of our users have is the inability to easily customize their posts with different font colors. As silly as it sounds, this has been brought up a bunch of times. Although BBcode and html can be used to achieve this, our users want a simple WYSIWYG control. 

**What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?**

We moved from a self managed AWS server cluster to a cloud hosted, fully managed server cluster with Vanilla. This relieves our IT department from having to worry about backups, security patches, etc.

  ### 9. Excellent Online Community Platform

**Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** October 16, 2017

**What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

Vanilla Forums provides a lot of features, very easy to use, and excellent support staffs. Vanilla Forums gives me all the tools I need to build a community. I've been using Vanilla Forums over 1.5 years and they have been very reliable.

The dashboard is very easy to navigate and allows the customer to customize their sites without any headaches. 



**What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

Customers cannot export data. I hope they add this feature in the near feature.  

**Recommendations to others considering Higher Logic Vanilla:**

I would definitely recommend Vanilla Forums. 

**What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?**

I'm using Vanilla Forums for both internal and external communities, it helps employees to collaborate other emoloyees and with our customers.  



  ### 10. Perfect for online communities

**Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Verified User in Financial Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** October 18, 2017

**What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

Vanilla offers a solid product as it relates to building online communities. The customer service provided is spot-on and they're able to incorporate our feedback and deploy requested changes at record pace. I like the fact that the tool is customizable to our needs and is great value for the money! I've personally built a good working relationship with them. Great partners!

**What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

None to mention at this point. They are building features at a good velocity.

**What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?**

We're building out a platform that is intended to connect a niche segment of our customer base. 

  ### 11. BallOfSpray Forum

**Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** John H. | Owner, Internet, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** October 19, 2017

**What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

Vanilla is a stable platform that does not require the admin to have database skills.

**What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

Functional or template customization is cost prohibitive. 

**Recommendations to others considering Higher Logic Vanilla:**

Not sure how to answer this question

**What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?**

My business is my community.  Vanilla lets me worry about my user culture and not think about tech.

  ### 12. Experience with Vanilla

**Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Games | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** October 30, 2017

**What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

Vanilla provides above and beyond client experience.

**What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

I wish there were more mobile options as most of our users access our sites via a mobile device.

**What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?**

We were using phpbb for our forums and needed to create a forum more inviting but also easier to manage by a small communications team.  We have a better grasp of each aspect of our forum that can help us deliver better support for our player needs.

  ### 13. An easy-to-use platform and superb support

**Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Verified User in Research | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** October 26, 2017

**What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

Vanilla is an easy-to-use platform and was very easy to migrate from our previous platform.  Support was very helpful and professional in helping us migrate.  

**What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

It is sometimes difficult to access specific data and support needs to be contacted for specific reports.

**What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?**

We utilize Vanilla Forums as a collaboration platform where our customers are empowered to collaborate with each other, in addition to having conversations with our in-house experts about our products.

  ### 14. Solid platform filling the needs for a traditional forum community

**Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** October 17, 2017

**What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

Personalized B2B approach with a dedicated CS contact, improving analytics, familiar forum platform, extensible organizational structure with multi-level categories, tags, and markdown capable rich posting. 

**What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

Frequent regressions and intermittent issues causing frustration primarily from moderators. Lack of certain features such as ability to ndubscribe from threads causes lots of unwanted traffic to moderators. Forum structure feels dated.

**What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?**

Community engagement, peer support, product discovery and experimentation, issue reporting, and user research. 

  ### 15. Easy to use and collaborate on

**Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** October 18, 2017

**What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

Clean look and feel. The navigation is intuitive and works well

**What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

Poor reporting tools for members stats. Unable to get daily/weekly scores on team members. API support is poor

**Recommendations to others considering Higher Logic Vanilla:**

take your time. Know what you want

**What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?**

Offsets some of the general questions presented to our Support team. Allow peers to discuss and help each other

  ### 16. Community Manager

**Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Marcie G. | Senior Community Manager and Strategist, Information Services, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** October 30, 2017

**What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

It is pretty user friendly. I can figure things out most of the time,  by playing around w functions.

**What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

I don't like that I cannot download dashboard data reports.

**What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?**

Not really solving anything, but utilizing the platform.

  ### 17. Great customer service

**Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Ricardo V. | Chargé de projets Web, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** October 11, 2017

**What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

Quick and efficient customer service. Very easy to communicate with

**What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

So far, so good. We have a good experience with Vanilla.

**What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?**

We needed a community where industrial automation professionals share their know-how and get answers. 
Working together

  ### 18. Great customer service, tons of features

**Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Ryan C. | Creative Designer, Computer Games, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** February 09, 2016

**What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

Great features, great customer support team who has gone above and beyond in making our forums awesome. When initially setting up our forums, they were very accomadating in building new features and helping us perfect the forums for our userbase. Post-launch, that has not changed. There are definitely some systems we had that weren't working for us, and Julie and the Vanilla team were more than willing to improve them.

**What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

Some features feel like I don't have as much control as I'd like, but Vanilla is often willing to expand on features to assist, as well as look for work arounds or manually change things for us.

**Recommendations to others considering Higher Logic Vanilla:**

If you're looking for a slick, modern forum software, Vanilla is the place to go.

**What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?**

Vanilla Forums software allows us to bring simple and effective gamification to our video game forums, making players feel rewarded for participating. The reactions and the leaderboards allow players to make a name for themselves so to speak, without having to be given any special privileges whatsoever. It encourages good behavior, good discussion, and overall, a good community. Our community is heavily based on communicating with our players, and a powerful software for doing so is invaluable to us.

  ### 19. Excellent software for starting communities

**Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Zachary D. | Embedded Software Engineer, Machinery, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** June 23, 2015

**What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

I like the underlying framework Vanilla is built on. It is extendable via event hooks in plugins. This allows you to add extra features without modifying core code making updates a breeze. As a novice PHP programmer, I was able to extend the discussion model within 2 hours of working with the framework.

**What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

The support forum for the open source (OS) version runs on the hosted version. If you are clicking around their support forum as a way to gauge features, you see some highly desirable features that are only available to the hosted version. This is pretty annoying when you fire up the OS version and can't find something that is clearly available.

The open source version of Vanilla lags behind the hosted product. I understand the decision, but I don't like it.

**Recommendations to others considering Higher Logic Vanilla:**

Jump in with a test environment. Read the developer documentation for a quick overview of what to expect. Open the source if you have any questions as it is mostly well written.

**What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?**

I need to be able to provide a way for my clients to communicate directly and openly with each. With Vanilla, I get a great forum that feels fresh and is easy to maintain.

  ### 20. Solid forum software with a great support team.

**Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Jacob C. | Senior Account Executive, Financial Services, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** December 10, 2015

**What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

Vanilla has a sleek look without being too obnoxiously web2.0 and minimalist-for-thesake-of-minimalism - things are easy to find and to use. I can only speak for my own forum, but it's been much better with uptime than our old 2000s-era software. The Minion feature is a great, easy-to-use tool that frees moderators and community managers from babysitting chores and allows us to focus on real issues.

Most importantly, Vanilla's staff has been responsive, helpful, and have participated in the community as members and partners. They have a relationship with our community beyond being just the guys we call when something goes wrong.

**What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

The mobile forum experience can be a bit hinky at times, although I know that's something they're working on. Thankfully, in most cases, viewing the non-mobile version of the site has been a solid temporary fix.

**Recommendations to others considering Higher Logic Vanilla:**

I strongly recommend it. I participate in several communities online and the ones that are still using older, 2000s-era software aren't delivering the same quality of experience.

**What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?**

Our forum is the official community board for a web-based media property; it's how fans of the property meet, communicate, and organize events such as convention meet-ups and charity drives.

  ### 21. Generally good. A few hiccups, but the product is good and the service has been good too. Good.

**Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** William H. | Community and Comms, Utilities, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** December 08, 2015

**What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

Flexibility to build on top of the standard Vanilla forum.

Strong feature set out of the box at a competitive price.

**What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

Email notifications are poor at best, a hindrance at worst. As an admin I would like to be able to set an HTML template using merge tags from Vanilla and be able to tweak them whenever I like. 

At the moment the PM notification misleads members into believing that they can reply to the email to reply to the member, instead they just end up emailing the admin. Since I can only slightly tweak the copy and the subject line is tied to the content of the email I can't fix this.

**Recommendations to others considering Higher Logic Vanilla:**

It does basic stuff better than the big boys like Lithium and you can build whatever else you need on top of it.  Seriously how does Lithium not have threaded PMs?

You will need to build on top of it however.

**What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?**

Increased retention
Crowdsourced help
Increasing NPS to drive referrals
Feedback and ideas

  ### 22. Vanilla Forums: Great Staff

**Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Garrett G. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** December 10, 2015

**What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

Friendly, responsive staff that is more than willing to go the extra mile to provide for their customers. A wide variety of custom features were worked on and provided just for our community.

**What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

Implementing requested changes or fixes can take some time.

**Recommendations to others considering Higher Logic Vanilla:**

Vanilla, is very simple and effective forum software. If you need more than that, it is still a wonderful service on account of the responsive and accommodating staff which I feel takes Vanilla to the next level.

**What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?**

When we switched to Vanilla, we were moving from a very old forum with a lot of features and quirks that our community had become adjusted to over the years. This was a major change for us, and we wanted it to go as smoothly as possible for everyone.

Vanilla, while primarily a simple, effective bit of forum software first and foremost, was incredibly helpful in providing a lot of these features specifically for us. This did not stop with the switch to Vanilla: over the years Vanilla's staff has helped add a number of new features to further improve our forums.

  ### 23. A growing product with a hard-working, hands-on development and customer support team

**Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Frank S. | Community Agent, Computer Games, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** February 10, 2016

**What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

Vanilla has a very hands-on and willing approach to work with its customers in order to produce forum solutions that fit the unique needs of their clients. We all know that no two forums are alike and each one, depending on how you manage the community that visits, can turn out to have different tendencies, priorities, and likes/dislikes when it comes to the forum experience. Our Vanilla representative has always worked hard to take our feedback, investigate issues, and ensure we have stable forum software. Hosted infrastructure is robust and the development team has a good pipeline to its community of users, which means it has the best of both worlds of being small enough that it can maintain a personable connection to its customers while growing larger to accommodate its increasing popularity.

**What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

Certain specific features and the way that things work with Vanilla's forums are in theory good for smaller communities that by nature have less potential for abuse or exploitation but run into challenges when faced with larger userbases in specific industries, and administrative overhead for some of the behind-the-curtain moderator-level functions could be better. Proper community management only goes so far in solving these challenges. But that said, Vanilla has always been committed to making changes or working with us to create solutions for these issues as well as listen to feedback about them for future development cycles, which definitely helps a great deal. We see them growing with each update and making good faith effort in crafting improvements to fix issues we've brought up.

**Recommendations to others considering Higher Logic Vanilla:**

If you're tired of the bloatware or the cost that longer-lived, larger players in the forum software business have, Vanilla is definitely the way to go.

**What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?**

The ability to create and build community through native forum mini-games such as points and Reactions has been great and has increased community time spent on our forums. The ease by which our community members can report rule-violating posts, create and maintain threads, and provide some customization through profile and signature editing are core features that can't be overlooked. Feedback gathering and archiving has worked very well for us as well.

  ### 24. Vanilla Forums - Great software, great service.

**Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Sterling A. | Customer Insights Manager, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** October 24, 2015

**What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

From the start of our relationship the entire Vanilla team has been focused on providing a great experience. Consistent communication and the desire to ensure a successful launch have been at the forefront.  The product offers an extremely high volume of customization for your Community Forum, 3rd-party integrations are a breeze to set up, out-of-the-box analytics and so much more. 

**What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

I would like more diverse analytics. While there is an API offered, I could use a bit more advanced analytics in the dashboard. 

**Recommendations to others considering Higher Logic Vanilla:**

Vanilla Forums is a robust product with a lot to offer. Setup can be hard if you are not technically savvy;  the Vanilla team was very quick to respond to emails with any questions we had and there is a lot of collateral on their blog site as well. 

**What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?**

We use our Community Forum as a self serve support channel as well as a place for community collaboration.

  ### 25. Great product and service.

**Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Games | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** December 10, 2015

**What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

Having the weight of maintaining the hosted forums off my shoulders and the fast and great customer service provided. There are no more middle of the night calls and scrambles because the community is down because it's all handled.

**What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

I wouldn't really call this a dislike, since I understand why they chose to do things this way, but it did take some getting used to relying on the service provider to enable certain features and not having that access myself anymore. The company's employees are very responsive and helpful however, so it hasn't been an issue whatsoever.

**Recommendations to others considering Higher Logic Vanilla:**

If you're considering Vanilla but are hesitant because it's not a free solution (we were at first), keep in mind that hosting your own requires a lot of hours in maintenance. If you're looking to add the functionality Vanilla offers, add a ton of hours in custom development on top of that. Throw in the peace of mind that someone's monitoring things and is on the case whenever DDOS attacks or other horrifying things happen, and I think you'll find it's more than worth it. 

**What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?**

We no longer need to spend cycles on keeping the forums up and running, and we've gained a LOT of integration options. Single sign-on for the forums Steam and our game is now a possibility.

  ### 26. A Review of Vanilla Forums from an early adopter

**Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Verified User in Entertainment | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** December 10, 2015

**What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

We switched over to Vanilla a few years ago, and aside from the instant increase in usability and the instant decrease in downtime, the thing that has stood out the most has been the support our forums have received from Vanilla, and the number of features we've implemented as a result.

**What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

There hasn't been much I've disliked.  Most of the things I'd like to see from Vanilla are minor feature additions and tweaks.

**What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?**

Our forum, at its very core, gives us the ability to maintain our community.  Vanilla's new features have given us a great many tools that allow us to both keep our community active, and help maintain a level of civility and, well, community.

  ### 27. Looks fresh but has some issues under the hood

**Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Verified User in Online Media | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** September 12, 2015

**What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

It is one of the few fresh but already stable products on the market for online communities / forums and small, but  seemingly stable company and developer community behind it. Offers many customization options and is easily extended by plugins.

The best part of Vanilla is its versatility. Extending Vanilla and catering to your specific needs can easily be done in a few hours of development work. This is equally benefitial to the open source as well as the SaaS solution.

**What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

Vanilla has a rather mediocre performance. This is not a problem when going with the hosted SaaS product though.
It has a rather unsightly security history. Vanilla is not written with security in mind which is a problem for an open source product where vulnerabilities can be easily spotted browsing the codebase.
Also, I am a bit unsure about Vanillas capability to adapt to future demands and rejuvenate itself in the long-term future.


**Recommendations to others considering Higher Logic Vanilla:**

Either go with the SaaS solution (which was not flexible enough for us) or chose the self-hosted Vanilla and be prepared to have a developer at hand to adapt Vanilla to your needs.

If you chose Vanilla not as an appendage to an existing online presence but the main framework on which your online presence relies on be cautious of the aforementioned issues.

**What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?**

Vanilla was chosen as the foundation for building a community and publishing platform promoting news, articles and services of interest for German and Chinese users.
Competiting products such as Drupal or Wordpress are not meant to cater to the specific needs of an online community with user contributions in the style of a forum.
Alternative forum solutions were either not flexible enough for us or outdated with a stale codebase or just in the first stages of development. Vanilla was the primary choice as the only flexible & stable modern and near-term furture proof forum software with an active company and developer community behind it

  ### 28. Vanilla base with unlimited toppings

**Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** December 11, 2015

**What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

I'm always pleasantly surprised at how versatile the platform can be. The staff are always able and willing to customize new options that fit our needs. It's fast, clean, and easy to use.

**What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

The search feels fairly limited in what it can do. I'm sure that'll change over time.

**Recommendations to others considering Higher Logic Vanilla:**

It's likely to be the best forum solution available today, and I can say that to anyone without even knowing what their specific needs are.

**What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?**

I'm a moderator for a somewhat large community, and unlike the more static platforms we've suffered through in the past, our expectations for new feature requests are frequently met or exceeded.

  ### 29. Vanilla is my favorite flavor. 

**Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Verified User in Internet | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** December 10, 2015

**What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

It has a great set of default features, and seems to make it very easy to add new ones. 

**What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

Honestly, I've yet to come across anything notable that I dislike. It doesn't come packaged with a free unicorn, I guess? 

**Recommendations to others considering Higher Logic Vanilla:**

Go for it. You know you want to. 

**What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?**

I am a moderator of a decently sized Internet forum that uses Vanilla. Compared to older platforms, Vanilla has an incredible capacity to provide new features that make my life as a moderator much easier. It seems very flexible. 

  ### 30. Vanilla is spicy

**Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** December 11, 2015

**What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

Mostly I like the ease of use. I'm able to manage the forum well without having to think about digging through tons of menues and drop downs. The support from the Vanilla team is stellar too. 

**What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

The software does have its limitations over some other forums that I've used. However this is not a deal breaker. 

**What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?**

The community growth has been great. Also the ability to help organize the community for certain events has been very helpful. 

  ### 31. The Vanilla platform makes us look good!

**Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Lou G. | Team Member, Computer Software, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** March 24, 2015

**What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

Love the support, API and ability to make it look like our brand.  Our forum looks like an extension of our website.  The API is strong and allows you to build reputation with your own achievements that match your business not some cookie cutter list.  The integration with Zendesk also makes this a great platform for gleaning from your customers to know what they want and get that data into your tracking system for feedback one on one.

**What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

There are some limits to the hosting since you are not allowed to use the addons but their services are full featured and can make the platform do what you want.  I would like to see them switch from jsConnect to jwt for their Single Sign On solution but it is functional.

**Recommendations to others considering Higher Logic Vanilla:**

Talk with their support group to understand what it can do and what is required to meet your requirements.  We opted to have their services team theme the forum to match our website and make it look streamlined. 

**What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?**

We are building a tight knit community and get wonderful feedback, engagement and believe we really know what customers want through this platform.  Our community is not just a way to get users to talk to other like minded users but it is allowing our company (marketing, sales, support, development and management ) to know what our customer are asking about and helps prioritize product improvement requests. 

  ### 32. Vanilla Forums Review

**Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Zach J. | Web/Graphic Designer, Information Technology and Services, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** March 24, 2015

**What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

The installation and setup was very smooth as promised. The support has been great, I was given everything I need to fully understand the forums. My favorite feature of Vanilla forums is the customizability. I can make changes to the HTML and CSS from anywhere,  just by logging in. It's very important that our client support forums follow the design guidelines in our brand standards. As a web-designer, this makes my job much easier. 

**What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

We would love to have the ability to organize a category’s posts by number of ‘likes’. Right now we are using the 'like' feature as a voting system. It’d be nice to have a voting system that let's the popular posts rise to the top organically. 

**What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?**

We used Vanilla to create a support forum for our clients. This helps reduce repeat support issues and gives us a platform to communicate with our clients. So far, activity has been steadily increasing. 

  ### 33. Good experience so far

**Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Anthony D. | Lecturer, Computer & Network Security, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** December 11, 2015

**What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

Features, ease of use, easy to setup and maintain.

**What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

Nothing comes to mind. Really, nothing comes to mind.

**What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?**

Vanilla forums has allowed us to connect with our community.

  ### 34. Vanilla sets the bar for my community platform expectations

**Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Aimee J. | Operations Manager, Internet, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** March 19, 2015

**What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

The quiet moderating tools are better than any I've used. I can stay transparent, help guide conversations, and address user concerns/conflict without making a scene. With the API we are able to integrate with our growing account and support systems. The platform is extremely extensible and flexible towards my and my users' experience.

**What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

My main point of grief is with pricing and hosted features. The open-source version is fantastic but missing many of the hosted features, not to mention no way to support Vanilla financially. The hosted version does not give as much flexibility at our price point, especially when we have an in-house development team. 

**Recommendations to others considering Higher Logic Vanilla:**

The Vanilla team is very knowledgeable about their product and able to give solid recommendations for its best use. This is true whether you're considering hosted service or the open-source version. I'd recommend becoming part of their open-source community to learn from their users' experiences and talk directly with the developers.

**What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?**

From a community manager standpoint, Vanilla lets me solve user and team problems without creating more. It's flexible so I can tailor the user experience to my communities' preferences, and allows for subtle moderating as a solid system instead of extended effort. With this platform, it's simple to efficiently coordinate a community team. After multiple implementations of Vanilla and multiple experiences establishing user communities on other forum software, I consider Vanilla my go-to for a holistic community platform. 

  ### 35. Amazingly  Easy and friendly support system to set up Vanilla Forums

**Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Verified User in Fund-Raising | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** December 14, 2015

**What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

I enjoyed the interface and the easy set up 

**What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

I have no dislikes of this product at the moment 

**What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?**

I have used Vanilla to help with sales of clothing line, allows our customers to express what they would like to see in our products as well as a forum to talk among other customers. 

  ### 36. Stable and very functional forum with no fluff

**Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Verified User in Airlines/Aviation | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** December 10, 2015

**What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

Formatting.  Easy to read and visually un-cluttered.  Ability to un-clutter further through disabling features like signatures are very useful.

**What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

Search.  Tough to see desired results which often get lost under quoted dialogue.

**Recommendations to others considering Higher Logic Vanilla:**

Check out communities using this product already!

**What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?**

Improving community involvement through easy to read announcements and notifications.

  ### 37. Engaging

**Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Lynne H. | Director, E-Learning, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** March 25, 2015

**What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

I like the engagement with our audience that Vanilla forums helps us to develop. I particularly like the feedback and the badges.   

**What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

I don't like the way members can't search for other members.  I also dislike the cost.  It's pretty expensive for a not for profit. 

**Recommendations to others considering Higher Logic Vanilla:**

Take the plunge.  If you can't afford it now, save up.

**What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?**

Our previous forum was paid for, but really slow.  Hosting on Vanilla has seen an end to that.
We needed a way for people to contact us to join our sessions, but wanted them to engage with the material, and to  contribute in some way, rather than just turn up and then forget about what they had learnt.

Our members are enjoying the badges, and the leader board.  It's a real incentive for them to get involved.

  ### 38. Vanilla is delicious

**Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Games | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** December 10, 2015

**What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

Speed, feature-rich tech and terrific support.

**What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

Not wild about the name, but I get over it.

**What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?**

Customer support and community building. Features and support allow for constant community engagement and make it easy to roll out new forum games and other activities to keep users constantly involved.

  ### 39. Great Product and Customer Service

**Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Games | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** February 09, 2016

**What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

Ease of use and friendly and attentive customer service staff

**What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

Wish there was a more robust moderation plug-in

**What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?**

We're a game company so we get lots of feedback and player engagement. 

  ### 40. Great way to get ideas from customers

**Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** September 06, 2015

**What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

Great discussion formatting - it encourages dialogue and communication. Love the survey widget.


**What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

It would be great to offer a Marketo plug-in.

**What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?**

Helps with customer engagement and marketing promotions. Also good for support. 


  ### 41. Customer feedback crowdsourced through communities

**Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Stéfan L. | Formateur / Trainer, Marketing and Advertising, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** August 08, 2015

**What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

-Great badges and reactions

-Encourages games to share their experiences together. 

-Gamification makes it fun

**What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

Would like RSS to email capabilities. This would help a lot.

**What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?**

Not really business related but hobbyist.

-Share in-game videos

  ### 42. Simple, basic functionality 

**Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Verified User in Internet | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** March 13, 2015

**What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

Vanilla Forums is easy to use and the basic functionality works well for simple communication.

**What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

Doesn't have the feel or a polished product. Would like the ability to solve basic problems without engineering support. For example, the ability to independently create private groups as an admin.

**Recommendations to others considering Higher Logic Vanilla:**

Recommended as a basic solution. It's not the fanciest, but it gets the job done.

**What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?**

Soliciting user feedback from our top members. 

Opportunity for handful of most engaged users to help with user support.

  ### 43. Vanilla forums is simple, easy, and helps me connect with my folks

**Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Verified User in Government Administration | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** March 13, 2015

**What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

Notifications are simple and effective (ie, bookmarking and getting an email)

**What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

I'm not much of a fan of the badges and game-ification. I think it incentivizes the wrong behaviors (over-posting, contentious threads, etc)

**Recommendations to others considering Higher Logic Vanilla:**

Simple, powerful, and not overwhelming. Easy to iterate or upgrade abilities.

**What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?**

With Nextdoor, we engage our power users (called Leads). The forum is a great place to share product updates, ask for feedback, or just chat with our members where they otherwise wouldn't be able to.

  ### 44. Modern UX Facilitates Collaboration

**Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** August 03, 2015

**What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

Really enjoyed the gamification aspects and the overall UX. These key elements help to encourage collaboration.


**What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

Overall great product. If anything, I'd like to see more flexibility for self-serve theming.

**What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?**

Community forums to improve customer engagement, recruit beta testers, and for general customer support.


  ### 45. Solid Online Community Platform

**Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Steven S. | Community Manager, Media Production, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** October 31, 2014

**What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

Strong customization & moderation tools, easy to get started and master

**What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

Limited default themes avaliable, wysiwyg is limited and can sometimes be difficult

**What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?**

Needed systematic and unified way to communicate with and facilitate communication between our clients in a controlled environment. Vanilla has allowed us to take the first step toward achieving that with strong moderation and customization tools.

  ### 46. A "meh" solution with pushy salespeople

**Rating:** 1.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Verified User in Professional Training & Coaching | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** July 25, 2014

**What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

It was easy to get up and running in a very basic sense. After that, it was hard to customize notifications and the documentation for making custom headers and things like that was incredibly technical and not at all geared toward their less technical userbase.

**What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

The salesperson was incredibly pushy and kept trying to upsell us on features and moderation. This is because the very basics were not suitable as-is, making it virtually impossible not to upgrade to a more expensive plan. Their salesperson would routinely call me (after I told him not to and to email me instead) and leave voicemails. He also refused to honor our ability to cancel the contract even after I explained to him that we were willing to pay everything in a lump sum and cancel it. As I was attempting to do this and close everything out, he escalated the issue and made me feel taken advantage of. I would never recommend Vanilla Forums to a fellow community professional.

**What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?**

Connecting users online. We ended up leaving Vanilla Forums because the basic site did not meet our needs and they kept trying to upsell us. We started a Facebook group instead.

  ### 47. My time with Julie and Vanilla Forums

**Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Verified User in Internet

**Reviewed Date:** November 04, 2014

**What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

I like Julie's prompt response as well as her willingness to always solve my issues. 

As a startup, being able to have her available when needed has a been a huge value add and she has been awesome.

**What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

I don't have any dislikes. I am very happy with the platform

**Recommendations to others considering Higher Logic Vanilla:**

Use them, great platform!

**What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?**

My company has created a platform that will allow Dental Professionals to communicate in a way that helps them solve everyday challenges as well as share success stories.

  ### 48. Loving our new friends!

**Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Dan H. | President, Construction

**Reviewed Date:** October 02, 2014

**What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

Super customer service from Vanilla and the smiles on the faces of the people in our community. 

**What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

That I wasn't smart enough to switch to Vanilla sooner. 

**What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?**

We're reaching more people and that builds our audience dramatically, which is bringing us more sales and advertisers. We have few if any complaints from the community now. There's peace in the valley!

  ### 49. Great quality and support

**Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Łukasz N. | Webdeveloper, Computer Games, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** October 20, 2014

**What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

Strongest points are hosting quality and super-responsive and helpful support. I also love the can-do attitude of the whole team.

**What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?**

Completely nothing to dislike here. And here are some random characters to make this review valuable.


## Higher Logic Vanilla Discussions
  - [Can Vanilla be integrated with the rest of my website so I do not need a separate login for the forums?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/can-vanilla-be-integrated-with-the-rest-of-my-website-so-i-do-not-need-a-separate-login-for-the-forums-08788a1c-e0ee-485a-9d0e-bb1aef5fa28b) - 1 comment, 2 upvotes
  - [Can I run a Vanilla forum in an embedded frame?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/can-i-run-a-vanilla-forum-in-an-embedded-frame-c9684c8b-9886-47d4-ab67-5e16849addd7) - 1 comment, 1 upvote
  - [How much can I customize a Vanilla Forum?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/customization) - 1 comment, 1 upvote
  - [Are Vanilla Forums mobile friendly?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/mobile-use) - 1 comment, 1 upvote
  - [Does Vanilla allow me to make my forum private?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/forum-privatization) - 1 comment, 1 upvote

- [View Higher Logic Vanilla pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/higher-logic-vanilla/reviews?page=2&section=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-07-13+20%3A28%3A03+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=72ddb05b-1169-4f7c-98d8-ad96156b7824&secure%5Btoken%5D=3ff22e8431412a75195107a1d95faab061f7e4a7d0ddd67a2bf008c844d2caa3&format=llm_user)
## Higher Logic Vanilla Integrations
  - [Agentforce Sales (formerly Salesforce Sales Cloud)](https://www.g2.com/products/agentforce-sales-formerly-salesforce-sales-cloud/reviews)
  - [ChurnZero](https://www.g2.com/products/churnzero/reviews)
  - [CleanSpeak](https://www.g2.com/products/cleanspeak/reviews)
  - [GitHub](https://www.g2.com/products/github/reviews)
  - [HubSpot Marketing Hub](https://www.g2.com/products/hubspot-marketing-hub/reviews)
  - [Intuit Mailchimp Email Marketing](https://www.g2.com/products/intuit-mailchimp-email-marketing/reviews)
  - [Jira](https://www.g2.com/products/jira/reviews)
  - [Productboard](https://www.g2.com/products/productboard/reviews)
  - [WordPress.com](https://www.g2.com/products/wordpress-com/reviews)
  - [Zapier](https://www.g2.com/products/zapier/reviews)
  - [Zendesk for Customer Service](https://www.g2.com/products/zendesk-for-customer-service/reviews)
  - [Zoom Rooms](https://www.g2.com/products/zoom-rooms/reviews)

## Higher Logic Vanilla Features
**Community Building**
- Member Profiles
- Email & Notifications
- Member Discovery
- Member Referrals
- Community Spaces
- Paid Memberships
- Multimedia Sharing
- Courses

**Self-Service Experience**
- Knowledge Base
- Searchable Articles
- Community Forums
- Mobile Optimization
- Personalization

**Community Improvement**
- Gamification
- Polls & Questions
- Automation Rules

**Self-Service Platform**
- Branding
- Automation
- Artificial Intelligence
- Integrations

**Customer Analytics**
- Community Insights
- Community Engagement Analytics
- Downloadable Reports
- ROI Tracking

**Agentic AI - Customer Self-Service**
- Autonomous Task Execution
- Multi-step Planning
- Cross-system Integration
- Adaptive Learning
- Natural Language Interaction
- Proactive Assistance
- Decision Making

**Community Management**
- Community Feeds & Discussions
- Live Streaming
- Chat & Messaging
- Events Management
- Admin Roles & Permissions

**Agentic AI - Online Community Management**
- Autonomous Task Execution
- Multi-step Planning
- Cross-system Integration
- Natural Language Interaction
- Proactive Assistance
- Decision Making

## Top Higher Logic Vanilla Alternatives
  - [Influitive](https://www.g2.com/products/jigsaw-interactive-influitive/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (388 reviews)
  - [Gainsight Customer Communities](https://www.g2.com/products/gainsight-customer-communities/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (267 reviews)
  - [Hivebrite](https://www.g2.com/products/hivebrite/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (222 reviews)

