Higher Logic Vanilla Pros and Cons

If I had to say what I like the best it would have to be where I spend about 80% of my time in. That would be the admin Dashboard. It is a fully functional and fluid space for any community administrator. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Being honest, there are a few things that we have to have custom work done that were available on our previous platform, but when we ask for the work it is done quickly and professionally. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I love that I have an awesome CSM who really cares about my forum doing well (shout out to Val). They look into any ideas I might have, no mater how crazy. I love that you can really make it your own. There is so much flexibility in terms of design and plug-ins. We have a Zendesk plug-in that allows us to pull tough questions into tickets to provide our users with privacy and faster service. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

If you don't know CSS, it can be a little hard. Luckily there are free CSS classes on a lot of different coding websites. Having a developer or a designer that can help you out would be awesome for this solution. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

- Easy design

- Plugin features

- Our CSM Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

- Underdeveloped analytics

- Very DIY (not a lot of help setting up or customizing) Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The thing I like best about Vanilla Forums is how easy it is to use for my customers. It is easy to find various topics and threads with the different menus available on each page. We've used other forum platforms that constantly crashed and this one has been very stable. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There are only minor things I dislike. Our members are all writers. Many of them copy from Word to paste content into the forum and run up against the character count limit. This is an easy workaround using a text editor program, but it would be even easier if Vanilla had a "Paste a Plain Text" option. Again, this is really minor. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

How quickly we can create new forums as we publish new games. The support team at Vanilla Forums is very responsive and willing to work with us to Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

No big complaints. It would be nice if our web developers could run instances of Vanilla locally so they could create themes faster. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Vanilla’s team went above and beyond to ensure the success of the pilot program that we conducted. The platform is intuitive and easy to use; it offered us a high degree of flexibility so that we could take a phased approach to rolling out new features and functionality. After signing our agreement, we were immediately introduced to Vanilla’s support and implementation team, who provided constructive feedback and shared innovative ideas for driving engagement on a weekly basis. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Overall, Vanilla has a strong product. However, we were disappointed to learn that you can't actually host a "live chat" in a discussion because comments don't load automatically in real-time...in order to see a new comment on a post you have to refresh your browser. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

No dislikes! so far our experience has been whole Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

No complaints: we have enjoyed reliable service, easy integration and look forward to implementing advanced features in the next calendar year. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.