Top Rated Ning Alternatives
Ning has provided a safe-haven for communities since its inception. At first they had a free tier, which was nice and sprouted many communities. After they retired the free tier, many communities chose to stay on Ning opposed to moving to other platforms. I have been part of two communities for a long time.
As an user, Ning provides me with a forum-like space with a vast but focused suite of social features. The granularity which it offers is great, it allows you to limit the audience of posts, which exist in formats such as videos, photos, audio, polls, articles, etc.
It also has integration with social media, so content from a community can be shared to Facebook. This can be a nice way to organize the content curation of a Facebook page, for instance.
Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Ning has a lack of variety in themes, while other platforms have themes in abundance, and that might lead some people to choose other platforms over Ning.
I believe the absence of a free tier is off-putting, although the paid tiers have friendly prices at the time of this review. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
14 out of 15 Total Reviews for Ning
It help[s create a social network for your brand with easily cusotmisable feautures. You can connect across a wide audience with social feautures and it is easy to use Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
There are a few issues with the platform in terms of bugs. It is also super expensive for a new niche product offered that hasnt a significant competiive advantage than other social media sites. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
There were no upsides to using this service, as I did not have adequate time to review it. Many of Ning's competitors have free plans to allow a more thorough service review. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
I was going to evaluate this company for use with several associated organizations. After the 14 day trial period, they hit my credit card for $300. When I inquired with them about this charge, they fell back on their terms of service, saying that after 14 days, your card would be charged. Most companies in this space will notify you to check on the evaluation process and remind you of an upcoming charge on your account. I suspect I am not the only one who has encountered this as subscription companies like Ning will lean on their terms of service to get unsuspecting clients to fork over the annual subscription charge with no refund due. We discussed this lack of integrity, and they agreed to refund $270 of the original $300. I begrudgingly agreed, and 14 days later, I have seen no refund to my Paypal account. I have since submitted a chargeback through Paypal to force Ning to complete the refund process. I would recommend that anyone looking into this company pass on and look elsewhere. If this is how they handle customer service with potential new clients, I can only imagine how bad it is for existing clientele. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The content management system is extremely simple to use. It's possible to get a simple site up very quickly without knowledge of CSS or html, with a lot of useful features, particularly around discussion forum functionality. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The number of templates is pretty limited, which means it's hard to make a site look really attractive. The core functionality is based on discussion/posting features, which means that even static informational pages have to be rendered as posts. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
With Ning I am able to build my niche social network and see my username grow exponentially each day. Our users are very important to us and Ning has made keeping them up to date and able to connect with each other easier than we could have imagined. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The pricing is a tad bit too high, but we are able to squeeze by at the moment. Thankfully support has helped us through our journey. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
It helps for building a social network that was self-sustaining over time and I was impressed with their new updates now. It has improved a lot and it's moving ahead with many good new features to use. From my point-of-view as designer, I was able to re-design, re-brand, update color selection and add more new components with relative ease. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
I do believe the price went up over time but I dont have anything else to report on the downside of Ning. It could be a better price for bigger businesses or corporations, but it's still limited for start-ups or smaller group. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
I first used Ning when they had their Free platform because my company wanted to test out the different platforms for building content management and social media networking. Ning was very easy adjustment. It didn't take much time to learn the platform. I had a few questions along the way but their customer service reps were knowledgeable. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
I overall like Ning but there were not many themes to choose from when building a website. Once our site was built, we also had a few times where certain pages wouldn't pull it. It was very random. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The ability to have a connected interface for all teams/departments when driving toward metric oriented solutions Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The onboarding/integration time was an issue we experienced although that may not have been a common occurrence Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
I like the themes that are offered. There are several catchy and classic designs. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
I dislike the value of the product offered. I didn't find a difference between my Ning traffic and my free social media (like Facebook and Instagram) traffic. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
