Discourse vs. Salesforce Experience Cloud

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Discourse
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Discourse is an open-source community management and moderation product.N/A
Salesforce Experience Cloud
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Engagement (formerly Salesforce Experience Cloud or Salesforce Community Cloud) is an online forum powered by Salesforce that enables businesses to connect with their employees, customers, partner organizations, and prospects. Designed to help facilitate communication and information sharing, customers can ask questions and request help, administrators can integrate data from third-party apps, and employees can collaborate across projects and…N/A
Pricing
DiscourseSalesforce Experience Cloud
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
DiscourseSalesforce Experience Cloud
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
DiscourseSalesforce Experience Cloud
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
DiscourseSalesforce Experience Cloud
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Discourse
-
Ratings
Salesforce Experience Cloud
10.0
1 Ratings
22% above category average
Role-based user permissions00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Discourse
-
Ratings
Salesforce Experience Cloud
10.0
1 Ratings
21% above category average
API00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Internationalization / multi-language00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Web Content Creation
Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Product A and Product B
Discourse
-
Ratings
Salesforce Experience Cloud
9.3
1 Ratings
20% above category average
WYSIWYG editor00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Code quality / cleanliness00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Admin section00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Page templates00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Library of website themes00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Mobile optimization / responsive design00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Publishing workflow00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Form generator00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Web Content Management
Comparison of Web Content Management features of Product A and Product B
Discourse
-
Ratings
Salesforce Experience Cloud
8.6
1 Ratings
19% above category average
Content taxonomy00 Ratings9.01 Ratings
SEO support00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Bulk management00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Availability / breadth of extensions00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Community / comment management00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Results and Analysis
Comparison of Results and Analysis features of Product A and Product B
Discourse
-
Ratings
Salesforce Experience Cloud
8.0
1 Ratings
10% below category average
Conversion tracking00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Test reporting00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Funnel Analysis00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
User Segmentation00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Digital Experience Platform
Comparison of Digital Experience Platform features of Product A and Product B
Discourse
-
Ratings
Salesforce Experience Cloud
10.0
1 Ratings
3% above category average
Campaign management00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Cloud enablement00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Content aggregation00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Content classification00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Multi-channel content personalization00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Customer data analytics00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
DXP Third-Party Integrations00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Multi-website management00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Digital asset management00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Editorial workflows and task management00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Best Alternatives
DiscourseSalesforce Experience Cloud
Small Businesses
PowerDMS by NEOGOV
PowerDMS by NEOGOV
Score 9.6 out of 10
Progress Sitefinity
Progress Sitefinity
Score 7.7 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
PowerDMS by NEOGOV
PowerDMS by NEOGOV
Score 9.6 out of 10
Tridion
Tridion
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Discord
Discord
Score 8.5 out of 10
Tridion
Tridion
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
DiscourseSalesforce Experience Cloud
Likelihood to Recommend
8.9
(3 ratings)
9.9
(52 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
9.4
(4 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(5 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
7.7
(17 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
9.4
(4 ratings)
User Testimonials
DiscourseSalesforce Experience Cloud
Likelihood to Recommend
Civilized Discourse Construction Kit, Inc.
[Discourse is by] far the best online forum platform in the industry. It may be a little pricey for people looking for a cheap option for their hobby forum, but for any type of business that relies on a forum, the pricing is more than fair.
Read full review
Salesforce
Salesforce Experience Cloud is well-suited for organizations that have clients who periodically or routinely need to access historical data or documents. The product also offers an exceptionally effective tool to engage with customers around support/service issues and the entire Case management functionality built into the Salesforce platform. The product might be less well-suited in environments where there is exceptionally high staff turnover within customer accounts, or where there is a substantial lack of very basic computer skills.
Read full review
Pros
Civilized Discourse Construction Kit, Inc.
  • User Privileges : Teams, Trust Levels, Moderation, Private and Public Threads make it possible to have as much transparency, privacy or power decentralization as one wishes.
  • Gamification: Badges and Achievements can be customized for User Activity and frequent readers and writers.
  • Mailing List mode: Users can choose to use forum threads without the User Interface by subscribing via mailing list mode.
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Salesforce
  • Complete integration with the Salesforce ecosystem. Data displayed in your Community portal reflects records from a Sales Cloud organization
  • Highly customizable. A Community Cloud portal can be totally customized both visually and with different funcionalities with little to no coding skills required
Read full review
Cons
Civilized Discourse Construction Kit, Inc.
  • Some configuration UIs are difficult to follow
  • Not well-suited for managing workflows (grant management as an example)
  • Bulk operations across multiple threads either impossible or difficult to figure out
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Salesforce
  • The documentation for implementing Experience Cloud can be a bit confusing as their rebranding hasn't made it's way into all articles, resulting in different terminology being used to refer to the same thing
  • Some things are not as intuitive regarding their customizability, so there's a bit of a learning curve (i.e. Lightning apps can't be used to customize layouts in Experience Cloud)
Read full review
Usability
Civilized Discourse Construction Kit, Inc.
No answers on this topic
Salesforce
Usability is pretty streamlined, especially if you're familiar with other Salesforce products, but even if not, take it from me, as I just entered the technological space about two years ago, that this product is pretty simple to learn. You don't have to jump in with your head underwater. Small wins and learnings along the way are what foster long-term understandings and enable your evolution alongside the product. I definitely recommend Salesforce Trailhead along with it
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Performance
Civilized Discourse Construction Kit, Inc.
No answers on this topic
Salesforce
It's delivered on our original requirements and we've found ways to grow its usage. We continue to build on our original success and we can report our data out to leadership to show a true return on investment which is great for growing support and expanding uses for the system.
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Support Rating
Civilized Discourse Construction Kit, Inc.
No answers on this topic
Salesforce
We have weekly calls with our Salesforce reps. They bring new ideas to the table and help with taxonomy builds. They have also answered many questions and connected us to the right people for us to grow our knowledge and utilization of the platform. They are a good partner overall in comparison.
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Alternatives Considered
Civilized Discourse Construction Kit, Inc.
Vanilla's mobile functionality was downright awful and it felt like it was stuck in the 2000s. While they have similar features, Discourse blows them away in almost every department. We don't regret switching at all.
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Salesforce
I have used Datatel/Colleague/Recruiter before. There were issues because only one person at the institution was able to have the student's record open at a time. This was problematic when collaboration between departments was necessary especially in the case of admissions, financial aid, and registration. We also had to do our work and then log out before asking a questions of another department. Sometimes simultaneous use was necessary. However, this was years ago and they may have since updated the program.
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Return on Investment
Civilized Discourse Construction Kit, Inc.
  • Community Members are eager to jump into the discussion.
  • Conversations can be tracked easier without the risk of being lost in a sea of messages as people tend to construct their posts more carefully than on any workspace messenger.
  • It's open source and configurable with many other add-ons to help integration with other services.
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Salesforce
  • Improved online admission application completion rates from mid-60%s to mid-80%s.
  • Positive user experience from start-to-finish to leverage one data system for all prospective student data
  • Fewer data integrations transforming and loading sensitive student data by leveraging Salesforce Community Cloud to access already existing data
Read full review
ScreenShots