FileZilla is a file transfer protocol (FTP) solution.
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Higher Logic Thrive
Score 8.7 out of 10
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Higher Logic Thrive is a private community platform that empowers members, customers, support and product teams to create and manage meaningful, engaging online communities. The solution is designed to keep users coming back. They can find support, best practices, peer-to-peer connections, resources, events, and networking, all in one destination.
I use FileZilla to securely upload files that are not permitted to be sent via insecure methods like email or web forms. FileZilla is great to test the ability to "reach" the remote SFTP server and to verify my files arrived. Once I have tested that, then our internal IT group automates the uploads to these third parties, however I can always manually log into FIleZilla to verify the uploads.
Higher Logic works very well for our business purposes. We can very easily create new communities when we need to (and this is often!). Our association isn't as concerned with driving engagement, but the tools Higher Logic provides allows us to take a closer look at the engagement level of our committee members when needed
Strips away unwanted underlying code from products that produce documents using any Microsoft product that is not needed in our products.
The nice part is that it strips away hidden code such as ctrl and another digit that is not necessary or can be replaced with the correct coding to produce standard processes such as graphics using ANSI or another protocol as well as line feeds and header masks.
We are in the process of determining if their pro product will function in the way we want it to across networks rather than going to each workstation to make changes decreasing our productivity.
We are also evaluating whether their technical support is responsive.
Higher Logic product managers are probably some of the best in the industry. They know their products and aren't pushy in trying to sell them to you. Don't get me wrong, they do try to sell you a product, but they understand that not everyone who is tasked with learning more is also a decision maker. That doesn't stop them from being professional and thorough in their demonstrations or explanation of fees.
Their technical support is top notch. Not only do they work to resolve issues, they also work with you to help you with non-issues. Our initial redesign was done by an agency that worked with HL directly to set up the new site. When I was tasked with a mini-redesign this year, HL technical support offered me a lot of insight on how to best do this using just my skills and HL.
They offer training on their platforms to ensure your success as an administrator. There is no cost and you can either go to their onsite two days "boot camp" or you can access a plethora of training videos and webinars through their online users' community.
Some of it's user interface could be a bit better designed (at least updated) to more of a modern look, but it's not really that big of a deal.
Inside the software it shows you various windows all embedded in one box. Moving the sizes of those windows around is a bit weird, especially if you just want of the windows to go away.
From time to time it can hang due to a timeout with the server connection. In those instances, I wish FileZilla would give you a heads up as to why it locked.
Reporting is copious but you cannot build your own reports so you may have lots of information in several different reports and have to pick and choose across several to combine manually. Exporting functionality is there but there are some reports that are only a screen shot and you cannot export them.
They are a great company that offer great products - primarily their community. As they continue to grow and expand their offerings, I believe they will increase the number of products that offer and in turn grow their client base. We use their community, activity synch, and volunteer manager currently.
FileZilla is really easy to understand and makes it easy to log into servers to upload files. Moving files around is a breeze (even if it's a little tedious to wait for large quantities to move one by one) and editing html and css files directly is a feature it would be difficult for us to live without
The software is not that simple to use when you have to get volunteers involved in the content assembly process. The content management system that is native to Higher Logic could improve to make the task of training volunteers far easier. Given its simplicity, it is hard for the system to rival more developed websites that use advanced CMS software.
I've never contacted FileZilla support directly, but they are so popular that there are countless tutorials online showing how to connect to any number of web servers, how to configure SSH/SFTP and so on. I feel that because of the popularity of FileZilla, the support from the general user community is sufficient.
Higher Logic's support is sub-par at best. It can be difficult to get in contact with anyone from the support team, and when you do, it seems as if they don't want to talk to you and don't even have the answers to your questions. Within the past few months, we've contacted them twice and both times have been very disappointing. The first time was to let them know there was an inconsistency between the analytics report and the heat map. They basically said that they already knew about the problem but didn't have any set plans to fix it because they were working on other "more important" things. The second time was for a conference call to go over some additional features that we wanted to implement. And the lady we spoke with seemed very disgusted to have to speak with us and then rushed us off the phone because she had another call.
Both perform the job they are expected to do, and they are easy to use. The FileZilla software is a desktop-based app, so I can only access it on the device on which it was installed. Cisco Secure Email allows you to send emails as you would normally, but the email and attachments are secure.
We are just in the early stages of looking into HubSpot Service Hub to determine if it will be a viable replacement for Higher Logic Community. We have other uses for the ServiceHub so there is an appeal to have it be a "one stop shop" for us. The big question however is how it will stack up to Higher Logic for the online communities. Candidly, while Higher Logic may be tough to beat in this area, it is something we will be looking closely at in the next 12 months.
The positive impact is easy file management. Since we have multiple clients some of them have different host providers which offer their own FTP interface. Using FileZilla allows us to use one interface to interact with all of our client files.
The return on investment is quick turnaround for updating files.
