Higher Logic Thrive vs. Higher Logic Vanilla

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Higher Logic Thrive
Score 7.1 out of 10
N/A
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.N/A
Higher Logic Vanilla
Score 6.0 out of 10
N/A
Higher Logic Vanilla is a customizable and themable forum software. It can be used for support communities, Q&A Communities and more. There are numerous integrations, including SSO, and connectors to popular software such as Mailchimp, WordPress, Zendesk and Salesforce.N/A
Pricing
Higher Logic ThriveHigher Logic Vanilla
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Essential
Contact sales team
Corporate
Contact sales team
Enterprise
Contact sales team
Enterprise Plus
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Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Higher Logic ThriveHigher Logic Vanilla
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesYes
Entry-level Setup FeeRequiredNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Higher Logic ThriveHigher Logic Vanilla
Considered Both Products
Higher Logic Thrive
Chose Higher Logic Thrive
Higher logic is comparatively cheaper than Khoros Communities and has lots of features.
Higher Logic Vanilla

No answer on this topic

Top Pros

No answers on this topic

Top Cons

No answers on this topic

Best Alternatives
Higher Logic ThriveHigher Logic Vanilla
Small Businesses
PowerDMS by NEOGOV
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Score 9.6 out of 10
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Score 9.6 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
PowerDMS by NEOGOV
PowerDMS by NEOGOV
Score 9.6 out of 10
PowerDMS by NEOGOV
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Enterprises
Discord
Discord
Score 8.5 out of 10
Discord
Discord
Score 8.5 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Higher Logic ThriveHigher Logic Vanilla
Likelihood to Recommend
7.5
(17 ratings)
9.0
(10 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
7.0
(2 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
9.8
(2 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Higher Logic ThriveHigher Logic Vanilla
Likelihood to Recommend
Higher Logic
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
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Higher Logic
For companies that want to customize almost anything and make the forum look like your site, Vanilla Forums is the one for you. Customization and automation of the data via the API with other systems is more than possible and they serve to be great as a hosting provider, dealing with all the upgrades, deployments and maintenance and threat management well. I would say they might be less turn key for a small application but the fact they have an open source community, the ability to find help and information can lower the barrier of entry for most.
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Pros
Higher Logic
  • 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.
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Higher Logic
  • Gamification: The ability to incentivise community members to get involved with ranks and badges is one of the main reasons that we purchased the tool.
  • Support: The Vanilla support team are incredible, often responding to issues very late at night and proactively fixing issues as soon as they occur.
  • Customisation: Vanilla can be completely styled with css allowing us to match it to the branding of the rest of our website.
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Cons
Higher Logic
  • 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.
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Higher Logic
  • There are some features I wish Vanilla would implement that could improve ease of use in our specific community, but some of the ideas we have are not necessarily something that would benefit all of the forums that Vanilla works with.
  • In the past, we've had issues with releases breaking some of our specific site features they built for us, but this has improved drastically recently.
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Likelihood to Renew
Higher Logic
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.
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Higher Logic
No answers on this topic
Usability
Higher Logic
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.
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Higher Logic
It is very intuitive and simple to operate. Our customers immediately came up with the curve and began contributing content.
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Support Rating
Higher Logic
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.
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Higher Logic
They did an amazing job transferring our content from GetSatisfaction. We had almost 100% success in the transfer of 8 years worth of content.
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Alternatives Considered
Higher Logic
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.
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Higher Logic
From a footprint standpoint, Vanilla has less technical bloat than vbulletin or InVision, and it outdoes Lithium as far as features and service go. The bloat of other services and ability to use new ways of engaging communities such as through Reactions are part of the reason Vanilla was selected. However, the features are better on a couple more seasoned platforms and more equipped to deal with issues and technical problems.
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Return on Investment
Higher Logic
  • Understanding preferences-- Higher Logic helps us tap in to how our members want to hear from us.
  • Data collection-- Since we started using Higher Logic the amount of data we get from our members has increased greatly.
  • Consolidation of tools-- Higher Logic replaced 2 or 3 additional SAAS options being utilized by us. This helped save money!
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Higher Logic
  • Increased uptime and overall speed in the forum (compared to our previous phpbb solution)
  • Increased usage by users which resulted in a higher pages/session in a short amount of time
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ScreenShots

Higher Logic Thrive Screenshots

Screenshot of Higher Logic Thrive Community logged in view
Bring members together 24/7. Discussions, Q&A, events, and engagement tools like automation and a mobile app – Higher Logic Thrive Community provides everything you need to bring members back from wherever they are.Screenshot of Higher Logic Thrive Community logged out view
Your value proposition shines on the logged out view of Higher Logic Thrive Community. Use this valuable space to remind members and prospects about the important work your association does.Screenshot of Target groups
Tailor every email or automated campaign with dynamic content, segmentation, and personalization. Integrations with your AMS or online community make adding contacts and creating compound distribution lists a breeze.Screenshot of Message designer
Save time with pre-built email templates and automated campaigns based on nearly two decades of association experience.Screenshot of Reports
Refine your programs with data. Gain insight from email interactions and web tracking so you can refine your offerings and prove ROI.Screenshot of Engagement scoring
See how engaged your members are so you can be sure you are providing value.

Higher Logic Vanilla Screenshots

Screenshot of Looks great on any device, including desktop, tablet or mobile device.Screenshot of We offer over 60 plugins that can add functionality to your community.Screenshot of Many different themes to choose from, which you can further customize as you like.Screenshot of You have full access to edit HTML and CSS of your theme, to make any changes you need.