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.
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HubSpot Marketing Hub
Score 8.5 out of 10
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HubSpot's Marketing Hub is an all-in-one inbound marketing engine that includes tools for email marketing, landing page creation, social media marketing, content management, reporting & analytics, search engine optimization (SEO), and more.
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 …
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
As I said previously, I was not a fan at the beginning because, like everyone, I don't take change so well. Once I started following leads through HubSpot Marketing Hub, I integrated it with my email and created templates for what I needed, I started to see the positives immediately. My time working was better spent as I eliminated time put in routine tasks. I was able to track all communication in HubSpot Marketing Hub, we created systems in the office assigning tasks to one another and, through HubSpot Marketing Hub, our leads were able to book meetings in my calendar automatically. To be honest, if you are in sales and marketing, I cannot think of scenarios where HubSpot Marketing Hub cannot help. All I would like to say is, when using templates, pay attention to where you send them - you may need some personalization. I would encourage the management of HubSpot Marketing Hub to create short tutorials for beginners like me who need to configure and start using various features: setting up deals, templates, and dashboards.
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.
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.
While Hubspot has added some collaborative tools, I think this could improve. I'd like to see more options to comment on emails and ways of being able to share out changes as well as approval channels.
The ability to update ads via the calendar is pretty cumbersome. There's no good way to bulk edit or update. You have go into each one individually.
Real time edits would be nice. If you have multiple people working on the same thing, you'll get kicked out and your changes might not be saved.
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.
Our business relies on the HubSpot platform to manage our marketing, sales and CRM processes. HubSpot marketing automation helps us define our activities and streamlines them in a cohesive and efficient way. Without HubSpot, we will have to revert to the 'old way' of doing everything with a variety of disparate systems.
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.
While there are some frustrating things that pop up unexpectedly ("wait... I can't do X?"), I have found HubSpot to be easy to use and extremely helpful to my daily work. The documentation is really good, and when it's not helpful, the support staff have been amazing.
They have had issues with system availability over the course of days. Sometimes the system is unusable, other times updates simply take a long time to show up. It's better now but, from a reliaibility standpoint, HubSpot is not Salesforce.com yet. Still great software though.
With all the new features in HubSpot, the system can get a tad slow sometimes... That said, most of the time it is lightning fast and I have no problems. Because most of the integrations are API, they silently work in the background. I have not had trouble with lag due to HubSpot integration
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.
During the few times I've needed it, HS support has been accessible, helpful and efficient. Often rolling up their sleeves to make changes for you as opposed to leaving you with a list of instructions to decipher on your own.
I did the 2-day classroom at HubSpot's corporate office in Cambridge. First off, it was amazing to see their corporate office in general. They have such a cool office environment. But it was also great to have the ability to learn in a workshop format with other HubSpot users and meet my Account Manager/ Inbound Marketing Consultant in person.
I went through Inbound Marketing University in 2006. Great training and helped my transition from traditional (outbound) marketing to inbound marketing that I've been able to apply to a number of businesses from wastewater and water reuse, to professional services and SaaS. Share information of value to build awareness and trust. Answer customers' questions in a transparent way to generate more qualified leads. Understand the difference between a marketing qualified lead and a sales qualified lead and put together a lead nurturing program. Your sales and marketing efforts will see significant ROI.
My biggest piece of advice for those who are implementing Hubspot is that you need to devote the time up front and learn how to use the product. Once you learn how to use Hubspot, it will be much more effective as well as much easier to use in the long run
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.
Other competing software such as Zoho and Boomtown may have more bells and whistles, but it is too cumbersome and has many parts that only advanced users can operate. With HubSpot, each function is within reach of the average agent. It doesn't overpromise and then makes you feel incompetent when you can't use it all...
HubSpot is addressing this more and more. Currently you can assign tasks to designated sales teams, which grow as you grow. They've added free baseline products for those just getting started. These and more contribute to the scalability of HubSpot - so I gave it an 8 and am hoping for more in the future!
