Likelihood to Recommend It's definitely worth considering Jive for the type of application we've developed i.e. a central shared repository for all employees to host and discuss information. I can't say I have ever used a superior tool, but they may exist. I'm just not sure I would want to use it exclusively for file hosting, though. It does integrate with various other tools, so perhaps it would be fine if used in conjunction with another tool for that purpose.
Read full review 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.
Read full review Pros Individual design Presence of Russian language (localization can be independently established) You can configure several information tapes with different themes. One for work, the second for communication A newly-arrived network user immediately receives a prepared block for beginners. After completing several game tasks, the user will receive the basics of using Jive. There is a template for each scenario. There is even a template for planning R&D, and there are more than twenty of them. Integrates with MS Office, Google Drive, Google Docs There are all platforms (even Winphone and blackberry) You can create forum threads Read full review 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. Read full review Cons Search functionality is very weak The information architecture and taxonomy doesnt allow for easy discoverability of content It's hard to navigate the and find spaces/groups that I already know about The main profile/interface does not allow easy access to key tasks or common tasks. Read full review 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. Read full review Likelihood to Renew There are always external factors that can impact this decision but currently, the Jive platform is maintaining its lead in the market place in this area. If the innovation in this space by Jive continues, then this number will remain high. Integration with other systems and adaptability to changes in the market or in client needs will also make this decision hard to predict more then 6 months into the future
Read full review Usability It was harder to use that expected. The admin needs to be code savvy to truly customize the system. And users need to trained on the system and the setup. Trainings and monitoring need to continue to enforce use.
Read full review It is very intuitive and simple to operate. Our customers immediately came up with the curve and began contributing content.
Read full review Reliability and Availability Uptime was OK. But there was one day that the system crashed for a whole day. Our company was unable to operate. And all the plugins to word/excel froze causing those systems to freeze. Jive posted a statement to the media saying all customers were up, but we were not.
Read full review Performance The product worked as designed. It just didn't work for our needs.
Read full review Support Rating They did an OK job when I needed them. Except for the one day the system went down. Jive pointed the finger at the hosting company, and the hosting company pointed the finger at Jive. No reliable information came to us.
Read full review They did an amazing job transferring our content from GetSatisfaction. We had almost 100% success in the transfer of 8 years worth of content.
Read full review Online Training Jive online training is there. It is OK/average. I feel some other companies are doing better. It is not a piece that is required to have a successfully implementation, but it could be useful to improve it
Read full review Implementation Rating If I did this over, I would hire out the implementation. They know the best practices and could have guided us to make an easier to use setup.
Read full review Alternatives Considered We had a Google phone number set up before and Jive was a lot better option than that. It is more consistent and can be configured much easier and with more advanced settings. Additionally, based on the pricing as well as working with the rep on our account, it was a perfect option for us
Read full review 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.
Read full review Return on Investment reduce email traffic reduce amount of files/documents scattered & lost across shared drives increased discovery, awareness and interaction of historically more separated individuals & team functions across the organisation from an IT perspective, we've benefited from improved IT operations (e.g. troubleshooting info shared and easily searched/found with all team members - such that even junior team members can solve technical problems outside of business hours, lessening the burden for standby/call-in for more senior team members) Read full review 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 Read full review ScreenShots Higher Logic Vanilla Screenshots