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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Joomla

    Score8.3 out of 10
    N/AJoomla! is a free and open source content management system used to publish web content. Included features are page caching, RSS feeds, printable versions of pages, news flashes, blogs, polls, a search function, and support for language internationalization.N/A

    Khoros Communities

    Score8.2 out of 10
    Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
    Khoros Communities is a fully-featured community platform, built for self-service support, education and collaboration. Organizations can host a vibrant space where customers can find answers, develop expertise, share experiences, and connect with their brand.N/A
    Pricing
    JoomlaKhoros Communities
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    JoomlaKhoros Communities
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoYes
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details—Pricing is variable based on the needs of the customer.
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    JoomlaKhoros Communities
    Considered Both Products
    The Joomla Project
    No answer on this topic
    Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
    Chose Khoros Communities
    Additional products not listed. Salesforce, Insided, Hivebrite. Khoros was the overall winner, with the right combination of function and flexibility we needed.
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    93%
    Would buy again
    14 Answers
    95%
    Would buy again
    70 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    93%
    Delivers good value for the price
    13 Answers
    98%
    Delivers good value for the price
    48 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    87%
    Happy with the feature set
    13 Answers
    86%
    Happy with the feature set
    64 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    10 Answers
    89%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    31 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    14 Answers
    81%
    Implementation went as expected
    38 Answers
    Features
    JoomlaKhoros Communities
    Security
    Comparison of Security features of Joomla! and Khoros Communities
    Feature
    Joomla!
    8.3
    51 Ratings
    1% above category average
    Khoros Communities
    -
    Ratings
    Role-based user permissions8.351 Ratings00 Ratings
    Platform & Infrastructure
    Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Joomla! and Khoros Communities
    Feature
    Joomla!
    6.6
    48 Ratings
    17% below category average
    Khoros Communities
    -
    Ratings
    API7.246 Ratings00 Ratings
    Internationalization / multi-language6.047 Ratings00 Ratings
    Web Content Creation
    Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Joomla! and Khoros Communities
    Feature
    Joomla!
    7.7
    54 Ratings
    2% below category average
    Khoros Communities
    -
    Ratings
    WYSIWYG editor8.353 Ratings00 Ratings
    Code quality / cleanliness8.551 Ratings00 Ratings
    Admin section8.249 Ratings00 Ratings
    Page templates7.052 Ratings00 Ratings
    Library of website themes6.350 Ratings00 Ratings
    Mobile optimization / responsive design7.550 Ratings00 Ratings
    Publishing workflow8.450 Ratings00 Ratings
    Form generator7.446 Ratings00 Ratings
    Web Content Management
    Comparison of Web Content Management features of Joomla! and Khoros Communities
    Feature
    Joomla!
    7.6
    52 Ratings
    1% above category average
    Khoros Communities
    -
    Ratings
    Content taxonomy7.951 Ratings00 Ratings
    SEO support7.650 Ratings00 Ratings
    Bulk management8.049 Ratings00 Ratings
    Availability / breadth of extensions7.052 Ratings00 Ratings
    Community / comment management7.150 Ratings00 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    JoomlaKhoros Communities
    Small Businesses
    Umbraco CMS
    Score7 out of 10
    Higher Logic Thrive
    Score8.9 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Square Online
    Score7.7 out of 10
    Higher Logic Vanilla
    Score5.5 out of 10
    Enterprises
    RWS Tridion Sites
    Score9 out of 10
    Verint Community
    Score10 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    JoomlaKhoros Communities
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.2
    (75 ratings)
    8.4
    (95 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    10.0
    (28 ratings)
    4.2
    (8 ratings)
    Usability
    8.0
    (14 ratings)
    8.0
    (3 ratings)
    Availability
    9.9
    (2 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Performance
    7.8
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    10.0
    (4 ratings)
    5.0
    (5 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Online Training
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    4.5
    (2 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    8.7
    (3 ratings)
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    9.9
    (3 ratings)
    8.6
    (86 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    JoomlaKhoros Communities
    Likelihood to Recommend
    The Joomla Project
    If your developers want to have some fun, Joomla offers the stability and friendliness to do custom coding. Certain marketing initiatives require us to get "cute" with the interface, and Joomla allows for that a bit easier than WordPress (and definitely easier than sites like Squarespace). The security of Joomla is also always a plus.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
    Khoros Communities is my go-to when I'm part of a big company with lots of customers who want to help each other. It's awesome for talking about products, giving ideas to make them better, and getting help when I need it. If my team is spread out or we're working from home, Khoros Communities is handy for sharing updates and working together. It's also a good tool for events, helping with planning and discussing what happened. But if my group is small or not very active, or if I just need a simple place to chat without too many extras, Khoros Communities might be more than I need. Plus, I've got to be ready to keep an eye on things to keep the community positive, and it works best when I have a plan to grow and keep the community lively.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    The Joomla Project
    • Security. Its got many new features in the new Joomla! 4 which make the already good security even better. I like the ability to use my Yubi keys to log in with the new webauth standard, I don't think any other CMS has that built in
    • W3C Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 (with AA compliance)
    • Really good SEO that gets our sites to the top of the search engines again without the need for any extra things
    • Speed, it gets a really good score (100%) in the google lighthouse on our server, can't beat that
    Read full review
    Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
    • Increase in suggestions from our clients to know what we should improve.
    • Reduce technical support costs and incredibly increase sales.
    • It helps to interact with customers and we receive positive and negative reviews and based on their comments we can make changes that increase sales.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    The Joomla Project
    • Because Joomla's user community is smaller than WP, it lacks as many choices from 3rd party developers, meaning it can be a little more difficult to find the right extension for what you need to accomplish
    • Along the same vein, most of the best 3rd-party software for Joomla! is paid
    • Simple features such as Add to Menu and Cache cleaners should be adopted as part of the Joomla! core, though they are available as extensions
    • Joomla! could use a simpler and easier URL rewriting process
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
    • Self Service, Low and No Code. The Community Managers should be able to some UI Tasks by self with doing any code updates.
    • Salesforce Integration: The basic Integration should also include the basic level of business requirement. (Contacts and Accounts Mapping)
    • Slack Connector Update: There is no update on this connector till the time its launch. The other team has lot of options to push the notification in multiple slack channels. And unfortunately Khoros does not. This creates a lot work for Community team to bring internal teams to the community to respond or acknowledge an post.
    • More Integrations: Since now the Khoros communities does not comes up with the integrations with basic support tools like JIRA, Confluence, Github etc.
    • Search Improvisation: Apart from last search update there is no updates we see in this feature. The team should think of Putting Some AI based Search into the community which helps the Community managers to manage the content accordingly
    • Some update on AI and Gen AI: Khoros communities did not shared any thoughts about their plans for putting these technology in community
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    The Joomla Project
    I gave it a rating of 10 because I just love how Joomla! works, how it is set up and how it handles many users. Also it is very fast, and there is no overload on the MySQL database or servers ever.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
    On a scale of 1 to 10, I'd give Khoros Communities a solid 8. The system is extremely easy to use, enabling our team and community members to navigate and interact with the platform with ease. The wide range of features offered by Khoros Communities has greatly enriched our online interactions and improved the efficiency of our customer service. The technical support team has also been extremely helpful, could be quicker sometimes for answering our questions but they efficiently resolving any problems we have encountered. The platform is perfectly scalable, capable of handling our growing user base without any performance problems. What's more, Khoros Communities offers excellent integration capabilities with our other software tools, making our operations smoother and more efficient
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    The Joomla Project
    Joomla! 3.x is easily installed either manually or via a script provided by your host. It contains most of the tools needed to begin creating websites right from the start. Those features that it doesn't have are easily installed via links and buttons from the thousands of extensions available in the community
    Read full review
    Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
    Like every backend, it can always be improved upon. The excellent thing is that Khoros have a hugely active customer support community as well as a fantastic case management system to triage support issues and requests. So regardless of your level of knowledge or familiarity, you're well supported out of the box.
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    The Joomla Project
    No answers on this topic
    Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
    I've hardly ever seen downtime in any of their production communities. There's the occasional reboot needed for config reasons or if patches are applied, but these take place after customer approval and typically last only a few minutes.
    Read full review
    Performance
    The Joomla Project
    Today's Modern Joomla performs very well and is robust and durable. The pages load faster than they ever did in the past and Modern Joomla's integration into other software or systems has become seamless. Modern Joomla sites will last long and will stay running forever.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    The Joomla Project
    Between the core Joomla developers who are excellent at answering questions and providing support, you have a whole community of developers who work with Joomla and are happy to help fellow developers out answering questions and supporting the Joomla project. Out of the many communities I am involved in for open-source software, Joomla's community is by far the best.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
    They are responsive and proactive. They are really on top of things. They send personal emails to check in on you. It feels like they really know you. You only get emails from 3-4 people at Khoros – they must be customer assigned.
    Read full review
    In-Person Training
    The Joomla Project
    No answers on this topic
    Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
    I think it is engaging and has good instructors.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Online Training
    The Joomla Project
    It is good if you know Joomla! if not it can get a bit confusing
    Read full review
    Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
    It was out of the box training - pre-recorded/ not live. There was nothing for more advanced topics like APIs. They do have a good knowledge base and community that you can access and folks in there are responsive. I would however like more advanced training options.
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    The Joomla Project
    Joomla has gone through tremendous growing pains. It is now better than ever. But before, when it was going from 1.5-2.5, the templates and plugins would break over and over again. If you don't understand what Joomla was trying to do back then, you might have a bad attitude toward it. Today, those pains are over and things don't break like they used to during that time period.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
    We were up against a hard stop with Jive’s contract ending and Khoros connected us with a deployment partner to do accelerated deployment using a template approach. It could have happened in 2 weeks. We did not end up going that way since we wanted more customization. Lithium handled technical stuff like migration, but a lot of the process is self-deployment. It’s one of the ways they teach use of the system is having the user self-implement.

    Overall, the implementation was super easy to do. Doing single sign-on (SSO) was the only hard part. The implementation ended up taking nine weeks total, but in hindsight, we could have done in it six. Most of the implementation time was spent in course work, which consisted of on-demand training - approximately 7-8 hours that you are required for you to do, before they turn on the system. During this nine week period, about 50% of my time was spent on implementation.

    We had a deployment manager who we were able to email 1-1. I leaned on him heavily. He was great at all hours, for example, they would call back at 7pm PST. They were very responsive.

    Content migration strategy is important to consider. Moving from an existing community you need to strategically choose how your layout will be. Two different systems will have two different ways to format communities. For example, Jive has communities with sub-communities, whereas Khoros has community, category, and boards.

    Contact migration is also an important consideration. You need to think through how you are going to move contacts from your old community to a new one. For example, are you going to create new logins and passwords? We were hoping to use the integration with Salesforce.com to be a portal, but ended up using an in-house solution that works well to maintain same the same logins. The next related question is are you going to be able to keep them connected to all the posts in your old community? We migrated old posts. If you have a tech-savvy team, you can do a self-migration. Khoros has a migration services team that we utilized. It cost us $10k to move content and posts were kept tied to the user.

    The next consideration is your launch/promotion plan. Khoros helped us out and gave us a lot of examples. They shared pre-launch email dates, follow-up emails, FAQ pages (e.g. to explain why switching, why better).
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    The Joomla Project
    We tested other platforms like WordPress, Magento and some local CMS. 
    But Joomla offered us better resources for generating content.
    Joomla is a CMS suitable for many types of projects, especially if you have several people editing content at the same time.
    It allows you to maintain visual standardization and offers many options for working with images.
    With its ability to control access to different articles, categories or even different components, it is a great tool, even if they are managed by different people.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
    Large companies and organizations with complex community needs are well served by Khoros communities. The platform's advanced analytics and reporting features helps organizations seeking deeper insights. The gamification is the best way to boost user engagement, Khoros Communities has a rich feature set. Also with customization options offered by Khoros Communities, companies can develop a unique and customized community experience.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    The Joomla Project
    No answers on this topic
    Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
    I think I would give Khoros an overall 7, while there were things we really liked about it. I also saw things that just did not work well for us. We like using iG but it was not the friendliest in using it on that platform. Sometimes the software would glitch or lag which is not helpful during high critical moments
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    The Joomla Project
    • Joomla has reduced our costs of rolling out a new website because it uses less developer time and can be rolled out by individual users as needed.
    • Joomla has a lot of extensions and add-ons that make it easy to create and implement advanced solutions quickly.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
    • We are able to see what our different cohorts of customers are doing within the community, and we are able to create content and programs based on the engagement we get from these different groups.
    • We have been able to start an Idea Exchange space where our customers can share, vote, and comment on features they would like to see in our products. It quickly became a very popular place within the Community.
    • With the discussion forums, we are able to use the Accepted Solutions functions to help deflect tickets and Support interactions working on a 1-to-many scale.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    Khoros Communities Screenshots

    Screenshot of the Khoros Communities solution, and some of its tools available to build an enterprise-class online community and scale member engagement.Screenshot of discussions, which can be enabled to connect product experts and brand-enthusiasts through peer-to-peer discussions. Both newbies and experienced users can read, post, and easily respond in forums.Screenshot of where community members can submit, vote on, and discuss ideas to improve products, and share insights, all while driving engagement, and building brand loyalty. Idea boards deliver value for product managers, marketers and customers.Screenshot of events, that provide a platform to schedule, announce, inform, and discuss everything from the smallest group gathering to the largest user conference. These community-hosted activities harness the enthusiasm generated by interactions between members, company, and brand ambassadors and foster deeper connections with audiences. Users can integrate Zoom meetings and webinars within the community, or host live-stream video outside the community with URL links to any video hosting platform like YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook or others.Screenshot of where to design a brand-approved community without custom code. It includes expert-created templates and a drag-and-drop interface to customize page layouts, navigation, and brand themes.Screenshot of some of the dashboards, reports, and benchmark data used to track visitors, usage, trending topics, interaction preferences, and agent responsiveness.