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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    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

    Agentforce Marketing

    Score7.6 out of 10
    N/AMarketing Cloud is a cloud-based digital marketing platform, used by marketers can segment their audience, deliver personalized messages, track campaign performance, engage leads and accounts, and optimize strategies based on real-time insights.

    $1,250

    per month per installation

    Pricing
    Khoros CommunitiesAgentforce Marketing
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    Account Engagement
    $1,250
    per month
    Engagement
    $1,250
    per month
    Intelligence
    $3,000
    per month
    Loyalty Management
    $20,000
    per month
    Personalization
    $100,000
    per year
    Data Cloud for Marketing
    $108,000
    per year
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Khoros CommunitiesAgentforce Marketing
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesYes
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional DetailsPricing is variable based on the needs of the customer.—
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Khoros CommunitiesAgentforce Marketing
    Considered Both Products
    Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
    No answer on this topic
    Salesforce
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    95%
    Would buy again
    70 Answers
    88%
    Would buy again
    84 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    98%
    Delivers good value for the price
    48 Answers
    89%
    Delivers good value for the price
    72 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    86%
    Happy with the feature set
    64 Answers
    93%
    Happy with the feature set
    89 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    89%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    31 Answers
    88%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    58 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    81%
    Implementation went as expected
    38 Answers
    84%
    Implementation went as expected
    54 Answers
    Features
    Khoros CommunitiesAgentforce Marketing
    Email & Online Marketing
    Comparison of Email & Online Marketing features of Khoros Communities and Salesforce Agentforce Marketing
    Feature
    Khoros Communities
    -
    Ratings
    Salesforce Agentforce Marketing
    7.3
    171 Ratings
    6% below category average
    WYSIWYG email editor00 Ratings7.4122 Ratings
    Dynamic content00 Ratings8.2153 Ratings
    Ability to test dynamic content00 Ratings6.3112 Ratings
    Landing pages00 Ratings7.6121 Ratings
    A/B testing00 Ratings7.0151 Ratings
    Mobile optimization00 Ratings6.7111 Ratings
    Email deliverability reporting00 Ratings7.2132 Ratings
    List management00 Ratings8.1129 Ratings
    Triggered drip sequences00 Ratings7.295 Ratings
    Lead Management
    Comparison of Lead Management features of Khoros Communities and Salesforce Agentforce Marketing
    Feature
    Khoros Communities
    -
    Ratings
    Salesforce Agentforce Marketing
    8.1
    124 Ratings
    2% above category average
    Lead nurturing automation00 Ratings8.9109 Ratings
    Lead scoring and grading00 Ratings8.1110 Ratings
    Data quality management00 Ratings7.3116 Ratings
    Automated sales alerts and tasks00 Ratings8.2101 Ratings
    Campaign Management
    Comparison of Campaign Management features of Khoros Communities and Salesforce Agentforce Marketing
    Feature
    Khoros Communities
    -
    Ratings
    Salesforce Agentforce Marketing
    7.3
    114 Ratings
    3% below category average
    Calendaring00 Ratings7.3103 Ratings
    Event/webinar marketing00 Ratings7.497 Ratings
    Social Media Marketing
    Comparison of Social Media Marketing features of Khoros Communities and Salesforce Agentforce Marketing
    Feature
    Khoros Communities
    -
    Ratings
    Salesforce Agentforce Marketing
    7.4
    88 Ratings
    2% below category average
    Social sharing and campaigns00 Ratings7.283 Ratings
    Social profile integration00 Ratings7.539 Ratings
    Reporting & Analytics
    Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Khoros Communities and Salesforce Agentforce Marketing
    Feature
    Khoros Communities
    -
    Ratings
    Salesforce Agentforce Marketing
    7.6
    124 Ratings
    1% above category average
    Dashboards00 Ratings8.1118 Ratings
    Standard reports00 Ratings7.3123 Ratings
    Custom reports00 Ratings7.2100 Ratings
    Platform & Infrastructure
    Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Khoros Communities and Salesforce Agentforce Marketing
    Feature
    Khoros Communities
    -
    Ratings
    Salesforce Agentforce Marketing
    7.6
    124 Ratings
    0% below category average
    API00 Ratings6.790 Ratings
    Role-based workflow & approvals00 Ratings6.689 Ratings
    Customizability00 Ratings6.8111 Ratings
    Integration with Salesforce.com00 Ratings7.6113 Ratings
    Integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM00 Ratings8.914 Ratings
    Integration with SugarCRM00 Ratings8.711 Ratings
    Third-party software integrations00 Ratings7.624 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Khoros CommunitiesAgentforce Marketing
    Small Businesses
    Higher Logic Thrive
    Score8.9 out of 10
    Vbout
    Score9.9 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Higher Logic Vanilla
    Score5.5 out of 10
    Bloomreach
    Score9.2 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Verint Community
    Score10 out of 10
    Iterable
    Score8.2 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Khoros CommunitiesAgentforce Marketing
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.4
    (95 ratings)
    8.2
    (329 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    4.1
    (8 ratings)
    8.1
    (114 ratings)
    Usability
    8.0
    (3 ratings)
    8.5
    (37 ratings)
    Availability
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    10.0
    (11 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.6
    (9 ratings)
    Support Rating
    5.0
    (5 ratings)
    7.0
    (36 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    5.0
    (4 ratings)
    Online Training
    4.5
    (2 ratings)
    8.1
    (7 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    3.0
    (17 ratings)
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    -
    (0 ratings)
    5.0
    (1 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    7.0
    (2 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    8.6
    (86 ratings)
    7.5
    (40 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (3 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.0
    (3 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Khoros CommunitiesAgentforce Marketing
    Likelihood to Recommend
    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
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    Salesforce
    I think the product, by definition, is meant for marketing — and we use it exactly for that, for running campaigns. That’s the best-suited use case for the product. I don’t think it’s really meant to be used for anything else — that’s just not how it’s designed.
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    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
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    Salesforce
    • Filter relevant content so you can priorize those that are more relevant and resolve it first
    • Measure the traffic in the different social networks, as well as the response rate, average response time and other relevant metrics
    • Configure automation rules to order the work of those who must interact with the customer
    Incentivized
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    Cons
    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
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    Salesforce
    • The email builder does not offer any way to catch/check bugs across different email service providers
    • Creating SQL is not as easy as drag-and-drop; a lot of technical knowledge is required
    • Salesforce Marketing Cloud is sold as a marketing tool, but to be honest, you need a LOT of technical IT support to run the tool
    • Einstein metrics are across the board; if you have multiple audiences in one instance of Salesforce Marketing Cloud you can't segment the data.
    Incentivized
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    Likelihood to Renew
    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
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    Salesforce
    As of right now we have not seen any other program that integrates as seamlessly into our Salesforce platform. We have barely scratched the surface of all the features and use cases. It would be irresponsible to make a move to another platform in the near future. We have not come up against any limitations that would prompt a need to switch
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    Usability
    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.
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    Salesforce
    You won't find another solution that has as many features as Salesforce Marketing Cloud Interaction Studio. We all know Salesforce, we all know how big they are and it's not for nothing... Their tools do most of the things you want, need and even imagine. Using it is complicated, but the usability is infinite.
    Incentivized
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    Reliability and Availability
    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.
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    Salesforce
    Upgrades and timing of the upgrades were communicated well and planned during off hours for our work. If we did have a campaign scheduled during that time, it would kick-off after the system was back active. There were a few unplanned system down times, but it was a rare occurrence and those times were also short in duration.
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    Performance
    Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
    No answers on this topic
    Salesforce
    Though the make up of MA apps is not built this way today, it would be nice to see them become more real-time. The integration between Salesforce and Pardot is not a true real-time integration. If I modify something in Salesforce, those changes are not automatically reflected in Pardot immediately. There is a delay of about 15 minutes before the systems sync. This delay, although not long, is less than ideal We would love the systems to be integrated real time such that changes are propagated from one system to the other immediately.
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    Support Rating
    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.
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    Salesforce
    They are really responsive and more than not solve the problem or give you insight to how you can manage the solution yourself. I do find however sometimes a long delay on the more complex issues when they need to loop in other departments. but overall a good experience with support
    Incentivized
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    In-Person Training
    Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
    I think it is engaging and has good instructors.
    Incentivized
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    Salesforce
    The trainers at the Pardot user conference (Elevate and Connections) were very knowledgeable and presented the material well. Again, the content was targeted to more of a new user audience, and was not really relevant for folks who had been using the product for 2+ years.
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    Online Training
    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.
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    Salesforce
    Pardot's online training touches on all topics briefly and vaguely without much indepth exploration into how a final outcome could look, such as Nurturing Campaigns, Email templates, landing page templates, etc... The only true way to uncover Pardot's full capabilities is to have Front End design and coding experience. Without this key skill set, I would not recommend Pardot to another business.
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    Implementation Rating
    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).
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    Salesforce
    From an IT perspective, once you set up the Javascript beacon and start collecting data there is a waiting game. During this time you can start labeling your site actions which can be labor intensive for a single person, but you don't really have the final end-users on the platform yet. We did a lot of training so users were experienced, but it wasn't until they had their first tasks to accomplish that they started using the system and had questions. I'd recommend setting up some immediate goals for an end-user to start segmenting for the purpose of displaying message campaigns so you can jump start end-user action.
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    Alternatives Considered
    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
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    Salesforce
    We use Salesforce Marketing Cloud for lead management, generating reports, tracking customer and dealer information, inputting orders, and more. I prefer HubSpot for email marketing and automation because it is easier to use and the emails are designed much better. We currently use Salesforce and HubSpot, and we are very happy to have both, as they have different pros/cons.
    Incentivized
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    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
    No answers on this topic
    Salesforce
    was not involved with this part but i have not heard about clompaints
    Incentivized
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    Scalability
    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
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    Salesforce
    Prior to this, we had no solution and literally were doing things on paper in a world where technology is outpacing paper. Having this process optimized has made it easier for the sales and marketing people to change information. From the training perspective, it has allowed us to see holes in where we could create additional support training, so the ROI here has been a lot more than just the optimization of a process.
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    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
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    Salesforce
    • Salesforce Marketing Cloud allows us to more efficiently reach out to a higher number of prospects.
    • Salesforce Marketing Cloud allows us to nimbly communicate important messages in a timely fashion to facilitate conversion.
    • Salesforce Marketing Cloud allows us to track who is opening our messages so that we can stop sending to those not interested and focus on the most engaged audiences.
    Incentivized
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    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.

    Agentforce Marketing Screenshots

    Screenshot of Pardot Analytics - Pardot's reporting and analytics can be used to perform true revenue impact analysis and closed-loop reporting.Screenshot of Pardot Email Analytics - The reach and impact of  email marketing efforts are displayed in real-time with advanced reporting and analytics by device, and email client.Screenshot of Pardot Forms and Landing Pages - Pardot's form and landing page builders are used to turn online traffic to leads with targeted offers and content marketing.Screenshot of Pardot Email Marketing - Lead nurturing flows are defined via an interface that enables definition of the simplest or most complex segmented and targeted campaigns.