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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

    Slack

    Score9 out of 10
    N/ASlack is a group messaging or team collaboration app that aims to simplify communication for businesses. Features include open discussions, private groups, and direct messaging, as well as deep contextual search and message archiving, and file sharing. Slack integrates with a number of other tools, such as MailChimp, Dropbox, and Google Drive. Slack was acquired by Salesforce in December 2020. The product is free to use, and also has paid plans with more features and greater controls. The…

    $8.75

    per month per user

    Pricing
    Khoros CommunitiesSlack
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    Free
    $0
    Pro
    $7.25*
    per month per user
    Business+
    $12.50*
    per month per user
    Enterprise
    Contact Sales
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Khoros CommunitiesSlack
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional DetailsPricing is variable based on the needs of the customer.*Per active user, per month, when paying once a year. Pro is $8.75 USD per active user when paying month to month. Business+ is $15.00 USD per active user when paying month to month.
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Khoros CommunitiesSlack
    Considered Both Products
    Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
    Chose Khoros Communities
    Khoros Communities was always one of our frontrunners during the selection process. Some communities had more integrations or better UI/UX for admins on the backend. Ultimately we went with Khoros because it integrated better with some 3rd party tools we already use and it had …
    Incentivized
    Salesforce
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    95%
    Would buy again
    70 Answers
    97%
    Would buy again
    503 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    98%
    Delivers good value for the price
    48 Answers
    99%
    Delivers good value for the price
    426 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    86%
    Happy with the feature set
    64 Answers
    98%
    Happy with the feature set
    510 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    89%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    31 Answers
    98%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    295 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    81%
    Implementation went as expected
    38 Answers
    99%
    Implementation went as expected
    330 Answers
    Features
    Khoros CommunitiesSlack
    Project Management
    Comparison of Project Management features of Khoros Communities and Slack
    Feature
    Khoros Communities
    -
    Ratings
    Slack
    7.9
    628 Ratings
    2% above category average
    Task Management00 Ratings7.6430 Ratings
    Gantt Charts00 Ratings6.961 Ratings
    Scheduling00 Ratings7.8363 Ratings
    Workflow Automation00 Ratings8.0396 Ratings
    Mobile Access00 Ratings9.4601 Ratings
    Search00 Ratings8.2608 Ratings
    Visual planning tools00 Ratings7.3275 Ratings
    Communication
    Comparison of Communication features of Khoros Communities and Slack
    Feature
    Khoros Communities
    -
    Ratings
    Slack
    8.7
    636 Ratings
    9% above category average
    Chat00 Ratings9.6635 Ratings
    Notifications00 Ratings8.7632 Ratings
    Discussions00 Ratings9.2620 Ratings
    Surveys00 Ratings8.1413 Ratings
    Internal knowledgebase00 Ratings7.8412 Ratings
    Integrates with GoToMeeting00 Ratings8.9110 Ratings
    Integrates with Gmail and Google Hangouts00 Ratings8.7182 Ratings
    Integrates with Outlook00 Ratings8.9120 Ratings
    File Sharing & Management
    Comparison of File Sharing & Management features of Khoros Communities and Slack
    Feature
    Khoros Communities
    -
    Ratings
    Slack
    8.4
    603 Ratings
    4% above category average
    Versioning00 Ratings8.2326 Ratings
    Video files00 Ratings8.2541 Ratings
    Audio files00 Ratings8.4527 Ratings
    Document collaboration00 Ratings7.9429 Ratings
    Access control00 Ratings8.3411 Ratings
    Advanced security features00 Ratings8.3362 Ratings
    Integrates with Google Drive00 Ratings9.0211 Ratings
    Device sync00 Ratings9.0455 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Khoros CommunitiesSlack
    Small Businesses
    Higher Logic Thrive
    Score8.9 out of 10
    Flock
    Score9.5 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Higher Logic Vanilla
    Score5.5 out of 10
    Troop Messenger
    Score9.8 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Verint Community
    Score10 out of 10
    Cisco Business Edition 7000 (discontinued)
    Score9 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Khoros CommunitiesSlack
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.4
    (95 ratings)
    9.1
    (639 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    4.2
    (8 ratings)
    10.0
    (25 ratings)
    Usability
    8.0
    (3 ratings)
    9.0
    (255 ratings)
    Availability
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    Support Rating
    5.0
    (5 ratings)
    10.0
    (68 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Online Training
    4.5
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    8.9
    (5 ratings)
    Configurability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    9.7
    (2 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    8.6
    (86 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Professional Services
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Khoros CommunitiesSlack
    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
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    Slack is ideal for Scrum and agile teams that need continuous communication during sprint planning, daily stand-ups, backlog refinement, testing, and retrospectives. Slack is well-suited for maintaining team knowledge through searchable conversations and dedicated channels, where experienced team members help onboard new QA analysts.
    Read full review
    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
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    • Customer issues: Threads feature allows us to group a particular issue in a single thread and discuss within that thread. I can use the thread link to embed in JIRA ticket for tracking progress in JIRA (which is our details engineering tracking system).
    • Ability to add folder to Slack channel helps keep important information, documents easily accessible. e.g., we use this to keep a "ramp up" folder that can be used by any new joiner.
    • Global search is effective when I forget which group a particular message was in.
    Read full review
    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
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    • Would love a better integration with GitHub. For example, notifications when your PR is updated, when review is requested, @-mention in comments, etc.
    • Improved "Later" tab, for example the ability to create to-do lists or making the "Later" tab into a more powerful to-do list (annotate items with notes)
    • More powerful integrations, e.g. Google Calendar could render a calendar view within Slack, rather than sending the daily schedule
    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
    To be more transparent, I give 10 because Slack serves our collaboration needs. It provide us a good platform for team communication relaying important update within the company, it has even mobile app where you can install in your phone to monitor any updates within that team that needs your immediate attention and intervention.
    Incentivized
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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.
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    Slack has good usability. Devs that are not familiar with the platform are able to jump into conversations and start sharing code and links within just minutes. Non developers are also able to understand the layout such as the Project Managers that are keeping the projects on track. We have not seen any tickets where employees are having trouble understanding Slack.
    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.
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    Yes, the app works 24/7. I don't even recall having any period that we could not use since the implementation. Even the maintenance periods are barely noticeable and our work is not impacted by it when it happens.
    Incentivized
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    Performance
    Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
    No answers on this topic
    Salesforce
    Slack is a soft app, we don't have many issues with it. I recall one or two people complaining about something during our usage period, but I didn't have a bad experience. When the app is slow, usually the problem is with my computer or my internet. The app works just fine.
    Incentivized
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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
    Whenever I've had to troubleshoot an issue with Slack (which, to be honest, has not happened very often), their online documentation has been easy to locate, easy to understand, and effective in resolving my issue. Slack's ever-growing popularity also means that there's a large community of practice out there that can be depended upon.
    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
    No answers on this topic
    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.
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    No answers on this topic
    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
    I was not part of the implementation team, but I recall being 100% happy and excited to learn and use a new tool. I'm still am to be honest.
    Incentivized
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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
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    I like Slack better than ClickUp, because I would spend 30-60 minutes a day updating my ClickUp tasks. The way ClickUp was used was very micromanaging. I billed by the hour, so I was willing to put in the time to alert the boss what tasks I was working on.
    One of my jobs used Hive - I mostly just ran it in the background in case anyone messaged me. I did not use it often.
    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
    No answers on this topic
    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
    • Slack has been incredibly helpful in connecting various tech apps and ecosystems, creating a more streamlined and responsive process.
    • Slack has made it significantly easier to communicate with our team members across multiple time zones, creating a more engaging environment for our all-remote team.
    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.