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Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board vs. Notion

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board

    Score9.1 out of 10
    Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
    Social Squared is a SharePoint Discussion Board App that can be deployed across SharePoint Online and Microsoft Teams. Social Squared improves productivity and efficiency by providing structured discussion forums for employee and student discussions. For Microsoft SharePoint Social Squared is a SharePoint discussion board application where users can post questions within relevant forums and receive answers to their questions from subject matter experts. The…

    $2,200

    per year per installation

    Notion

    Score8.7 out of 10
    N/ANotion aims to present users with an all-in-one workspace — for notes, tasks, wikis, and databases, from Notion Labs in San Francisco.

    $5

    per month per user

    Pricing
    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion BoardNotion
    Editions & Modules
    Social Squared Discussion Board
    From $2200
    per year per installation
    Social Squared Discussion Board Enterprise Edition
    POA
    per year per installation
    Free
    $0
    Plus
    $12
    per month per user
    Business
    $24
    per month per user
    Enterprise
    Custom Pricing
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion BoardNotion
    Free Trial
    YesYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional DetailsPrices stated are minimum per installation for "stock" products. $2.20 per user/year on top of base price. Enterprise editions can be amended to suit business needs if deemed necessary, additional costs incurred and TBD. All packages include free technical support. Free upgrades available to latest versions of tool as they are released.A discount is offered for annual billing.
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion BoardNotion
    Considered Both Products
    Lightning Tools
    No answer on this topic
    Notion Labs, Inc
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    No answers on this topic
    93%
    Would buy again
    75 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    No answers on this topic
    97%
    Delivers good value for the price
    60 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    No answers on this topic
    98%
    Happy with the feature set
    79 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    96%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    45 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    No answers on this topic
    93%
    Implementation went as expected
    53 Answers
    Features
    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion BoardNotion
    Project Management
    Comparison of Project Management features of Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board and Notion
    Feature
    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board
    9.1
    1 Ratings
    16% above category average
    Notion
    7.3
    79 Ratings
    6% below category average
    Mobile Access9.11 Ratings7.272 Ratings
    Search9.11 Ratings7.975 Ratings
    Task Management00 Ratings8.174 Ratings
    Gantt Charts00 Ratings6.846 Ratings
    Scheduling00 Ratings6.957 Ratings
    Workflow Automation00 Ratings6.355 Ratings
    Visual planning tools00 Ratings7.868 Ratings
    Communication
    Comparison of Communication features of Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board and Notion
    Feature
    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board
    9.1
    1 Ratings
    13% above category average
    Notion
    7.7
    76 Ratings
    4% below category average
    Chat9.11 Ratings6.129 Ratings
    Notifications9.11 Ratings7.568 Ratings
    Discussions9.11 Ratings7.249 Ratings
    Internal knowledgebase9.11 Ratings8.769 Ratings
    Surveys00 Ratings6.820 Ratings
    Integrates with Gmail and Google Hangouts00 Ratings8.98 Ratings
    Integrates with Outlook00 Ratings9.02 Ratings
    File Sharing & Management
    Comparison of File Sharing & Management features of Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board and Notion
    Feature
    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board
    9.1
    1 Ratings
    12% above category average
    Notion
    8.1
    76 Ratings
    1% above category average
    Versioning9.11 Ratings7.657 Ratings
    Video files9.11 Ratings7.649 Ratings
    Audio files9.11 Ratings7.343 Ratings
    Document collaboration9.11 Ratings8.571 Ratings
    Access control9.11 Ratings8.271 Ratings
    Advanced security features00 Ratings7.251 Ratings
    Integrates with Google Drive00 Ratings9.213 Ratings
    Device sync00 Ratings9.253 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion BoardNotion
    Small Businesses
    Flock
    Score9.5 out of 10
    Flock
    Score9.5 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Troop Messenger
    Score9.8 out of 10
    Troop Messenger
    Score9.8 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Cisco Business Edition 7000 (discontinued)
    Score9 out of 10
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    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion BoardNotion
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    8.6
    (85 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    8.4
    (55 ratings)
    Data Sharing and Collaboration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.4
    (4 ratings)
    Data Sources
    -
    (0 ratings)
    4.7
    (4 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion BoardNotion
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Lightning Tools
    Their customer service it top notch and always responsive. I struggled in the beginning a little bit because I'm not tech savvy and we had to add it to our SharePoint site but they helped me along the way and even had share screen meetings with me to assist!!
    Read full review
    Notion Labs, Inc
    If you want a customizable solution that can be adapted for just about any scenario, I recommend using Notion. If you need a solution that's easy to share with people outside your organization, Notion is great and allows individual or team permission-setting. If you want a turnkey solution, Notion might not be the best since it requires a fair bit of set-up. There are templates that can be purchased to handle this, but I haven't found them very helpful.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Lightning Tools
    • Organizing Data
    • Opens up discussion, whether publicly or anonymously
    • Easy to setup
    Read full review
    Notion Labs, Inc
    • I love that you can create nested pages, allowing for separate sections to organize information as needed.
    • I appreciate the convenience of effortlessly uploading images to any section.
    • I appreciate that when adding links, you can embed them so the website displays directly on the page.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Lightning Tools
    • I would love to be able to assign various people as administrators of different topics (this may be an option now but a couple years ago it wasn't)
    Read full review
    Notion Labs, Inc
    • I use Notion on my personal tablet, and unlike on the computer, I have a lot of difficulty editing backgrounds, GIFs, and page dividers. It's not as user-friendly, and often the elements end up cut off or misaligned, which is frustrating.
    • While the current calendar feature is helpful, I'd love to see more customization options. The Google Calendar style isn't always ideal, especially for tasks without specific times or for ongoing projects that require daily maintenance.
    • It would be fantastic to have more flexibility in customizing Notion pages. For example, I'd love to create planners with the freedom to add illustration boxes, stickers, or GIFs without being restricted to a fixed layout.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Lightning Tools
    No answers on this topic
    Notion Labs, Inc
    We're too settled in the ecosystem and we have no major complaints with it. No reason to move unless you have a burning pain point
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Lightning Tools
    Our employees really like the fact that they can find things easily with the search feature and add questions and comments as they see fit.
    Read full review
    Notion Labs, Inc
    Very easy to use (I learned how to use everything on my own) and I was able to set up an entire ecosystem without any courses or other tools. I often say that Notion is like Lego for adults, because there we can use all the available tools to create a multitude of things, from funnels to projects with calculated deadlines and tags.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    Lightning Tools
    No answers on this topic
    Notion Labs, Inc
    The company uses both Notion and Trello within the company. Notion is more for North America employees while Trello is used between Operation team overseas and in North America. Sometimes it's a preference of how the tools look like for project management. I would say both Notion and Trello are nice tools and serves our needs.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Lightning Tools
    • We signed up for a 3 year contract and hope to do another 3yr contract when this one is up. :)
    Read full review
    Notion Labs, Inc
    • It has streamlined our processes across various teams to all work from a signle source of truth
    • Maintaining this source of truth is a full time job
    • It has reduced our overall tool set by completely eliminating two other softwares we were paying for
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board Screenshots

    Screenshot of MODERN, RESPONSIVE SHAREPOINT DISCUSSION BOARD
Discussion Forums can be created for a variety of different reasons. This example is a Forum Group for the Microsoft 365 technologies such as Teams, Planner, and SharePoint. Forums are then created within the Forum Groups for more specific discussions. Under the SharePoint Forum Group, there is a Forum for SharePoint On-Premises and SharePoint Online. Anyone looking to ask a question regarding SharePoint 2019 for example would be able to post their question under SharePoint On-Premises rather than SharePoint Online. This also allows subject matter experts to focus more on the questions that they can respond to and provide value.Screenshot of SHAREPOINT DISCUSS BOARD – TOPICS VIEW
When navigating into a forum, the topics and discussions that are taking place are shown. Any new topics that not yet read will be highlighted. It also displays whether topics have been answered, their average ratings, how many views and posts are within the topic, and also provides the ability to subscribe to the forum to be notified of new posts within it.Screenshot of READING DISCUSSIONS AND PROVIDING FEEDBACK
Social Squared offers a threaded discussion view with the ability to provide feedback to other users.

Posts can be rated, voted upon, or liked by users in order to give feedback to the user creating or responding to a post. Additionally, replies can be marked as answered or marked as featured, which gives readers of forums assurance that the response they are reading is validated to be the correct answer.

Users also receive feedback through the earning of badges. The more users post or mark posts as answered, the more points are rewarded. This makes it easy to spot subject matter experts.Screenshot of SUGGESTED TAGS
Social Squared provides a rich text editor for creating and replying to topics. The Rich Text toolbar provides functionality such as inserting images, YouTube videos, Stream Videos, Formatted Code Inserts, as well as font formatting.

While typing, suggestions on how to tag a post appear. Selecting an existing tag will provide consistency in the tags used making it easier for other users to discover the post.Screenshot of SOCIAL SQUARED TAG CLOUD VIEW
The Social Squared Tag Cloud view makes it easy to navigate to posts within a specific category even if they span multiple forums. The more a tag appears in different posts, the more prominent it will be in the tag cloud. Users can navigate to posts with the tag in one click.Screenshot of DISCUSSION BOARD WITHIN MICROSOFT TEAMS TAB
Social Squared is a Discussion Board App for Microsoft Teams Tab’s and Microsoft Teams Personal Apps. Social Squared provides information workers the ability to post questions within relevant forums, and receive answers from their team. The Discussion Board layout for posts makes it easier to find answers to questions that may have already been asked before. Through features such as “Mark as Answered”, “Forum Moderation”, “Post Rating”, “Post Likes”, “Post Voting”, users will be assured that the answers they are reading are validated.