Socialcast (discontinued) vs. Higher Logic Vanilla

Socialcast has been a great tool for FactSet. I would recommend it to any firm looking for an easy-to-use tool to centralize communication and collaborate on a global scale.

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.

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• Socialcast has an exceptional user experience. With very few idiosyncrasies, it works well on every platform I've tried.
• The platform has such a high level of ease of use, it becomes somewhat addicting.
• Social analytics are superb.
• The platform is highly intuitive and requires zero training or coaching in order for network members to become productive with it.
• It's extremely reliable. Only once in 4 years, was the product not available, and that was only for about a half-hour. In that half-hour, we realized how dependent we were on it. (Very.)
• The multi-device and deployment options are excellent. On-premise, Private Cloud, and Multi-tenant SaaS all available.
• The mobile apps for iPhone, tablets, and Android render well with a beautiful UI/UX. The desktop AIR app is equally highly usable.

• 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.

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• The software is a little bit pricey because it is charged by user/month and depending on the deployment method.
• For companies with a lot of workers the price can increase significantly.
• The mobile app usability and notifications are poor. Need to be improved.
• If there were more administrative features available the product would be improved

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Independently Invited by TrustRadius

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• 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.

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Invited by the Vendor

A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info

Beyond the value FactSet derives from using the platform, Socialcast (the firm) has been a good partner to FactSet. We've experienced very little downtime with the service and they have been responsive and fair with enhancement requests and questions

The UX is its best feature

It is very intuitive and simple to operate. Our customers immediately came up with the curve and began contributing content.

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Independently Invited by TrustRadius

A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info

Excellent support; of course not perfect. :-)

They did an amazing job transferring our content from GetSatisfaction. We had almost 100% success in the transfer of 8 years worth of content.

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Independently Invited by TrustRadius

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Not applicable, as it is a SaaS platform with minimal implementation

Socialcast is great for collaboration & light project management, but anything complex doesn't work well.

Using it as an email notification curator works nice for us.

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Independently Invited by TrustRadius

A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info

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.

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Independently Invited by TrustRadius

A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info

• Definitely more organized project management and team collaboration.
• Efficiency in carrying out tasks.
• Creates a spirit of collaboration and friendliness among colleagues.

Incentivized

Independently Invited by TrustRadius

A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info

• 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

Incentivized

Invited by the Vendor

A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info