Higher Logic Vanilla

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Higher Logic Vanilla
Score 6.0 out of 10
N/A
Higher Logic Vanilla is a customizable and themable forum software. It can be used for support communities, Q&A Communities and more. There are numerous integrations, including SSO, and connectors to popular software such as Mailchimp, WordPress, Zendesk and Salesforce.N/A
Pricing
Higher Logic Vanilla
Editions & Modules
Essential
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Corporate
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Enterprise
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Enterprise Plus
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Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Higher Logic Vanilla
Free Trial
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup fee
Additional Details—
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Higher Logic Vanilla
Considered Both Products
Higher Logic Vanilla
Chose Higher Logic Vanilla
GetSatisfaction offered no voting. It also didn't offer a good way to deal with trolls. Vanilla's indexing and SEO capabilities are far superior.
Chose Higher Logic Vanilla
Most of all we could customize the forum to look and feel like an extension of our existing web properties. This makes the forum feel more native to the users coming from or being redirected to the forum. We also had plans of being able to create custom badges we could grant …
Chose Higher Logic Vanilla
It's certainly pricey for the cloud option, but it was easy to setup and we've had zero crucial issues since.
Chose Higher Logic Vanilla
We've only ever had a forum built in house by our engineers.

Vanilla has a lot more features and are constantly adding new features.
Chose Higher Logic Vanilla
More difficult to customise, less/no gamification features.
Chose Higher Logic Vanilla
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 …
Top Pros
Top Cons
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Higher Logic Vanilla
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User Ratings
Higher Logic Vanilla
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(10 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Higher Logic Vanilla
Likelihood to Recommend
Higher Logic
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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Pros
Higher Logic
  • 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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Cons
Higher Logic
  • 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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Usability
Higher Logic
It is very intuitive and simple to operate. Our customers immediately came up with the curve and began contributing content.
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Support Rating
Higher Logic
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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Alternatives Considered
Higher Logic
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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Return on Investment
Higher Logic
  • 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
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ScreenShots

Higher Logic Vanilla Screenshots

Screenshot of Looks great on any device, including desktop, tablet or mobile device.Screenshot of We offer over 60 plugins that can add functionality to your community.Screenshot of Many different themes to choose from, which you can further customize as you like.Screenshot of You have full access to edit HTML and CSS of your theme, to make any changes you need.