What Type of Community Platform Do You Actually Need?

If you’ve started looking into platforms for community, you’ve probably realized there’s a wide range of options and not a lot of guidance on how to compare them. 

I talk to prospective customers every day at Higher Logic, and a big part of my job is walking people through the landscape and helping them figure out what they actually need. 

This guide breaks down the main types of platforms on the market, how they differ, and what to consider as you figure out what’s right for your team.

1. Customer Communities

This is where many organizations land when their community plays a role in the customer experience. These platforms are designed to scale and integrate with broader business systems, making them a strong fit for teams managing support, education, or customer engagement at any level of complexity. 

They’re especially useful when you need things like security and accessibility controls, and heavy brand customization. 

Typical benefits buyers look for: 

• Advanced reporting and custom dashboards 
• Extensive integrations with existing business software 
• Strong security standards and compliance (GDPR, SOC 2, SSO) 

What to keep in mind: 

• May be more than you need for early-stage programs 
• Cost adds up. Account for onboarding and integration work. 
• Complexity. Setup can take time, especially for smaller teams. That’s why we’ve focused on making Higher Logic the easiest enterprise platform to customize. 

If your community touches multiple teams or contributes to core business goals, this category gives you the flexibility, structure, and data visibility to grow with it. 

Examples: Higher Logic Vanilla, Higher Logic Thrive, Khoros Communities, Gainsight Communities, Salesforce Community Cloud* 

*Quick note on Salesforce Community: We hear this one brought up a lot, mainly from teams already using Salesforce. And while it might seem convenient to stay within that ecosystem, there are a few serious drawbacks. It’s not really a purpose-built community platform. It’s more of an extension of the CRM, which means customization can get expensive and clunky. Licensing costs can escalate quickly depending on your use case, and a lot of the basic community features you’d expect, like moderation tools or analytics, either require workarounds or just aren’t there. It’s fine for very specific internal use cases or tightly controlled partner portals. But if you’re building an engaged, open community, most teams hit walls pretty early.

2. Communities of Practice

These platforms are built to support peer-driven knowledge sharing, often around a job function or area of expertise rather than a specific product. They’re commonly used by professional associations, nonprofits, academic institutions, and learning-focused teams inside larger companies.  

Typical benefits buyers look for: 

• Built for knowledge exchange. These platforms are structured to support discussions, document sharing, and collaboration among peers with shared interests or professional goals. 
• Often integrated with learning tools. Many support features like resource libraries, event calendars, mentorship, or continuing education tracking. 
• Flexible membership structures. They typically enable large, multi-group setups—like chapters, committees, or working groups—with custom permissions and visibility settings. 

What to keep in mind: 

• Commercial features vary. Many platforms in this category prioritize discussion and knowledge sharing over software integrations, so their ability to sync with your AMS or CRM, marketing automation, LMS, or monetization tools may be limited or absent. Platforms like Higher Logic Thrive, however, are built to support those capabilities for organizations that need both engagement and operational alignment. 
• It can feel outdated. Some of the legacy platforms in this space haven’t modernized the user experience, which can impact adoption and participation. Here, a platform like Higher Logic Thrive stands out for embracing modern design and features (including AI enhancements). 
• If you’re using your community to support a robust resource library, make sure you look for tools that help you organize it. Features like bulk file uploading and automatic or suggested tagging can be a game changer. 
• Privacy settings and security groups can help you take your community to the next level. A strong community platform will allow you to customize what you lock down to members-only, and what you leave open to draw in prospective members. The best platform will have automation rules that reduce the manual overhead of managing a community, accomplishing tasks like assigning security groups, badges, and ribbons. 

These platforms make sense if your community is centered on shared practice and ongoing learning, especially if you’re managing multiple subgroups or chapters. But if your use case is customer-driven, you may find other platform types offer more relevant integrations and workflows. 

Examples: Higher Logic Thrive, Forj, Tradewing, Glue Up 

3. Creator Communities

These are platforms built more for individuals or small teams who are growing an audience, such as YouTubers, course creators, and niche newsletters. They are focused on monetizing their communities through subscriptions, gated content, and direct connection with followers. 

Typical benefits buyers look for: 

• Easy setup, low tech barrier 
• Built-in tools to charge for access or content 
• Feels direct and personal 

Where it falls short: 

• Not built for scale. Permissions, moderation, and workflows are pretty basic. 
• No real enterprise integrations. These platforms might have Zapier-style connectors or limited native integrations, but they’re not built for deep, bi-directional syncs or data visibility across departments. 
• Organizing content gets hard. It’s more feed-based than structured. 

Great option if you’re building community around yourself or a small brand. But for customer engagement at scale, especially if you need cross-functional visibility, it won’t take you far. 

Examples: Circle, Mighty Networks, Bettermode 

4. Employee (Internal) Communities

These platforms are designed for internal use, prioritizing secure document sharing and integration with productivity tools like Slack or Microsoft Teams. Security and collaboration are usually the main focus. 

Typical benefits buyers look for: 

• Easy internal knowledge-sharing and collaboration 
• Integrations with common workplace tools  
• Strong security for internal communications 

What to keep in mind: 

• Engagement can be spotty. Without clear purpose or leadership, these often become ghost towns. 
• Not always a great user experience. Some platforms feel outdated or clunky, which can hurt adoption. 
• Hard to scale across regions or teams. Especially in global orgs where different offices use different tools. 

Examples: Viva Engage (formerly Yammer), Jive, Slack* 

*Quick note on Slack: It’s a great tool for team communication, but it’s not designed to support a community. Here are a few limitations: 

• No knowledge retention. Conversations are short-lived. If someone asks a great question, it’s gone by next week unless you pin it, which most people don’t. 
• No structure. Everything lives in channels, but there’s no hierarchy. You can’t create categories or subforums to organize topics. 
• Hard to onboard new members. New folks join and have no idea what’s already been discussed. There’s no easy way to surface common questions or shared resources. 
• Search isn’t great. Especially on the free plan, which limits access to past messages. 

Slack works well alongside a community platform, but if you try to use it as your community, you’ll feel these constraints. 

5. Open-Source or Self-Hosted Communities

These platforms offer complete customization and control, ideal for companies with significant technical expertise. Buyers who choose this path prioritize the flexibility to customize the software extensively but must manage security and server maintenance themselves. 

Typical benefits buyers look for: 

• Total control over setup and data 
• Customizable front to back 
• Cost efficiency for technically adept teams 

What to be cautious of: 

• You’re the IT team. Hosting, uptime, performance, backups, software updates, bug fixes, and security patches are all on you. 
• Security and compliance become your job. This is a big one. When you host the platform yourself, you’re also responsible for keeping user data secure, managing access, and staying compliant with regulations like GDPR or CCPA. There’s no vendor taking care of that in the background.  
• Support is DIY. You’ll be on forums and GitHub a lot. 
• Costs can creep. You’ll need to budget for hosting, developer hours, maintenance, monitoring tools, and potentially third-party plug-ins or services. 
• Scaling takes effort. If you want roles, analytics, or workflows, you might have to build them. 

It can be a good option if you have dev resources and clear technical goals. But not for the faint of heart if you want to move fast or stay lean. 

Examples: Discourse, phpBB, NodeBB 

6. Social Media Communities

Using social media platforms as a community are often an option for getting something off the ground quickly. But the tradeoff is limited control. The social media provider (Meta, X, etc.) owns the data, the experience, and your access to the audience. 

Typical benefits buyers look for: 

• No real setup needed 
• The audience is already there 
• Good for top-of-funnel or casual engagement 

What to watch out for: 

• You don’t own the data. If the platform changes its algorithm, policies, or access rules, you’re at their mercy. You can’t export your community, and you don’t control how or when you can reach people. 
• You don’t own the experience. Design, layout, features are all predefined. You can’t tailor the space to fit your brand or your members’ needs. 
• Limited structure. These platforms aren’t built for long-term content management. Posts get buried quickly, and there’s no clean way to organize discussions or surface FAQs. 
• No portability. If you ever want to move off the platform, you’re starting over from scratch. 
• For organizations with groups based on things like membership or customer status, there’s no automated way to add or remove people based on membership/customer status. 

They’re fine for more informal engagement, but it is risky if you want a stable, long-term home for your community.  

Examples: Facebook Groups, LinkedIn Groups, Reddit Communities 

Choosing the Right Community Platform

To decide what’s best for your situation, consider: 

• How big and complex are your needs? Enterprise tools exist for a reason, but they may be overkill if you’re an early-stage startup. 
• What’s the main job your community needs to do? It makes a difference, whether it’s support, education, internal knowledge, or monetization. 
• Do you have any technical resources? If not, skip the self-hosted route. 

This should give you a decent map of the landscape. If nothing else, it’ll help you ask better questions when you start talking to vendors.