Higher Logic Online Community Reviews

The opportunity to build individual communities private and open for individuals to connect virtually. We use the portal to engage individuals in between in-person events, allow them to share content and resources, ask questions and promote blended learning. One of the best ways we use the site is to engage in conversation in connection with learning experiences (in-person or online) to create discussions and follow up actions to support application of the learning. As a user I appreciate the ability to manage my notifications and when I receive emails. I also like the ability to customize the page for an organization and use the banner to promote upcoming resources or events.

The design is simple which can be good for users to navigate but is not necessarily the "prettiest" platform I've used.

Understand your goals and what you want individuals to be able to use within the community to set up the standards and recommendations for users to get the most out of the site.

Opportunities to connect remote individuals, share resources virtually and engage in follow up after online or in-person events.

We've used the Higher Logic community site for abut 7 years now. You can build multiple, all-in-one sites using the Bootstrap framework. From an association perspective, the ability to offer a place on your website where members can interact is quite valuable, so long as it functions well. We can build numerous staging sites with community functions that link to our AMS while Higher Logic handles file hosting, security and technical support. As a small operation that does a lot of our IT in-house, this is a huge advantage.

HL also has an active client base that regularly make use of the HUG forums to ask questions and get ideas from each other - this has helped us solve some problems in the past, as well as draw our attention to new features we otherwise wouldn't have known about.

As Higher Logic has rushed to acquire, the platform has gone downhill tremendously. We constantly find bugs that customer service has repeatedly dragged its feet to respond. When we first launched, it was nightmare trying to make sense of where we needed to direct the DNS, and the President of the company responded personally to apologize. Nowadays, I'm often sending up follow-up emails to support asking for a response to my initial question. Tech support often seems confused about solutions, or provides temporary fixes. And considering the cost of the product, which has both increased and now must be paid annually rather than monthly, we are preparing to move to other platforms. Until HL makes some serious improvements to the initial platforms and its customer service, I wouldn't recommend this product to anyone.

Higher Logic is really a one-of-a-kind system. If moving to the platform, take advantage of the on-site trainings for new clients as well as their annual conference, where they deep dive into more advance subjects that will really help you make the most of your HL site(s). While it doesn't take long to learn the CMS, it does require you to know HTML, CSS and probably some javascript. Create a HUG account (their client site) and make good use of the discussion forums when you get stuck. They have a very active client community. But, above all else, talk to other clients first. It's a huge investment and not a great product.

HL is first and foremost a community site, and members have been able to ask questions and get ideas from each other, and it has encouraged others to do the same. It has also become a great way to conduct committee business. However, we sometimes struggle to get our members to use the community features, but I think that has more to do with the type of members we have -- they work in a broad range of fields as opposed to a particular specialty, so one person's concerns may not be relevant to more than a few members.

The basic concept is very much needed by the association world--an online discussion group system that integrates with AMS (association management software) and that allows you to create distinct discussion groups (say, a group for all of your members, groups for your sections/interest groups and chapters, groups for retirees or students, etc.) that automatically update their membership to reflect membership in you AMS. This makes it possible to maintain discussion groups without having to constantly manually update their membership, which could take hours and hours every day, if you're an association of any size.

The discussion group system also lets you bring in members who are still wedded to listservs, as it incorporates the ability to send and receive posts to the discussion groups via email. In fact, if a member of mine contacts me about 'the listservs,' I just use the word 'listserv' with them, too, as I talk about whatever they need to know about the discussion groups. It really seems to avoid confusion and make them more comfortable.

I've been working with Higher Logic and this tool for several years (and our use of Higher Logic dates from before my joining my association). When I started, though many aspects of the service were clunky, customer service seemed responsive and personable and was able to give me faith that the clunky bits would be addressed in the near future.

As time has passed and I've talked to more Higher Logic clients, it seems many of us have been requesting basic features or improvements for years with little or no response from Higher Logic. This includes the ability for discussion group members to receive notifications when discussions they start receive replies, a feature that I've never seen missing from any social media, forum, or other discussion tool. (That's right, members have to remember to go back to check discussions to see if they've received any replies!) If you do some digging in their customer support forums, you'll find that people have been requesting this feature for at least six years.

Customer service and maintenance of what I see as their core product (the discussion group system) has dropped off even further in the last two years. The company has acquired four other companies in that time (RealMagnet, Informz, Socious, and Kavi) and it seems deadset on creating a monopoly on communication services for associations. The results, so far, have been as chaotic as you'd think. Customer service has become slow, uneven, and about as transparent as mud (often you'll be told by customer service to post your issue in the client discussion group and if you post in the client discussion group, you'll be told to contact customer service). No one seems to know what features are being prioritized for development or what the timelines might be. Often you're told to use clunky workarounds that you then have to somehow educate your poor members about and do a song-and-dance for them to convince them that the workarounds are convenient and/or will be fixed soon. New bells-and-whistle features are introduced while broken or, at least, in very unfinished stages of development and dropped as quickly as they're introduced.

It really feels like the core product is just being left to decay while the company pursues, I assume, new sales. What they're selling to these new customers, I don't know. Email services with features and customer service that's worse than when they were individual companies? The dying discussion group core product? Website content management systems that are much less intuitive to use than most other content management systems I've worked with?

I hate writing this review, because, one, as an association, there aren't really any competitors for you to work with. (Though there seem to be a few forming.) Two, I do think many of the employees at Higher Logic are doing their best and are likely as trapped working with a company that grew too fast as their clients are. (Take a look at some of the recent employee reviews in Glassdoor for an idea of some of the tension they may be facing.)

We want you to do better, Higher Logic! In fact, we need you to do better.

You don't have many options, but consider starting out small. Don't dive in and add or buy too many features or modules before you determine if you can work with the basics. Keep an eye on HL's competitors as they grow. Report everything that doesn't work to customer service and post about it in their client discussion group.

See "what do you like best," above. Our committees and officer groups, in particular, use their individual discussion groups to conduct official business in a way that can be easily handed over to their successors.

The platform is intuitive, and members can communicate the way they choose - through the website, their email, or the app.

There are a lot of choices when it comes to setting up the user experience. It can be overwhelming. Our "out of the box" effort wasn't very attractive. We were grateful to work with HL partner eConverse to customize and polish the user experience.

Start small and build.

We are using Higher Logic to engage committees and and other governance/leadership groups. One benefit we've realized is the power of the community to answer questions and solve problems. We've also been successful at getting community members to review documents and complete tasks. To date, we're still in beta mode, but we're rolling out the platform to all committees in November 2017.

It is really the people at Higher Logic that make working with this organization a pleasure. We have been thoroughly impressed, both personally and professionally, with every Higher Logic team member that has worked with our community.

Some of the processes within the Admin section of the platform are not intuitive. For example, placing Email Templates under the Communities tab doesn't make sense to me. Why not include it with the Automation Link?

The Higher Logic platform has given our community members a long sought after place to call "Home" on the web. We have connected in many other scattered ways over the years, and now we have a single place to connect. One of the benefits is that our community is "behind a login", which provides safety, security, and privacy that many of our members want.

HL allows you to customize community groups and micro-sites for any purpose you might need. The HUG user community is also really awesome for learning how to make the most out of HL software and customize your site to accommodate members' needs.

Customization requires advanced coding knowledge, you're otherwise pretty limited with its basic templates/widgets to customize microsites and communities with their WYSIWYG module. It's easy to customize your site to have all changes apply to all communities, but difficult to customize setting for only one community on your site (unless you change it into a microsite). For blogging functions, unless you know code, the font size, colors, table formatting, image insertion functions are very basic.

Customer service involves a ticket system or posting on the HUG forum to get peer assistance on solving issues or finding innovative ways to use the product. Don't expect immediate responses on support issues; it would be nice to have 24/7 live chat support, but it doesn't work that way. Tickets usually receive a response w/i 48 hours.

We use HL to provide a community forum for members to connect, exchange info, and post/share content or blogs with each other. It also serves as an information portal for us to send out alert, blogs, etc. to members too. The file libraries are nice for sharing resources too.

Has the ability to integrate with our internal data warehouse. Also has additional plugins that can solve a lot of business problems.

Poor user experience. It's a clunky, outdated backend that's difficult to pick up. HL staff is hit or miss. Sometimes they go out of their way to be helpful and answer your questions. Other times it's like pulling teeth to get a response to an email.

HL is slow to get features that I would consider standard on other platforms (@-mentions and #s were just incorporated in 2017, for example). I do think the future is positive, but it seems to be a slow moving machine.

We host our internal community on the Higher Logic platform. We use the discussion boards, member directory, and resource library. It's been a helpful forum platform for our current customers who are or want to become certified with our organization.

We started using Higher Logic as a way for our volunteers to connect with each other, as we are a national organization. We love that we are able to have everything for each volunteer group in one, easy location. Additionally, our members are always asking for more ways network with each other, so creating member-based communities has been a big help with that, and our members love it! Lastly, Higher Logic support always responds in a timely manner and shows dedication and urgency to solving any issues that arise.

While their automation rules are generally very helpful in creating member engagement and save our office staff a lot of time, there are minor limitations.

Using Higher Logic has helped increase member and volunteer communication in between our regional conferences and National Convention. Because they are able to rely on their network of colleagues in each community, our members feel more engaged and get their questions answered.

Their support team is probably the most responsive and helpful teams I've worked with. They don't "talk down" to someone because they assume that because you are using their products you aren't "tech savvy" since the products are so easy to use.

As with all things, there are certain limitations that are encountered when trying to "make it your own". I'm a web developer so using a CMS can be restrictive compared to what I could do if my employer had the site on a standard domain. That said, I think the issue lies more in my desire to have more functional control than in any issue with the platform.

Definitely give them a chance. If you are a Netforum customer, you'll find their integration is pretty spectacular.

Having the community and the web site hosted by the same company adds a lot of integration advantages that weren't present when our site was hosted by a competitor. Our site crashes less and has a much more organic feel when navigating between the community, the web site, and our back end market place.

I love the user community surrounding Higher Logic's product. It's a wonderfully supportive group. In addition, their product is easy to use for new admins, made even easier by the supportive community and HL employees.

There are times when it seems like the support and development teams could use more experienced technicians to help solve problems, especially with things like JavaScript and CSS. In addition, reporting tools and analytics could use improvement--while there are a large number of available reports, some of them do not provide the detail needed to effectively evaluate parts of our community.

Make sure to do your homework before implementing any new technology to members, even with a company as great as Higher Logic. While they can help you figure out the technical details of implementation, it's up to you and your company to effectively roll out an online community for your members.

Connecting members, creating a user community of our own. Higher Logic's product has allowed us to create further opportunities for members to network, share ideas, and to grow professionally.

The overall look and feel is fairly customizable. We're able to install our company logo, our preferred fonts, and our color palette.

The libraries need heavy work. They're non-intuitive and feel like a very dated file management system: something akin to BBS file sharing.

The back-end user interface is all over the map! Clicking the admin gear on the side takes you through an adventure of interfaces ranging from the clean Admin interface to the clunky Site Setup interface to the completely unforgiving Edit This Page or Edit Navigation interface. It feels like these areas were set up by different teams to accomplish different goals — rather than to help me accomplish my goals. I want a back-end interface that doesn't get in the way of getting my business done. To that end, if everything felt a bit more like the Admin interface, we'd be rocking.

Documentation can be tricky to find. For instance, setting up an RSS feed of a members-only discussion (i.e., to showcase to non-members what kind of cool discussions are going on), doesn't have much useful support.

I'm never sure if a question should be addressed through customer service (always fast response, but I sense they get irritated with me), HUG discussion (useful responses can be hit or miss), or submitting a ticket (I thought I heard once that we have to pay for this, but I don't know).

While not everything is perfect, and some things are quite lagging, they are absolutely headed in the right direction. I feel that HL listens to customer feedback and improve their product based ultimately on their customers' needs — this level of service is not something that a lot of association-level companies can boast.

We want to be able to have an easy-to-use discussion platform for the interests of our members.

The easy-to-use part is the important part. Our members are "get stuff done" type of people who don't have a lot of patience to learn new software systems. With HL's recent bootstrap implementation, it feels like there are fewer steps to go from landing at NIRSA Connect to posting a discussion. This is great since our previous iterations of the site were tremendous turn-offs and we're still trying to get users to come back.

Higher Logic's platform has allowed us to connect our members to each other in a way we couldn't before. We host numerous virtual events each month, and local meetings each quarter but were missing the day-to-day connections. Since implementing HL, our discussion forums consistently rank in the top 3 benefits during our annual NPS survey and the qualitative feedback from members who have found solutions to their problems through the forums is astounding.

There are some real-time notifications we'd like to see implemented, such as a notification if someone responds to a question you posted or the ability to follow a thread. Overall, we consistently see 25+ posts in each daily digest so we have good engagement, but those features are ones our members request from us and we believe would further our participation in the forums.

As an international association which provides education and services to our members mostly online, the personal connection our members are making through the platform has been extremely beneficial. It's created a sense of community, and helped drive attendance to our annual conference (an in-person event) as an opportunity to network with those you've been interacting with virtually all year.

We launched our community in June 2015. Since that time it has become the premier member benefit for our organization. Not only does it help increase engagement, which helps with retention, it also serves as a phenomenal recruitment tool. Additionally, the Higher Logic team is amazing! They go out of their way to ensure that any questions we have are addressed immediately. Truly top notch service!!!

N/A Nothing that I can think of. Even if the platform doesn't fulfill a current need, Higher Logic has proven that "we can't do that," is not the immediate response. Instead, they will fully investigate whether our need can be addressed by creating a new system or update.

I highly recommend Higher Logic to any organization that is considering the use of an online community. Since we launched in June 2015, our community has become the premier benefit for our members. Not only is it helping to increase retention by getting existing members to engage, it also is a wonderful recruitment tool. The volunteer management system also demonstrates value well beyond our membership base. Every other business unit at my organization will reap the benefits from a centralized volunteer management system. Finally, the staff at Higher Logic are absolutely amazing -- they offer the ultimate customer service experience. I simply cannot say enough good things.....

This is the member benefit that my organization needed to take us into the future. It has already proven its value by giving our members a platform to discuss the technical issues that impact them on the job. In addition to serving our members, we are using the volunteer platform to centralize our organization's volunteer activities. This is well over 100k members and non-members. Our entire organization is going to benefit greatly from the volunteer management system.

During the implementation phase of our site, we worked with an implementation manager who took all of our ideas and made them achievable within the site. Our site itself is a great way to connect our alumni of our programs and provide a space for discussion. There is also a yearly conference that you can connect with other with and see the new innovations.

There is a big learning curve with any new system. To get the hang of higher logic, you need to get in and play. I would highly suggest an in person training compared to over the phone trainings because it is easier to see the process.

We are using this product for our alumni engagement strategy. We are connecting our alumni from years past and getting critical member data from them that is updated from what we previously had.

The program evolves as our needs increase. Higher Logic is constantly looking for ways to improve their product and increase customer satisfaction. We are one of their smaller clients and yet they always treat us like we are their most important client.

There really isn't any part of Higher Logic that I dislike. The system runs smoothly, they have the best customer support department I have ever worked with and they check in with us periodically just to make sure we are running smoothly.

BE prepared to devote staff and time to the initial set up and marketing to your members. It took us a while to change member culture on social sites but the rewards have been worth the initial effort.

Since we are a trade association that deals with Hospitals, doctors and nurses we have to be concerned with security and HIPAA regulations. Higher Logic has always provided this type of security for us. It has given our members a place to go and work out industry issues and help improve their safety and day to day operations concerns.

I have worked with Higher Logic since 2009. Many companies say they want to partner with you. Higher Logic is a true partner to us. They continue to evolve the product in response to the market needs and are always soliciting customer input. If I so much as hint at being unhappy with something, they promptly contact me to get clarification and resolve it. The staff is friendly and genuinely wants their clients to be happy and productive. Of course, I am very pleased with the product itself (if it weren't great, I wouldn't be here, right?), but I just believe the comprehensive work this company is doing in the online community space is stellar and I am proud to be a client associated with it. For example, they continue to provide superior resources and education in benchmarking community performance, and they partner with experts outside of the organization to do it. Not only do they provide the product, but they provide you with the resources and education to be excellent at what you do.

I have no concerns about the product. Once in a blue moon I will have a bumpy service experience, but it gets resolved promptly. I'd love to go back to having a rating system in the libraries that is more refined than a "recommend it" button, but I also realize that's where the industry is (i.e., Facebook's "like it" thumbs up button - which yes, has refined a bit to allow additional "emotions" to be reflected). I

Be sure you are devoting adequate staff resources; don't hesitate to get involved in the user community. Understand that implementing an online community hinges on cultural change. "If we build it, they will come" doesn't work!

We were looking for a way to engage members in our special interest groups year-round, beyond a once-a-year face-to-face meeting. Our online community quickly became one of our top two member benefits, and it is one that everyone gets to access. (Not everyone has the financial resources for professional conferences!) I love that our members feel like they have a relationship with staff as a result of their online interaction. Every year since launch, we have seen our logins and usage increase. It has been a slow but steady climb, and this become a centerpiece of our member benefits.

We had already a successful community where everything that organically could be done for success it had been done. But, from a technological point of view, there was a lot of room for growth. That's when we decided that we needed a platform that could bring us from GOOD to GREAT. We haven't re-launched yet, but we are few weeks away from our re-launch date, and so far Higher Logic has provided the best customer service, technical support, professional community manager consulting, and thorough training.

We are coming from a platform that has a lot of possible customization, while Higher Logic offers an out-of-the box product. This is not a weakness for us, but it gives us confidence in a well working product.

ROI tracking. Less time consuming manual activities, more automatized and efficient campaigns for scalable results.

We like the flexibility, reliability and feature set that lets us serve our members. Our members like the mobile app.

I hope the CMS can continue to evolve so we can use forms and other web-based features. We use a third party solution for file management. It would be nice to have an integration for file management.

We referred one of our peers to Higher Logic and they are happy. Understand your needs and use case(s), then get on a demo to learn more.

We are solving the need for a community to connect our 1,000+ peer group members globally. We move from SharePoint and needed a solution less expensive to setup and maintain. Our members onboard and become productive easily. They share ideas between themselves openly and securely. We are able to community with our members clearly and reliably.

We use HigherLogic for both our website and our community. For our website, I like the BootStrap framework, because it is so responsive, mobile-friendly and open-source. For our community, I like that they help us to increase engagement, set community goals, and have so many features that are what we need! We also have single sign-on integration with our AMS, so our members find it SUPER convenient to only have one username and one password for all things relating to our association. Also, I just have to say a positive word about the HigherLogic Support team. I have never known software support people who responded so quickly and were so knowledgeable, and the knowledge extends not only to HigherLogic software but also to how it might interact with other systems (like AMS or email management), how browsers or versions might affect HigherLogic, etc. VERY HELPFUL!!.

I have to be honest and say there's not much I dislike at all. One possible improvement would be if reports were more "configurable" (meaning that I set up reports I want, rather than having to choose from a list of ones that are pre-made). Honestly that's not really much of a dislike, though, because they have made so many reports in so many ways that I'm able to find what I want to track.

I would recommend that you follow their suggested best practices and suggestions for implementation. The implementation team is fantastic and they will help you launch the software for the best possible results.

Our association is national, so it's difficult for our members to feel like they are "connected" to anything--an organization or each other. HigherLogic solved that issue 100%. In addition, it brought our website into the 21st century so we are mobile-friendly and responsive to any device (desktop, tablet or cell). Our membership is growing steadily, our engagement is increasing steadily as our members understand how to use the communities, and views to our page are continuing to increase steadily...after using HigherLogic for two years!

Higher Logic manages to offer the features that you want in an online community platform, but without gumming it up with extra modules that add little. Plus, they back up the platform with fantastic educational tools and support functions.

Would love to be able to tag individuals in specific posts. The feature is in development, but it can't get here soon enough.

When launching, listen to the advice that they have to provide and test their process. If something doesn't sound right for your association/company, explain the situation and see if they have a fall-back idea.

We needed to find a way to get more individuals involved with our association. By launching a Higher Logic online community we took down a lot of walls and got more people effectively engaged.

The product makes it easier to do email marketing.

Informz, the email software we use, used to be its own company before Higher Logic bought it now. Customer service was much better when Higher Logic wasn't in charge. Now whenever we have a question, instead of being able to contact our rep directly, we're told to submit a form or look up an article in their Knowledge Base.

Focus on customer service instead of pushing your paid marketing automation module

We're able to send large quantities of emails and track open/click data. We're able to get a better understanding of what our members want to see (and what they're not interested in).

I like how easy the email design is in Informz 2.0. I also enjoy the easy reports.

I am not a fan of the limited design opportunities in Informz 2.0.

None.

We are using Higher Logic to reach our 20,000+ members, informing them of updates & new opportunities. This platform is an essential part of our digital communications when reaching our clientele.

The ability to completely customize our member community landing page, which we do with banner ads for upcoming in-person and virtual events. The clear layout makes navigating easy, even for the first time user. The Member Forum is another great tool for member engagement, again found right on our landing page. This forum allows our 7300+ members to engage with each other, no matter their chapter affiliation.

There are two things that I would say are issues being worked on, so I can't say I outright dislike them :-) First, the ability to nest communities in a parent/child or grandparent/parent/child configuration. Many of our chapters have associated communities, and each has a board community. It would be a much cleaner organizational structure to have nesting capabilities. And, with numerous leaders belonging to numerous communities (committees) within their chapter, this would help the volunteer manage their communities a bit better. The second thing is a Google docs-like functionality to be able to jointly edit a working document. Currently the system only allows a static storage, and no ability to edit for a group with associated permissions.

Cloud solution for our chapters - 100%. This is a huge value proposition for our volunteer leaders who serve one year terms, and succession planning and other resource documents for these leaders not being trapped on individual computers any more. A big win!

The Higher Logic platform has served as a great benefit to our members in the last few years. The platform integrates smoothly with our AMS, has plenty of great features to facilitate member interaction, and since moving to the Bootstrap framework, has made building and managing websites so much easier. Not only a great product to work with, but also a great company to work with, Higher Logic is miles above the rest in its customer service. The sites almost always move smoothly, but if there are kinks or if we have questions, the technical support team is readily available to assist. They also maintain client forums, on-site training activities, and a great annual conference to help members make the most of their platform.

There is a slight learning curve for members. It takes some time to teach members how to navigate the various features of the site (profile, communities, etc.).

Know your members: do your members interact frequently (or would they interact frequently, if given the opportunity)? If so, the HL may be of great value. You will have to educate your members how to use the site, and maybe encourage early adopters, but your members will be the ones to determine whether it meets their needs.

Also - you can build customized sites in Higher Logic fairly easily. The Bootstrap framework requires little knowledge beyond HTML and CSS, and there are a host of resources available online to help.

Collaboration is important in our field, and we wanted to encourage our broad membership base to interact and learn from each other. We were also looking for a cost-effective way to build and manage our sites. We've been able to do this all in one platform.

We love the flexibility of the CMS. It's very user friendly and we can customize our site as needed. We have the ability to create microsites as needed, and the WYSIWYG editor is by far the most user friendly CMS we've used. It provides us the ability to own our website and update content quickly and frequently. It's a great alternative to the custom CMS we have used before. Our members also love the app - they like having access to information, primarily the directory, on the go.

The need work w/ a 3rd party for web design. We would have preferred to work with Higher Logic from start to finish, but we needed design work down. It wasn't a hard process, but we enjoy working with Higher Logic directly and it would keep most of our website under one umbrella.

Higher Logic is great to work with! I would recommend you consider their solutions for both member communities and website hosting.

We love the Higher Logic platform. It's opened so many doors for our members by using the communities, as well as the app. Member LOVE the directory available from the app. From a staff perspective, we love the CMS. It's given us the flexibility to create a dynamic website that is constantly changing. We can leverage tools already available within the community, and use them to better serve our membership.

I enjoy that it is a hosted platform and it relieves a lot of the stress coming from a startup. It allows easy access for members to connect online.

It took us a lot of time to get used to the product. Having a tech savvy team is very useful but if they are not it will take time to teach employees.

Continue making improvements to the software. Great to see companies continue to innovate, listen to your customers wants and improve.

Customer engagement is easily a common issue with many startups. Higher Logic allows simplicity among connecting members of the community with just the click of a button.

The platform is really easy to use. It is user friendly and users find it easy. The best thing about Higher Logic is the customer support. Being new to the platform, having that support to answer my questions or trouble shoot is very helpful.

Some of the admin functions are hard to grapple. There is a lot of resources and information, but how to really utilize them to maximize usage.

Increasing engagement, value, and loyalty to the association. Although our association has had the platform for awhile, I think there is a great potential to leverage the community to drive engagement and increase areas of concern such as membership retention, registration, and content.

I like the constant innovation Higher Logic brings to the platform. They are always coming up with new tools to help me do more with less staff. In particular the integration with Informz has addressed several challenges I thought we couldn't get around.

I would like to see a better way of pushing one-way communications from our staff to members. Right now we use the discussion posts because announcements are not included in daily digests.

Take advantage of the free training through the Higher Logic academy and engage on HUG.

It has enabled our member leaders to answer questions that would otherwise be directed to staff, saving us time and increasing the stature of our member leaders.

The integration with Informz has allowed me to include interests expressed in Higher Logic in our Informz mailing target groups.

It allows our members to hold their own discussions on the platform. This not only gives them a tangible member benefit, but it also is being used by the organizers of our annual meeting to see what topics should be included in the agenda.

Not real dislikes yet, but we're pretty hands off with the product aside from the forums. A more robust file library would be nice.

Same as the like box, it gives us a real member benefit to add to our services and it allows us to see what topics and discussions are important to our members.

Higher Logic provides members with an opportunity to connect and collaborate between live events, conferences, meet-ups, etc. It is an ideal platform to increase learning and engagement between members. Our members are excited to create and participate in discussions that help them grow their careers and improve their organizations.

The lack of time and resources I have to improve our HL system.

Member engagement and retention.

I like how user friendly the platform is and how easy it was for our members to learn how to use the platform. I also like how my own information is pulled in from LinkedIn to save me time from inputting my info again. I like the individual communities and how our members are using them to share information.

There's nothing that I dislike, but I'm interested to see how it will integrated with our new AMS system. I'm also interested to know if this product can somehow integrate with Phone2Action, which we use for advocacy efforts.

We are a member driven organization so this has been beneficial to give our members a voice. They have taken ownership of posting on the online communities and will continue to do so in the future.

Higher Logic allowed our franchisee association to engage members like never before. We are able to share best practices, advice, and even connect members who want to trade equipment, and so much more! The app is also key to the success of this platform -- our Members live by it and look forward to the participant discussions every day!

Wish I could have more ads in the app, so that I can offset the cost.

Associations and similar trade groups should not go without this tool.

This tool helped us boost membership significantly.

Creating new communities and microsites.

New members want a facebook look. It is difficult to customize the look and feel. A change on one page can effect all. Updates are often made without warning or information and have often caused problems with access. Most of my support issues have required follow-up before they are resolved. New features are added without information provided on how to use them and can result in losing current functionality. Documentation has always been lacking and it is especially difficult to find for new features. Members have a terrible time understanding the interface for uploading documents.

Creating a platform that integrates with your AMS and is skinned to your brand will demand many hours of your time. Plan accordingly.

Members need a place to share information and access member-only products. We have not realized an increase in retention from the platform, however, that is one of the goals.

Very good online resources. Quick to respond when there is a problem. Demonstrate the features and possibilities of their product by using it in online communities for customers.

Content management system is pretty basic.

We integrate the Higher Logic product with a membership database. Do your homework to make sure they will work together. - both the products and the support personnel.

We need a platform that allows people from all over the world to share ideas and questions. Online activity is growing and we've been building an incredible knowledge bank.

I love that Higher Logic keeps updating the product. You may have bought the product in 2015 and started implementation but once you have it there are constant updates that benefit your members and users.

For those who aren't as tech savvy there is a learning curve. Once you learn the basics it is easy to use but sometimes getting the platform to do exactly what you want it to do requires a bit more coding experience.

We wanted to engage with our members on a deeper level and across the country. We have realized that there are more benefits to using this platform than we originally thought and will be moving towards utilizing all this platform has rather than spreading assets across several different sites.

The ease of using different features, as well as the look.

Visually, it is very appealing and easy on the eyes.

Editing webpages is a lot less difficult than our previous vendor.

I was very excited to learn about automation rules, but was then disappointed when I found out that multiple email addresses cannot be used as the community manager (for using automation rules on different communities). We do not have one designated employee who will be taking care of this, yet. At the moment, each community has it's own staff person assigned to it.

We are getting our members to "talk" with each other. Due to the clean look and ease of use, it is easier for our members to use our communities.

HL Community platform allows us to engage our members and connect them to each other and the NSPE community while keeping them aware of the great work that is taking place.

I wish I didn't have to choose which modules to implement because of resource restrictions of my organization. Volunteer module, mentor module, activity synch -I want it all!!

Is there even another player in this space? I'm pretty sure almost all engineering organizations are using HL. And the ease of integrating with Abila products sold us.

NSPE hasn't had a member directory since the old school paper system. We are now about to launch an online directory through Higher Logic to help our members connect with each other and engage.

This is a very robust platform with all the bells and whistles I could imagine.

The customer service is not always the best. However, I can see the company is trying to remedy this.

None

Prior to Higher Logic, my association did not have online communities. We also have a much more robust website.

Higher Logic significantly increases member engagement through its private networking community platform.

We have also been able to use the platform to provide our website as the front end of the private communities and discussion forums.

The clever backend has meant that we have been able to cater for our 7 Divisions/Chapters by providing them with their own microsite, plus it allows us to have a fully integrated event calendar, libraries and discussion forums.

Higher Logic are constantly upgrading the platform as part of our annual subscription.

I can't say that I dislike anything about the Higher Logic platform. I am very satisfied with what we have been able to implement and achieve.

Higher Logic can suggest best practice guides when implementing the platform. Using best practice can dramatically improve the results / outcomes.

Over the past 3 years, our integrated approach to using Higher Logic as our private networking community and website, combined with our content marketing approach to our communications has resulted in our membership increasing by 68%, our prospects 126% and our website hits and increased five fold.

We have a membership of nearly 4,000 but we have been able to increase our broader industry prospects and contacts to around 18,000. People want to connect to our private networking community.

Our online community has become one of our most popular member benefits and has become one of our best engagement tools. The Higher Logics Support team is terrific and always helpful in answering questions or providing assistance if needed.

It can take a while to figure out all of the admin features and figure out how to utilize certain tools; however, there is a great set of online resources and their Support team is very helpful.

The HL online community allows our members to interact in a way to get fast, helpful information that they can utilize in their everyday jobs and this has proven very beneficial and popular with our members.

I really like the breakout sessions the best. They are very informative and they aren't painfully long. There are all full of such useful information that is very handy to know

I dislike that there are so many good breakout sessions options at the same time and i can't attend all of them.

Higher Logic provides our Workspace area for our members. We are really looking forward to incorporating/transitioning to communities to better engage our members and really use the Higher Logic platform

The 1 on 1 was amazing! It saved me so much time!

The fact that I couldn't attend even more sessions!

I now know how best to integrate HL with our website and make them work for each other, and work for our members!

I like that it is difficult to choose what section to attend, but know I will be able to access later.

I can't think of much here. Perhaps the sense that modules are so emphasized and I see $$ signs when I think of everything I'm intrigued with.

I'd recommend HL, and think they are leading this industry

we are working on member engagement and managing big data. I'm seeing the benefit of our HL community in anecdotal and measurable ways

Every staff member I've worked with over the past 5 years has gone above and beyond to help me get it done.

We don't always agree on what should be a priority for future development

Talk to Higher Logic clients who have implemented features you are interested in. This will give you a good idea of what's realistically needed to achieve your end goals.

Giving association members access to their greatest member benefit - each other.

The platform is really easy to use and the team at Higher Logic are always quick to answer questions!

I wish there was more automatic reporting capabilities.

Our membership is made up of 52,000 professionals and our staff of 60 can't answer all of their operational questions and career advice questions, so it's a great place for members to answer and inspire one another.

Higher Logic is the best tool we've found to Communicate, Engage and Collaborate.

Can't think of anything that I dislike, the Support staff is top notch and it is a quality product.

We were seeking a stable, feature-filled, customizable platform that allow us to keep members informed and afford the opportunity for collaboration among our many disparate association Units. HL integrates with our AMS which automates our Community registration, authentication and membership.

Higher Logic's Connected Community software has enabled our association to offer an unprecedented opportunity for our members to communicate with one another and get pressing questions answered. I also appreciate the company's commitment to continually develop their software and solicit input and feedback from their customers.

There's not much I dislike! The one area of the software the is a bit overdue for improvement is the document library.

Our online community has become an integral part of many of our members' businesses. But in addition to our members benefitting, we are benefitting as an organization by seeing what our members are talking about so that we know topic areas we need to address and provide guidance on.

Super staff, flexible platform. Ease of use, and powerful automation rules.

Document libraries are still evolving - it can be difficult to do live group editing or versions of a document.

Definitely look at Higher Logic - it's a great fit for us and many associations!

By empowering the ASAE network through Higher Logic, we helped ASAE members host events and give advice to one another.

Their forum for users which allows you to ask questions of other clients/customers, this is usually more effective than contacting their customer service

Platform is clunky, will launch updates without allowing users time to test or notify their own users

Online member forum; increases engagement and retention

Reading member posts and learning more about what we do well as an organization and areas of focus.

Some features could be easier to use. More opportunities to learn best practices of community would be helpful.

We're learning about ways we can enhance our business processes, especially in our certification and education areas. Data inputs from members have been helpful to better our customer service, as well.