--- title: Higher Logic Vanilla Reviews meta_title: 'Higher Logic Vanilla Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta_description: Filter 99 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how Higher Logic Vanilla works for a business like yours. aggregate_rating: rating_value: 4.3 review_count: 99 scale: '5' date_modified: '2026-08-09' parent_category: name: Marketing url: https://www.g2.com/categories/marketing --- # Higher Logic Vanilla Reviews **Vendor:** Higher Logic **Category:** [Online Community Management Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/online-community-management) **Average Rating:** 4.3/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 99 ## About Higher Logic Vanilla Higher Logic Vanilla is a customer community platform from Higher Logic, a global leader in engagement software headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. Backed by the largest community software organization—with 15+ years of experience and more than 3,000 customers worldwide—Vanilla delivers the scale, stability, and focus enterprise organizations expect, while remaining fully dedicated to driving stronger community outcomes. Vanilla brings together discussion forums, Q&A, knowledge base, ideation, gamification, and advanced moderation in one flexible platform. Organizations can manage multiple products, regions, or sub-communities within a single instance, with full control over branding and permissions. The platform integrates seamlessly across the tech stack, includes advanced analytics and dashboards, and supports workflow automation. Admin teams get intuitive no-code tools for everyday management, while developers can extend capabilities with APIs, theming, and a fully integrated development environment. Personalization, accessibility, SEO, and mobile responsiveness are built in from the start. Organizations use Vanilla to lower support costs, engage advocates, and capture product feedback. Peer-to-peer discussions and Q&A create a living knowledge base that deflects tickets. Gamification, reputation systems, and sentiment analysis surface customer champions who can drive advocacy and engagement. Structured ideation channels provide product teams with direct, actionable insights. Beyond technology, Vanilla offers program-level expertise with practitioner-led guidance, dedicated community success managers, and responsive technical support to help communities grow, scale, and deliver measurable business impact. ## Higher Logic Vanilla Pros & Cons **What users like:** - Users value the **ease of attendee engagement** with straightforward setup and excellent support during the process. (2 reviews) - Users commend the **responsive customer support** of Higher Logic Vanilla, enhancing the overall experience and engagement. (2 reviews) - Users commend the **ease of use** of Higher Logic Vanilla, noting its user-friendly setup and excellent support. (2 reviews) - Users appreciate the **easy setup** of Higher Logic Vanilla, making community engagement a breeze from the start. (2 reviews) - Users value the **user-friendly implementation process** and customization options that enhance their overall experience with Higher Logic Vanilla. (2 reviews) - Users praise the **helpful implementation team** and user-friendly platform, enhancing overall experience and success. (2 reviews) - Intuitive (2 reviews) - Automation (1 reviews) - Customization (1 reviews) - Users appreciate the **easy integrations** with various platforms like ChurnZero, enhancing their community-building efforts. (1 reviews) **What users dislike:** - Users express a desire for **greater customization options** to enhance the overall user experience on Higher Logic Vanilla. (2 reviews) - Users face **numerous bugs** in the knowledge base, resulting in a frustrating and inefficient search experience. (1 reviews) - Users experience **email communication issues** with Higher Logic Vanilla, affecting engagement and usability for community interactions. (1 reviews) - Users find the **inadequate analytics** of Higher Logic Vanilla frustrating, wishing for a more user-friendly navigation experience. (1 reviews) - Users find the **missing customization features** limiting, impacting the overall functionality of their community management. (1 reviews) - Poor Customer Support (1 reviews) - Poor Navigation (1 reviews) - Search Functionality (1 reviews) - UX Issues (1 reviews) ## Higher Logic Vanilla Reviews ### 1. High Logic Vanilla has been a great way for our customers to connect. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 09, 2025 **What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?** It is easy for our customers to engage with. Setup is straightforward and supported throughout the process by their team. **What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?** Nothing that I don't like, the platform is easy to use and great for our customers. **What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?** We needed a way for our customers to engage with eachother, share ideas and build stronger connections. **Official Response from bleehe@higherlogic.com Leehe:** > Thank you for taking the time to share your feedback, we’re so glad to hear that Higher Logic Vanilla has made it easy for your customers to connect, share ideas, and build stronger relationships. It’s great to know the setup process felt smooth and well-supported by our team. We truly appreciate your positive comments about the platform’s usability and the value it brings to your community. Thanks again for being a valued partner! ### 2. An easy-to-use community platform with just enough bells and whistles that can grow **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Maureen R. | Customer Marketing Manager, Computer Software, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 08, 2024 **What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?** The platform was easy to navigate, with good out of the box reporting that integrated with ChurnZero (our customer success platform) out of the box. I was able to build a beautiful community without taking too much training. **What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?** It's definitely not the most robust community platform on the market, but it has just what we need for a team who is managing community in addition to other jobs. I wish there was more out of the box customization options when it comes to design and more of a 'news feed' approach to discussions where people can like and comment on posts without having to go TO the post beforehand. **What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?** It's giving our customers a space to build their own networks, share best practices, answer questions, etc. We also use is at a marketing tool to share announcements, events, and other department initiatives. ### 3. Great platform for Communities in Associations. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Financial Services | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 11, 2023 **What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?** Higher Logic is a great way to share ideas and to have engagement. We have used the Higher Logic Online Community which provides discussion boards for members to engage. **What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?** I wish Higher Logic has a Google drive concept where members can update in real time. **What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?** Engagement. ### 4. Strong customer support platform with excellent customer support **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Consumer Electronics | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 23, 2022 **What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?** Vanilla's support is incredibly helpful - they know the product well, are honest about the status of bugs/issues/feature requests, and their response rate is very impressive! They also have a good integration with Zapier and are continuing to add more (as well as other features requested by users) **What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?** Each community platform has its strengths and weaknesses. Vanilla could benefit from having some more email tools to encourage community engagement/adoption (ex. regular newsletter, ability to add we miss you emails, more welcome emails, etc.). It would also be helpful if they had more of a WYSYWIG editor and ability to change pages without CSS/JS required. I would also love to see a more robust events system. **What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?** Vanilla offers a strong community platform. We have used this to connect with customers and potential customers about our product as well as topical content related to the product. It's been great to have our community as the home base for connecting with our company. ### 5. Reliable forum software with the tools you need to grow your community **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 23, 2022 **What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?** The ability to create categories and groups - the structure of how you can create them is very versatile which will meet many different use cases. It is also easy for the end user to understand how the structure is set up and find what they are looking for and how to participate. **What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?** There is not a built in digest functionality - where you can send a recap of the posts from the prior day. This would be helpful in getting users to come back to community and engage them in discussions - I hope this is something they add in the future as it impacts community engagement greatly! **What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?** Manage support forums with ease. Decent data reporting in terms of average response time and number of questions - this allows me to report on the success of the forum from a ticket deflection perspective. Additionally, allows us to collect feedback from our users. ### 6. Very comprehensive platform to grow in to **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Leanne M. | Events and Community Manager, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 25, 2022 **What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?** I like that there is a lot of flexibility in design and setup so we can really make the platform work for us now and into the future. We reviewed a lot of competitors before settling on Vanilla/Higher Logic and we ultimately ended up going with this platform because it met all of our needs including excellent content distribution and moderation features, detailed reporting and much more. **What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?** It can be a little tricky to completely personalise the product without technical knowledge/assistance and sometimes it can be a little slow to hear back from someone in the team if there is a challenge (particularly with billing) **Recommendations to others considering Higher Logic Vanilla:** Don't just think about what you need now, but also into the future and you'll see that you can really grow into and with this platform. **What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?** It's helping us to better connect with our customers. We can now share and discuss exclusive content with them, hear their challenges, and even support onboarding for customers and employees all in one place. ### 7. Vanilla by Higher Logic the Epitome of What Customer Community SaaS Should Be **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Nichole D. | Director of Customer Operations, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 25, 2022 **What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?** There are a lot of amazing things about Vanilla by Higher Logic. I used to work for a competitor for nearly seven years, so I have first-hand knowledge of not just what I expect in the mechanics of a platform and how it's deployed, but the kind of programmatic support needed as well. When I was looking for a community platform for my company, I looked at the above, plus the value for the price, as well as the kind of culture they have that would turn this into a partnership. Across the board, Vanilla has been the most outstanding community partnerI could have asked for. For an incredibly reasonable price, we obtained a platform that allowed us complete flexibility on look and feel, what gaming mechanics we wanted to offer to our users, as well as a ton of Moderation controls that takes some of the taxing work off of those that do the moderation. In addition, the number of plug-ins it's compatible with is astounding. As for programmatic, the amount of training materials, the initial support from my assigned CSM, as well as ongoing continuing education and networking opportunities have been numerous. If you're a first-time Community Manager, there's no better partner than Vanilla to hold your hand every step of the way. Finally, their culture is geared towards supporting humans. Since beginning my work with them in 2019, I've made numerous friendships within both Vanilla and Higher Logic, which is testament to the amazing people they employ. **What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?** There's really not much to dislike. If you are looking for a vendor that offers a great platform, program guidance, and an in-depth education on communities, then they are the vendor for you. **What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?** Our use case is a self-service support community that allows our customers to access a whole range of materials from articles on troubleshooting, to important product updates, to industry news and events, customer stories, and best practices. Our goal was to reduce support tickets, as well as time to resolve. We have achieved that with Vanilla's Community platform. ### 8. Bringing our passionate community together, online **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** David P. | Community Manager, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 24, 2022 **What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?** Vanilla makes managing our community online simple and easy. Everything we need is available in an instance and our passionate community of travel professionals can support each other more efficiently online. On the rare occasion I can't sort or resolve something myself, their support team is on-hand to help and it's always thorough and friendly. The platform connects our global community in a way they've never had before which is fantastic. **What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?** There are some instances where I feel I should be able to do myself, like allowing additional file types for attachments in posts, I can't and have to reach out to the support team for help. I can understand to a certain degree why this is the case but it's long-winded and slows things down. There could also be better communication; my CSM left their role and told me the day they were leaving, I'm still waiting for a new CSM to be appointed to our account. **Recommendations to others considering Higher Logic Vanilla:** Fully review analytics offering, this was our only challenge. **What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?** We're now better at connecting a global community in a way that works for them. We're seeing better peer-to-peer support which is allowing our in-house support teams to focus on more detailed problems that can't be solved by this kind of peer-led support which means our teams are more efficient. ### 9. Higher Logic offers a solid product with responsive support and flexible development options. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jimerson A. | Director of Technical Operations, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 23, 2022 **What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?** I like how how it is simple to use but also offers extensive options under the hood for nearly unlimited customization. **What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?** I think the largest pill to swallow is cost, but you really do get what you pay for. **What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?** We were able to rollout a modern forum that provides ongoing member engagement, building real community! ### 10. Fully-featured forum functionality (and at a reasonable cost) **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Gordon S. | Director of Community, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 13, 2021 **What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?** Vanilla is a fully-featured forum platform with virtually all the customization options you want in a forum with the ability to customize the Forum look and feel, categories, member settings, moderation options, email settings, multiple forum instances, APIs, badging, and more. And Vanilla offers these options at a reasonable cost. Virtually anything you want to do terms of customization is probably possible with Vanilla. **What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?** While we're happy with Vanilla overall, we have run into three areas where we'd love to see improvement: - The lack of an email digest option (we'd love it if the system could generate a once a day email listing top and new discussions). - The moderation options are a little bit buggy (sometimes we'd like to take action behind the scenes which isn't always possible). - Now that Higher Logic has bought Vanilla, we'd love to see Vanilla integrate with Higher Logic's best in class ability to segment users and create unique experiences for them. **What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?** It's enabling us to create an online community for our top members, which we leverage to enable self-support, to get detailed feedback about our service, and to communicate proactively with these members. ### 11. Great Customer Service **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Kanyin O. | Sr solution architect, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 04, 2022 **What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?** the CS rep who worked with us from design to implementation was spectacular. she was very organized and receptive to our needs. **What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?** I wish the Vanilla platform had some more features **What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are creating a closer connection with our customers and we are getting to hear their voice ### 12. Great Plaftform for Online Community Forums **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Rahul D. | Software Engineer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 28, 2022 **What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?** Support community for the customers, where every person can connect and find the solutions. **What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?** More help features should be provided for the users. **Recommendations to others considering Higher Logic Vanilla:** The best portal for Customer Support. **What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?** To communicate with community members. If anyone has a query they post it and someone provides the best solutions for it. That's the cool feature I like. ### 13. Amazing support, seamless design, intuitive UI **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 24, 2022 **What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?** What I like best about Vanilla is how simple the UI is to use. It's seamless to set up, monitor, and run a community (which I haven't found the same with other community platforms). Support is wicked fast every time I come across an issue. **What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?** Since Vanilla is newer, there are certain things I'd like to see in the product that just aren't there yet. Totally understandable, that's all I can complain about. **Recommendations to others considering Higher Logic Vanilla:** You won't find a better platform for community. **What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?** Giving our customers a platform to collaborate, find answers to their questions, and be rewarded for being a crucial member of our community. Most of our advocates started on our community forums. ### 14. Vanilla Online Community by Higher Logic is a great asset for our company **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** jeremy m. | Sr. Manager Digital Journey & CX Experience, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 24, 2022 **What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?** The platform itself and the options included are more than what we can ask for when compared to other competitors; their support team is incredibly supportive and hands-on. **What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?** None that I can think of, to be honest - there is nothing to dislike. **Recommendations to others considering Higher Logic Vanilla:** Vanilla Online Community by Higher Logic is a no-brainer if you're looking for a robust community platform to support your business and customers. **What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?** P2P support reduced OPEX, and huge returns on ROI. ### 15. Market leading platform that is constantly evolving **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 28, 2022 **What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?** My most significant admiration for Vanilla is their constant drive toward improvement and innovation. They don't sit still and are always evolving their offering which has been a breath of fresh air for us. **What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?** The platform is really intuitive, and you can get up and running quickly with out-of-the-box functionality. When it comes to deeper customisation there is a need for dev resources which is a tad limiting **Recommendations to others considering Higher Logic Vanilla:** Don't hesitate to take the leap with Vanilla for your online community needs. You won't be disappointed. **What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?** Our Vanilla Community allows us to provide a digital self-service support channel that has garnered a user base of 28,000 registered members. We've been able to utilise the community platform to service a range of needs including support, mass communication along with building brand advocacy. ### 16. Responsive, Helpful, and Proactive Customer Support **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 18, 2021 **What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?** The fast turnaround from Customer Support as well as the proactive communication from our CSM. We also love how our Vanilla Online Community forum has really engaged our customers not only with us - but also between each other with knowledge and experience sharing. **What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?** Sometimes, the WYSIWYG editor is a bit lacking in terms of content control. Additionally, the Admin Dashboard UI can be difficult to navigate and find certain items. **What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?** We utilize the community forum for an array of things - from non-urgent questions and issues that can be quickly addressed (thus assisting our Support team with our ticket queue), to creating an active community of product users that want to share their knowledge and experience, to receiving creative Feature Request ideas. ### 17. Quick to get set up and very flexible product **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 02, 2021 **What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?** The thing that makes Vanilla stand out is its dedicated customer success team. Mila guided us through the whole onboarding experience and on-going maintenance of the forum. From the very first day, Vanilla's forum became a hit with our community. The product is very flexible, which was important given how distinct our community is. It made a huge difference to have Mila help us navigate those options so we could easily and quickly take advantage of the flexibility the platform offers. **What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?** There are many options in the settings, so it's not always clear how to use them all. This is why we were extra grateful to have a dedicated member of Vanilla help us learn to use them. **What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?** Our community is very segmented and requires heavy moderation. Vanilla helps us completely segment our community while being able to manage them all in one place for the ease of our moderators. ### 18. Vanilla - A great choice for your new community! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Kara A. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 14, 2020 **What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?** My favorite thing about the Vanilla platform is its simplicity and intuitiveness. It was my top choice after the first demo I did, after seeing the admin view. It is uncluttered and logical. The member-facing community is customizable by choosing a theme or doing some custom CSS work. We did both, and based our design off another Vanilla customer's community we admired. We also have subcommunities built into our agreement, allowing incredible flexibility for future growth with new audiences. We did not have a prior community, so it was important to have confidence in a platform that would get us "up and running" in the right direction. Vanilla has been a great partner thus far. **What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?** Vanilla has been very responsive to feedback and feature requests. The three things I'm most looking forward to are the development of a Member Directory (to more easily see who else is in the community), the refinement of search results, and improved analytics. **What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are providing an online community to our audience for the very first time. We've realized very quickly that there is a great appetite for best practice sharing and the opportunity to connect with others in new ways. With Vanilla's platform, we are able to offer many options for our audience to converse in public forums, provide feedback and collaborate in social groups, as well as have a little fun competing for the top spot on the leaderboard! ### 19. Easy-to-implement user community **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jeff G. | VP of Product, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 24, 2020 **What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?** The available templates make it very quick and easy to stand up a user community that includes announcements, questions and ideas. The support is fantastic. **What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?** The API is pretty robust, but we do find some actions that we would like to perform automatically to not be possible via the API. **What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?** Catalytic has a thriving user community as a result of our implementation of Vanilla. This supports a self-service model for customer support, in which customers are able to instantly search previously answered questions. Additionally, customers are able to inform our product roadmap by submitting feature requests and voting on one another's ideas. ### 20. Love the features Vanilla has to offer! **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Internet | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 25, 2020 **What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?** Vanilla has so many great features on their platform. It is also very user friendly, and they did a great job customizing it to meet our brand. **What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?** There isn’t anything that I really dislike about the platform. **Recommendations to others considering Higher Logic Vanilla:** I would definitely recommend Vanilla Community to others and would say that they are very up to date with their software and product offerings. They are very transparent about what they can and can't offer, as well as sharing upcoming things on their product roadmap. **What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are able to reach hundreds of sellers that we work with on a daily basis, and share important information with them. Some of the benefits I have realized are the ability to create private groups, and also the private and group messaging. I think our users have found the new community very useful and are able to connect with others, as well as use it as a daily reference for any questions they might have. ### 21. Learning what can be accomplished with the platform **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jeffrey M. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 21, 2020 **What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?** I really like the "out of the box" functionality of the platform. It allowed us to stand it up with a V.1 while we work on building a more robust interface and functionality for our users. **What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?** We didn't know what all could be accomplished with the platform from basic site interactions. To really understand what we could do, I had to speak with our account manager. **Recommendations to others considering Higher Logic Vanilla:** Think about what you want to accomplish with your community. Once you have a plan of action, work with your account manager to bring that to fruition. **What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are using Vanilla to be an ongoing feedback loop with our users. The biggest component is ideation for our product managers to know what our users want. ### 22. Affordable Plug and Play Solution **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Alan B. | Founder, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 21, 2020 **What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?** There is a lot to like about Vanilla Forums, but what I like most is that it is so easy to post. Recent upgrades make it have the feel of other social media, with posting urls that allows share images and a short summary. It's easy to upload files, images and text too. **What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?** I have had a little challenge onboarding new users - this may be due to my lack of awareness of information that would make it easier **What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?** I wanted my newsletter subscribers to be able to communicate in an effective and organized manner, and this has been achieved ### 23. Freedom to customize CSS **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 21, 2020 **What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?** I like the fact that we were able to customize a lot with CSS most of the interface to fit our needs. Also, since vanilla forums is based on a markup language, we were able also to add some extra coding and conditional statements to fine tuning what was required. **What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?** Due to some restrains of the markup language and the logic, we had to split our CSS between two different areas: the template itself and the CSS file on the other side. **What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?** We opted for an easy way to have customers/members feedback and interaction within our member areas of our sites. ### 24. So easy to use - perfect for what I needed **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Trevor B. | VP of Marketing, Computer Software, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 20, 2018 **What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?** I love that within days of starting my free trial, I had a nicely branded solution (that I was able to setup with the self-service configuration options) that I was able to test out internally to colleagues to make sure it checked all the boxes we needed. Vanilla team is very responsive and provided best practice articles, webinars, suggestions, etc. when I ran into some doubters about how a community could be successful for our business. **What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?** I wish I had more control over the content of the email alerts that get sent out. They are short and sweet but it would be nice to add my own touch in some cases. **What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?** We have just launched and it's going great so far, but we essentially wanted to provide a way for our customers to share best practices, network, and have closer access to our support and customer success teams. Instead of answering questions in silos, it's now available for all customers to see and learn from - the live KB that we needed. We have internal SMEs adding articles of tech tips and commonly asked questions to help boost the usefulness and activity out of the gates. ### 25. A world-class online community solution with amazing flexibility and scale **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sreekumar J. | Designated Partner, Information Services, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 09, 2018 **What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?** It is pretty simple for Administration. We took a few hours to create and organize our online community. Building it up is easy. I found the solution, extremely flexible - a handful of options,and business rules. The design is cool and UX is perfect. The large pool of add-ons and themes are definitely advantages for customers. Coming to forum specific features, there are plenty of cool features like social login, polls, media management, ranking system, gamification, and the newly added business app integration. **What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?** So far, our experience with Vanilla is perfect and hence no dislike. If get more deep in to functionalities, probably analytics portion is something which require further improvement. **Recommendations to others considering Higher Logic Vanilla:** I recommend Vanilla forums to anybody who wish to begin an online community. Vanilla is simple, stable, and having excellent add-ons compatibility and this is going to exceed your expectations. **What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?** For our startup in online solution space, we were looking at a stable and easy to manage community solution. We were keen on pursuing an application which we can rely on and at the same time, less time consuming one for forum administration and management. We found vanilla as the perfect solution to meet our requirements. ### 26. Vanilla Forums **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Geraldine V. | Associate Director of Outreach and Communications, Research, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 07, 2017 **What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?** Vanilla Forums constitute a very flexible solution that we're able to customize and adapt as our userbase grows and as the scope of our product line expands. It has scaled really well so far and we expect to take advantage of some more advanced integrations (including potentially zendesk) moving forward. **What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?** The analytics features that are included in the dashboard UI are rather underwhelming, we end up writing API queries to get the info we really care about. It would be nice if more of that was built in. **What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?** We use Vanilla Forums as our main channel for providing technical and scientific support to the users of our genomic analysis software package and related cloud services. The forums enable us to communicate knowledge and collect feedback and issue reports from our users in an efficient manner. Over the past 5 years, we've grown our userbase from a few thousand to >55K registered users. Our users often express that they come to us based on the reputation of the software and stay with us because they're so happy with the support we provide, and the Forums are an integral part of that. ### 27. Vanilla Forums Put Our Community into Overdrive (and the 21st Century) **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Patrick M. | Founder, Sports, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 04, 2017 **What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?** As a decade old company with forums even older that that (!) the Team at Vanilla was able to port over our collective knowledge into a platform that is mobile-friendly, intuitive and fun to use. We have seen our time-on-site increase as well as overall engagement. The addition of gamification (badges) and the ability to easily embed photos, videos and GIFs has made the user experience something that folks rave about. And the fact we could leave our old, outdated software behind (good riddance!) enables us to focus on Customer Success vs Tech Support. Finally, the turnaround time for support questions and modifications (included or paid) via Vanilla is both transparent and quick. I've never had to wait more than a month for a feature, and my support rep replies in less than 24 hours ever time. What's not to like? **What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?** So far, there's nothing to complain about. One year in and still going strong. **Recommendations to others considering Higher Logic Vanilla:** Definitely worth giving them a call and seeing what they can do with your existing community. **What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?** A robust, up-to-date online space for my community members to interact and share knowledge and stories with one another. ### 28. Best Kept Community Secret **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Emilia D. | Founder, Managing Partner, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 30, 2017 **What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?** Excellent Sales to Customer experience. What the salesperson sold is what we received and more. The customer success manager knows his product and if he doesn't know the answer, he gets it to you asap. He is also very proactive in managing the customer relationship. I am surprised that not more people know about this community vendor. **What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?** I haven't experienced anything that I don't like yet. **Recommendations to others considering Higher Logic Vanilla:** -They don't have a mobile app but I hear it is in the works! The web version works well though. -Make sure you have your resources to go because it is an easy set-up. -Take their online training and webinars. Very helpful for launching! **What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?** I started our WalkMe user groups on the phone and in LinkedIn groups. I quickly realized a needed a more robust platform to scale a fast growing community online and to segment the customer experiences by platform. Today we are excited to have a community for Workday®, Salesforce®, External, General & for Product testing. It has been a great experience to work with such a professional and available team. We have also been able to create the customer experience we want without investing in heavy professional services that many competitors nearly require. This product is easy to use for the admins and for customers. Thank you, Vanilla! ### 29. Great flexibility **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Christy C. | Customer Support Manager, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 16, 2017 **What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?** I love that I have an awesome CSM who really cares about my forum doing well (shout out to Val). They look into any ideas I might have, no mater how crazy. I love that you can really make it your own. There is so much flexibility in terms of design and plug-ins. We have a Zendesk plug-in that allows us to pull tough questions into tickets to provide our users with privacy and faster service. **What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?** If you don't know CSS, it can be a little hard. Luckily there are free CSS classes on a lot of different coding websites. Having a developer or a designer that can help you out would be awesome for this solution. **Recommendations to others considering Higher Logic Vanilla:** Keep doing things like making apps to integrate with Hootsuite. Make getting CSS help easier. **What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are using it as a channel to help our users find quick answers on questions that might have already been answered on the forum. We love having a place where users can interact and talk about tips and tricks while getting answers for our more commonly asked questions. ### 30. Reliable and easy-to-use **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Kelli P. | Virtual Assistant, Internet, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 16, 2017 **What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?** The thing I like best about Vanilla Forums is how easy it is to use for my customers. It is easy to find various topics and threads with the different menus available on each page. We've used other forum platforms that constantly crashed and this one has been very stable. **What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?** There are only minor things I dislike. Our members are all writers. Many of them copy from Word to paste content into the forum and run up against the character count limit. This is an easy workaround using a text editor program, but it would be even easier if Vanilla had a "Paste a Plain Text" option. Again, this is really minor. **Recommendations to others considering Higher Logic Vanilla:** Ask as many questions have you have. The sales team and the support team are very helpful. **What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?** Vanilla Forums has given us a place for our members to connect. It's given us the ability to host different levels of membership without anyone feeling like they're missing out on anything. Whenever we've had a problem or needed help, Laura and the Vanilla Support Team has been there to help within hours (sometimes minutes). They are a dream to work with. ### 31. Vanilla Forums makes it easier for us to manage our communities **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mark G. | Technical Producer, Computer Games, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 10, 2017 **What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?** How quickly we can create new forums as we publish new games. The support team at Vanilla Forums is very responsive and willing to work with us to **What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?** No big complaints. It would be nice if our web developers could run instances of Vanilla locally so they could create themes faster. **Recommendations to others considering Higher Logic Vanilla:** Vanilla forums makes it easy for administrators to build and deploy new forums and for community managers to moderate their communities. The software is very flexible and easy to integrate with existing account management systems. **What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?** We used to maintain forums that we built in-house and that were tightly coupled with our internal account management system. Once we started publishing a lot of new games, we needed a modern forum solution that would allow us to create new gaming communities very quickly. Our time to deploy forums decreased from several months to under 1 week. ### 32. Vanilla Forums – An Unwavering Commitment to Customer Success **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** John F. | Chief Operating Officer, Management Consulting, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 26, 2017 **What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?** Vanilla’s team went above and beyond to ensure the success of the pilot program that we conducted. The platform is intuitive and easy to use; it offered us a high degree of flexibility so that we could take a phased approach to rolling out new features and functionality. After signing our agreement, we were immediately introduced to Vanilla’s support and implementation team, who provided constructive feedback and shared innovative ideas for driving engagement on a weekly basis. **What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?** Overall, Vanilla has a strong product. However, we were disappointed to learn that you can't actually host a "live chat" in a discussion because comments don't load automatically in real-time...in order to see a new comment on a post you have to refresh your browser. **What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?** To ensure the success of your online community, it is imperative that you obtain buy-in from key stakeholders. I recommend that you assemble a comprehensive business case, and obtain support from the C-suite, before moving forward. Your business case should include key milestones, goals/objectives, metrics, etc. Key performance indicators should be tracked on an ongoing basis and share with all stakeholders. ### 33. Vanilla Forums has given us the best solution for building communities **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Juan V. | Project Manager, Information Technology and Services, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 19, 2017 **What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?** Vanilla Forums has brought me and the company I work for the best experience and solution for our clients´needs in terms of building communities and connecting people to the brands. I also really like the customer experience since everyone I have spoken with in Vanilla has been extremely nice, helpful and polite. **What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?** No dislikes! so far our experience has been whole **What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?** Vanilla Forums has brought me and the company I work for the best experience and solution for our clients´needs in terms of building communities and connecting people to the brands. Thanks to vanilla we have easily implemented many types of contests, tolls, brand activities and so on... but most importantly we have found a great solution for data bases management. ### 34. Outstanding features and service **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Catherine C. | Senior Digital Project Manager/ Agile Lead, Publishing, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 19, 2017 **What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?** Our teams love the fast deployment, customization options and easy management for non-technical admins. The audience loves Vanilla for its simple yet comprehensive community tools that enable them to share and engage with the sports writers they follow every day. **What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?** No complaints: we have enjoyed reliable service, easy integration and look forward to implementing advanced features in the next calendar year. **Recommendations to others considering Higher Logic Vanilla:** If you need a stable, simple-to-implement forum or community solution, Vanilla Forums will exceed your expectations. **What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?** We utilize Vanilla Forums to power communities for fans of specific college sports teams. The communities are moderated by our sports writers and a few trusted colleagues. The conversations enable the fans to look to our websites as the ultimate sources not only for college sports news but also to engage with fellow "diehards" in an environment we control. Overall, the communities give us unparalleled ability to connect with our audience. ### 35. Migrating over to Vanilla Forums was a great decision **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ryan O. | Community Manager/Public Relations, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 11, 2017 **What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?** The unique features and customer support are top notch. The gamification, design, countless add-ons and ability to create forums and ranks with special permissions are among my favorite features. I also really like the detailed profiles, embedded videos, polls and Q&As. In terms of gamifications, the ranking system and badges are a lot of fun. One of the newest features I have discovered and think is really cool is the automated email integration with MailChimp based on RSS feed. I like the reaction bar and social log-in and sharing capabilities as well. There are many other features I like, but too many to name. **What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?** I wish I had instant access to data, I dislike the fact they we can only access our database of users once per month. My company does enjoy about a 10 percent, but I do wish the product was cheaper. I also really wish the announcements were more "global" and would show at the top of each forum topic. The view count on discussions often seems inaccurate, as a post may say it only has three views, yet somehow has seven comments. I wish there the ability to edit what the transactional emails say as well. I also wish there were more reporting features in terms of analytics. **Recommendations to others considering Higher Logic Vanilla:** Yes, I would recommend it. Pros include great support, features and integrations. Cons include price and not being able to access your database in a spreadsheet more than once per month (for the corporate version at least). But pros outweigh cons. And Vanilla worked out a nice discount for us. **What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?** Vanilla enables StartupNation to connect with entrepreneurs, small business owners and startups. It provides a space for these like-minded folks to share knowledge, ask questions, build relationships and foster small business. This is perfectly in-line with the StartupNation brand as an online media group and premier small business platform. Benefits included with Vanilla that I didn't have with my previous forums platform: -A smooth, clean-cut interface -Fun features for users such as ranking system, badges, tagging and bookmarking -Easy-to-navigate backend/settings -Ability to create forums with special permissions -Detailed profiles/bios -Social log-ins and sharing -Embedded videos -Automated RSS feed emails with MailChimp -Polls, Q&A and add-ons -Auto-systems that help fight spam -Pockets for ads and promotions ### 36. A strong product with great support **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Gambling & Casinos | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 11, 2017 **What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?** So far it's the responsiveness of the staff that's been most important to us. In terms of functionality I like the power and flexibility of the post tool (as a user) and the configurability of user roles (as an administrator). **What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?** We're embedding the forum using their jsConnect model, and I'd like to see more around configuration for hiding login/registration features when using Connect-only registration, or being able to configure them to make JavaScript function calls. **What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?** We're currently migrating our reasonably large forum (1m posts, 300k users) over to Vanilla from another provider. It's a big task and Vanilla have really helped us at every step, from handling the import procedure to creating custom plugins to help redirect from the old system ### 37. A must have for any Software Company **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 18, 2017 **What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?** Ideation and gamification, customers can now tell us and vote on what they want to see in our product line. They can also share customizations to inspire other customers to help build brand advocacy. **What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?** Better API integrations would allow us to automate and a lot of manual steps, as well as pull richer data. I believe this is a work in progress currently though. **Recommendations to others considering Higher Logic Vanilla:** Best bang for buck **What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?** Ticket Deflection & End User Self Service. No longer is support asked the same questions over and over again. Vanilla SOE means our issues are googleable, people can stumble into the right thread to find answers quickly without having to wait for a response to a support ticket. ### 38. Successful migration from vBulletin to Vanilla **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Games | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 27, 2017 **What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?** Vanilla's analytics tools are light years ahead of what we had available to us on vBulletin. **What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?** I think the primary issue that most of our users have is the inability to easily customize their posts with different font colors. As silly as it sounds, this has been brought up a bunch of times. Although BBcode and html can be used to achieve this, our users want a simple WYSIWYG control. **What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?** We moved from a self managed AWS server cluster to a cloud hosted, fully managed server cluster with Vanilla. This relieves our IT department from having to worry about backups, security patches, etc. ### 39. Excellent Online Community Platform **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 16, 2017 **What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?** Vanilla Forums provides a lot of features, very easy to use, and excellent support staffs. Vanilla Forums gives me all the tools I need to build a community. I've been using Vanilla Forums over 1.5 years and they have been very reliable. The dashboard is very easy to navigate and allows the customer to customize their sites without any headaches. **What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?** Customers cannot export data. I hope they add this feature in the near feature. **Recommendations to others considering Higher Logic Vanilla:** I would definitely recommend Vanilla Forums. **What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?** I'm using Vanilla Forums for both internal and external communities, it helps employees to collaborate other emoloyees and with our customers. ### 40. Perfect for online communities **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Financial Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 18, 2017 **What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?** Vanilla offers a solid product as it relates to building online communities. The customer service provided is spot-on and they're able to incorporate our feedback and deploy requested changes at record pace. I like the fact that the tool is customizable to our needs and is great value for the money! I've personally built a good working relationship with them. Great partners! **What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?** None to mention at this point. They are building features at a good velocity. **What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?** We're building out a platform that is intended to connect a niche segment of our customer base. ### 41. BallOfSpray Forum **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** John H. | Owner, Internet, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 19, 2017 **What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?** Vanilla is a stable platform that does not require the admin to have database skills. **What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?** Functional or template customization is cost prohibitive. **Recommendations to others considering Higher Logic Vanilla:** Not sure how to answer this question **What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?** My business is my community. Vanilla lets me worry about my user culture and not think about tech. ### 42. Experience with Vanilla **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Games | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 30, 2017 **What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?** Vanilla provides above and beyond client experience. **What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?** I wish there were more mobile options as most of our users access our sites via a mobile device. **What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?** We were using phpbb for our forums and needed to create a forum more inviting but also easier to manage by a small communications team. We have a better grasp of each aspect of our forum that can help us deliver better support for our player needs. ### 43. An easy-to-use platform and superb support **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Research | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 26, 2017 **What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?** Vanilla is an easy-to-use platform and was very easy to migrate from our previous platform. Support was very helpful and professional in helping us migrate. **What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?** It is sometimes difficult to access specific data and support needs to be contacted for specific reports. **What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?** We utilize Vanilla Forums as a collaboration platform where our customers are empowered to collaborate with each other, in addition to having conversations with our in-house experts about our products. ### 44. Excellent software for starting communities **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Zachary D. | Embedded Software Engineer, Machinery, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 23, 2015 **What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?** I like the underlying framework Vanilla is built on. It is extendable via event hooks in plugins. This allows you to add extra features without modifying core code making updates a breeze. As a novice PHP programmer, I was able to extend the discussion model within 2 hours of working with the framework. **What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?** The support forum for the open source (OS) version runs on the hosted version. If you are clicking around their support forum as a way to gauge features, you see some highly desirable features that are only available to the hosted version. This is pretty annoying when you fire up the OS version and can't find something that is clearly available. The open source version of Vanilla lags behind the hosted product. I understand the decision, but I don't like it. **Recommendations to others considering Higher Logic Vanilla:** Jump in with a test environment. Read the developer documentation for a quick overview of what to expect. Open the source if you have any questions as it is mostly well written. **What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?** I need to be able to provide a way for my clients to communicate directly and openly with each. With Vanilla, I get a great forum that feels fresh and is easy to maintain. ### 45. Solid forum software with a great support team. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jacob C. | Senior Account Executive, Financial Services, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 10, 2015 **What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?** Vanilla has a sleek look without being too obnoxiously web2.0 and minimalist-for-thesake-of-minimalism - things are easy to find and to use. I can only speak for my own forum, but it's been much better with uptime than our old 2000s-era software. The Minion feature is a great, easy-to-use tool that frees moderators and community managers from babysitting chores and allows us to focus on real issues. Most importantly, Vanilla's staff has been responsive, helpful, and have participated in the community as members and partners. They have a relationship with our community beyond being just the guys we call when something goes wrong. **What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?** The mobile forum experience can be a bit hinky at times, although I know that's something they're working on. Thankfully, in most cases, viewing the non-mobile version of the site has been a solid temporary fix. **Recommendations to others considering Higher Logic Vanilla:** I strongly recommend it. I participate in several communities online and the ones that are still using older, 2000s-era software aren't delivering the same quality of experience. **What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?** Our forum is the official community board for a web-based media property; it's how fans of the property meet, communicate, and organize events such as convention meet-ups and charity drives. ### 46. Vanilla Forums: Great Staff **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Garrett G. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 10, 2015 **What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?** Friendly, responsive staff that is more than willing to go the extra mile to provide for their customers. A wide variety of custom features were worked on and provided just for our community. **What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?** Implementing requested changes or fixes can take some time. **Recommendations to others considering Higher Logic Vanilla:** Vanilla, is very simple and effective forum software. If you need more than that, it is still a wonderful service on account of the responsive and accommodating staff which I feel takes Vanilla to the next level. **What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?** When we switched to Vanilla, we were moving from a very old forum with a lot of features and quirks that our community had become adjusted to over the years. This was a major change for us, and we wanted it to go as smoothly as possible for everyone. Vanilla, while primarily a simple, effective bit of forum software first and foremost, was incredibly helpful in providing a lot of these features specifically for us. This did not stop with the switch to Vanilla: over the years Vanilla's staff has helped add a number of new features to further improve our forums. ### 47. Vanilla Forums - Great software, great service. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sterling A. | Customer Insights Manager, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 24, 2015 **What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?** From the start of our relationship the entire Vanilla team has been focused on providing a great experience. Consistent communication and the desire to ensure a successful launch have been at the forefront. The product offers an extremely high volume of customization for your Community Forum, 3rd-party integrations are a breeze to set up, out-of-the-box analytics and so much more. **What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?** I would like more diverse analytics. While there is an API offered, I could use a bit more advanced analytics in the dashboard. **Recommendations to others considering Higher Logic Vanilla:** Vanilla Forums is a robust product with a lot to offer. Setup can be hard if you are not technically savvy; the Vanilla team was very quick to respond to emails with any questions we had and there is a lot of collateral on their blog site as well. **What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?** We use our Community Forum as a self serve support channel as well as a place for community collaboration. ### 48. Great product and service. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Games | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 10, 2015 **What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?** Having the weight of maintaining the hosted forums off my shoulders and the fast and great customer service provided. There are no more middle of the night calls and scrambles because the community is down because it's all handled. **What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?** I wouldn't really call this a dislike, since I understand why they chose to do things this way, but it did take some getting used to relying on the service provider to enable certain features and not having that access myself anymore. The company's employees are very responsive and helpful however, so it hasn't been an issue whatsoever. **Recommendations to others considering Higher Logic Vanilla:** If you're considering Vanilla but are hesitant because it's not a free solution (we were at first), keep in mind that hosting your own requires a lot of hours in maintenance. If you're looking to add the functionality Vanilla offers, add a ton of hours in custom development on top of that. Throw in the peace of mind that someone's monitoring things and is on the case whenever DDOS attacks or other horrifying things happen, and I think you'll find it's more than worth it. **What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?** We no longer need to spend cycles on keeping the forums up and running, and we've gained a LOT of integration options. Single sign-on for the forums Steam and our game is now a possibility. ### 49. A Review of Vanilla Forums from an early adopter **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Entertainment | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 10, 2015 **What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?** We switched over to Vanilla a few years ago, and aside from the instant increase in usability and the instant decrease in downtime, the thing that has stood out the most has been the support our forums have received from Vanilla, and the number of features we've implemented as a result. **What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?** There hasn't been much I've disliked. Most of the things I'd like to see from Vanilla are minor feature additions and tweaks. **What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?** Our forum, at its very core, gives us the ability to maintain our community. Vanilla's new features have given us a great many tools that allow us to both keep our community active, and help maintain a level of civility and, well, community. ### 50. Vanilla base with unlimited toppings **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 11, 2015 **What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?** I'm always pleasantly surprised at how versatile the platform can be. The staff are always able and willing to customize new options that fit our needs. It's fast, clean, and easy to use. **What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?** The search feels fairly limited in what it can do. I'm sure that'll change over time. **Recommendations to others considering Higher Logic Vanilla:** It's likely to be the best forum solution available today, and I can say that to anyone without even knowing what their specific needs are. **What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?** I'm a moderator for a somewhat large community, and unlike the more static platforms we've suffered through in the past, our expectations for new feature requests are frequently met or exceeded. ## Higher Logic Vanilla Discussions - [Can Vanilla be integrated with the rest of my website so I do not need a separate login for the forums?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/can-vanilla-be-integrated-with-the-rest-of-my-website-so-i-do-not-need-a-separate-login-for-the-forums-08788a1c-e0ee-485a-9d0e-bb1aef5fa28b) - 1 comment, 2 upvotes - [Can I run a Vanilla forum in an embedded frame?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/can-i-run-a-vanilla-forum-in-an-embedded-frame-c9684c8b-9886-47d4-ab67-5e16849addd7) - 1 comment, 1 upvote - [How much can I customize a Vanilla Forum?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/customization) - 1 comment, 1 upvote - [Are Vanilla Forums mobile friendly?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/mobile-use) - 1 comment, 1 upvote - [Does Vanilla allow me to make my forum private?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/forum-privatization) - 1 comment, 1 upvote - [View Higher Logic Vanilla pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/higher-logic-vanilla/reviews?filters%5Bnps_score%5D%5B%5D=5§ion=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-08-13+19%3A42%3A42+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=d6d2b61e-f810-4074-80a7-944fb0bbc20c&secure%5Btoken%5D=449f74802a36dafb7af2b284d5e939f27938759e20dd330b09c826cdf97862d8&format=llm_user) ## Higher Logic Vanilla Integrations - [Agentforce Sales (formerly Salesforce Sales Cloud)](https://www.g2.com/products/agentforce-sales-formerly-salesforce-sales-cloud/reviews) - [ChurnZero](https://www.g2.com/products/churnzero/reviews) - [CleanSpeak](https://www.g2.com/products/cleanspeak/reviews) - [GitHub](https://www.g2.com/products/github/reviews) - [HubSpot Marketing Hub](https://www.g2.com/products/hubspot-marketing-hub/reviews) - [Intuit Mailchimp Email Marketing](https://www.g2.com/products/intuit-mailchimp-email-marketing/reviews) - [Jira](https://www.g2.com/products/jira/reviews) - [Productboard](https://www.g2.com/products/productboard/reviews) - [WordPress.com](https://www.g2.com/products/wordpress-com/reviews) - [Zapier](https://www.g2.com/products/zapier/reviews) - [Zendesk for Customer Service](https://www.g2.com/products/zendesk-for-customer-service/reviews) - [Zoom Rooms](https://www.g2.com/products/zoom-rooms/reviews) ## Higher Logic Vanilla Features **Community Building** - Member Profiles - Real-Time Notifications - Member Discovery - Member Referrals - Community Spaces - Paid Memberships - Multimedia Sharing - Courses - Alerts/Notifications **Self-Service Experience** - Knowledge Base - Searchable Articles - Community Forums - Mobile Optimization - Personalization **Community Improvement** - Gamification - Polls & Questions - Automation Rules **Self-Service Platform** - Branding - Automation - Artificial Intelligence - Integrations **Customer Analytics** - Community Insights - Community Engagement Analytics - Downloadable Reports - ROI Tracking - Engagement Tracking - Activity Tracking **Agentic AI - Customer Self-Service** - Autonomous Task Execution - Multi-step Planning - Cross-system Integration - Adaptive Learning - Natural Language Interaction - Proactive Assistance - Decision Making **Community Management** - Community Feeds & Discussions - Live Streaming - Chat & Messaging - Events Management - Admin Roles & Permissions - Knowledge Base Management - Group Management - Content Management - Feedback Management - Membership Management - Email Management - Website Management - Communication Management - User Management - Calendar Management **Agentic AI - Online Community Management** - Autonomous Task Execution - Multi-step Planning - Cross-system Integration - Natural Language Interaction - Proactive Assistance - Decision Making - Social Media Integration - Third-Party Integrations - Multi-Language **Additional Functionality** - Activity Dashboard - Generative AI - Single Sign On - Email Reminders - API - Discussions/Forums - Ideation - Personalization - Reporting & Statistics - Contact Database - Moderation - @mentions - Member Directory - Mobile Access - Filtering - Data Import/Export - Commenting/Notes - Document Storage - Customizable Branding - AI Copilot - Drag & Drop - SSL Security - Customizable Templates ## Top Higher Logic Vanilla Alternatives - [Influitive](https://www.g2.com/products/jigsaw-interactive-influitive/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (388 reviews) - [Gainsight Customer Communities](https://www.g2.com/products/gainsight-customer-communities/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (273 reviews) - [Hivebrite](https://www.g2.com/products/hivebrite/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (225 reviews)