Patrick M.

Founder

Sports

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

11/4/2017

"Vanilla Forums Put Our Community into Overdrive (and the 21st Century)"

5/5

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 And the fact we could leave our old, outdated software behind (good riddance!)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? Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?

So far, there's nothing to complain about. One year in and still going strong. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering Higher Logic Vanilla:

Definitely worth giving them a call and seeing what they can do with your existing community. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Emilia D.

Founder, Managing Partner

Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

10/30/2017

"Best Kept Community Secret"

4.5/5

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?

I haven't experienced anything that I don't like yet. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Paul C.

Online Community Executive

Accounting

Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

10/25/2017

"Vanilla - is it a tasty experience?"

4/5

What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?

Two things strike me as the most important since I've used Vanilla forums.

#1 The layout. Having the search function at the top where it's easy to see for new and existing users is especially useful for us as a lot of our community will come to the forums to find something technical out about accountancy. Having the search function right there helps them find what they need without any fuss. Since using Vanilla we've seen a massive increase in people using the search function which is great. As well as search, everything you really need is all on the front page. You can see active threads and you get notifications for any favourites you've added, making tracking important topics and moderating a breeze.

2. Customer service. Every time we've had a query about the forum we've been able to get it sorted very quickly and efficiently in a professional manner. Brendan is great! Thank you. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?

The 'best of' section is kind of redundant and a bit confusing. It displays tons of dated and unrelated content and as I understand it there's no way of removing this as it's part of Vanilla. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering Higher Logic Vanilla:

If you're looking for a clean, easy to navigate and customise platform Vanilla is a great option. You can get a free trial too so why not give it a try? Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?

Our community seek and possess a lot of technical knowledge and our students sometimes require deep understand of the topics they are revising for. The forum is a great place professionals and students can come to help each other and transcend their experiences to each other to help with their business or career development. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

James B.

Online Community Manager

Accounting

Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

10/25/2017

"A solid platform with lots of customisation"

4/5

What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?

The platform we use has two subforums and a variety of roles for our different customer types. We need a forum that can allow a variety of different access and permissions on specific threads. We also needed a tool that lets contributors keep a level of anonymity but also allows us to identify the authority of each user so that their comments and discussions can be trusted by our community. Within this complex framework, Vanilla excels at giving us the control we need that has grown an authoritative forum that offers real value to our customers. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?

Although the website is responsive and can be customised to any level you need, it's missing a dedicated mobile app that allows for push notifications which can alert users to activity on the forum immediately without having to check their e-mails. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?

We're connecting our customers and building a peer support network that offers a better level of support than we could provide on our own. We work within a very technical industry and by using the expertise of our long-term customers we are building a longer relationship with our newest and progressing customers. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Brett L.

Community Administrator

Consumer Electronics

Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

10/19/2017

"ZTEUSA Z-Community Admin retrospective.."

4/5

What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?

If I had to say what I like the best it would have to be where I spend about 80% of my time in. That would be the admin Dashboard. It is a fully functional and fluid space for any community administrator. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?

Being honest, there are a few things that we have to have custom work done that were available on our previous platform, but when we ask for the work it is done quickly and professionally. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering Higher Logic Vanilla:

If switching to Vanilla it would be a great opportunity to come up with a new theme for your community. There are endless opportunities available to you. Think about what you want Vanilla to do for you and tell them up front. They will work with you for most any solution you need. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?

We started a community last year on a different platform. We were out of touch with our customers and had no way to communicate with them. Our platform at the time got us in the door with our customers, and thru their feedback we realized that we needed a community with more flexibility and personal service. We realized that solution thru Vanilla. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Christy C.

Customer Support Manager

Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

10/16/2017

"Great flexibility"

4.5/5

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering Higher Logic Vanilla:

Keep doing things like making apps to integrate with Hootsuite. Make getting CSS help easier. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Brittany H.

Advocate Marketing Specialist

Marketing and Advertising

Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

10/16/2017

"Good relationship, young product"

3.5/5

What do you like best about Higher Logic Vanilla?

- Easy design

- Plugin features

- Our CSM Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Higher Logic Vanilla?

- Underdeveloped analytics

- Very DIY (not a lot of help setting up or customizing) Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Higher Logic Vanilla solving and how is that benefiting you?

Hootsuite manages multiple online customer engagement programs that consistently adapt with the evolution of social marketing and customer support .Vanilla helps us engage with our ambassadors, customers, and users online on an easy to use platform. Specifically, I use it for our ambassador program - our ambassadors are able to connect with each other internationally through our platform.

It's been great to have a close relationship with the company, and we've done some custom work with the team. Vanilla is still growing as a company, and it reflects in the product. However, if I'm looking for functionality which doesn't exist, our CSM will go out of their way to try to find me a work-around.

Nothing comes without a few pain points. One of my biggest challenges was the on-boarding process. It was all very do-it-yourself and they didn't have any straightforward set up guides. We even offered to pay for a contact to set it up according to our specifications, but they didn't have the capacity to do so. This product definitely requires a basic knowledge of HTML/CSS if you want to dive into customization.

Overall, we're pretty happy with the product and our contacts. A big benefit for us is having a few instances and champions within our company. It's been interesting to see different use cases, and this shared knowledge has benefitted our community immensely. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Kelli P.

Virtual Assistant

Internet

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

10/16/2017

"Reliable and easy-to-use"

5/5

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering Higher Logic Vanilla:

Ask as many questions have you have. The sales team and the support team are very helpful. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Mark G.

Technical Producer

Computer Games

Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

10/10/2017

"Vanilla Forums makes it easier for us to manage our communities"

4.5/5

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 Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

John F.

Chief Operating Officer

Management Consulting

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

10/26/2017

"Vanilla Forums – An Unwavering Commitment to Customer Success"

4.5/5

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.