Discord vs. Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Discord
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
Discord is an app designed to connect users with communities over voice, video, and text chat, via Discord servers, a gaming and game industry oriented app for growing communities around video games and allowing developers to communicate with their customer base; the app may yet also be used for business communications of other kinds.
$4.99
per month
Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board
Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
Social Squared is a SharePoint Discussion Board App that can be deployed across SharePoint Online and Microsoft Teams. Social Squared improves productivity and efficiency by providing structured discussion forums for employee and student discussions. For Microsoft SharePoint Social Squared is a SharePoint discussion board application where users can post questions within relevant forums and receive answers to their questions from subject matter experts. The…
$2,200
per year per installation
Pricing
DiscordLightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board
Editions & Modules
Discord Nitro
$0
Discord Nitro Classic
$0
Social Squared Discussion Board
From $2200
per year per installation
Social Squared Discussion Board Enterprise Edition
POA
per year per installation
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
DiscordLightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsPrices stated are minimum per installation for "stock" products. $2.20 per user/year on top of base price. Enterprise editions can be amended to suit business needs if deemed necessary, additional costs incurred and TBD. All packages include free technical support. Free upgrades available to latest versions of tool as they are released.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
DiscordLightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board
Features
DiscordLightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board
Project Management
Comparison of Project Management features of Product A and Product B
Discord
8.2
23 Ratings
6% above category average
Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board
-
Ratings
Task Management8.48 Ratings00 Ratings
Gantt Charts9.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Scheduling8.06 Ratings00 Ratings
Workflow Automation7.05 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile Access9.221 Ratings00 Ratings
Search8.719 Ratings00 Ratings
Visual planning tools7.04 Ratings00 Ratings
Communication
Comparison of Communication features of Product A and Product B
Discord
7.9
23 Ratings
0% below category average
Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board
-
Ratings
Chat9.523 Ratings00 Ratings
Notifications9.222 Ratings00 Ratings
Discussions9.523 Ratings00 Ratings
Surveys8.014 Ratings00 Ratings
Internal knowledgebase9.112 Ratings00 Ratings
Integrates with GoToMeeting10.02 Ratings00 Ratings
Integrates with Gmail and Google Hangouts4.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Integrates with Outlook4.01 Ratings00 Ratings
File Sharing & Management
Comparison of File Sharing & Management features of Product A and Product B
Discord
7.7
22 Ratings
2% below category average
Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board
-
Ratings
Versioning6.89 Ratings00 Ratings
Video files7.222 Ratings00 Ratings
Audio files6.721 Ratings00 Ratings
Document collaboration6.510 Ratings00 Ratings
Access control8.212 Ratings00 Ratings
Advanced security features7.69 Ratings00 Ratings
Integrates with Google Drive10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Device sync8.212 Ratings00 Ratings
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DiscordLightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board
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User Ratings
DiscordLightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(23 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.2
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
DiscordLightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board
Likelihood to Recommend
Discord
Discord works phenomenally if you want a chat platform that is free, quick to set up, and very flexible in the ways you can start using it. It doesn't require a complex set of logins for different servers and confusion about adding new members, or tough pricing right out of the gate. If you prefer to view full conversations all in one place without them "splintering" off into branches that are missed, Discord works great for this. All in all, Discord is great for startup companies or lean working companies, but it does not lend itself as well for larger, traditional "corporate" enterprises.
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Lightning Tools
Their customer service it top notch and always responsive. I struggled in the beginning a little bit because I'm not tech savvy and we had to add it to our SharePoint site but they helped me along the way and even had share screen meetings with me to assist!!
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Pros
Discord
  • One to many Communications to ensure that we can quickly get messages out when we have to.
  • Quick polling of questions and issues
  • The ability to gate channels so we can focus on folks that we know are stakeholders gives them an added feeling of belonging and that they have a say in the direction of projects.
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Lightning Tools
  • Organizing Data
  • Opens up discussion, whether publicly or anonymously
  • Easy to setup
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Cons
Discord
  • Better volume balancing between members on a call.
  • More customizability of the notification sound for each server. It would be nice to set each of my important servers with a different notification sound.
  • More expansive note section when you view another user's profile. I'd like to be able to contain more information there in a more organized way.
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Lightning Tools
  • I would love to be able to assign various people as administrators of different topics (this may be an option now but a couple years ago it wasn't)
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Usability
Discord
It just works, and works well. Very rarely does anything go wrong, and I can't remember the last outage (sure there's been some but very rare and not something I even think about or worry about). Desktop clients, web access, mobile clients - the lot. Very happy with our easy it is to use.
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Lightning Tools
Our employees really like the fact that they can find things easily with the search feature and add questions and comments as they see fit.
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Support Rating
Discord
There is plenty of online documentation and knowledge base articles. As well as having an open API to be able to tie it into other products makes it a really viable solution for any business. I have never had to contact support, any questions which I have need answered can be found in the documentation,
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Lightning Tools
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Discord
I like Slack for more professional settings, but Discord is excellent for casual groups, especially when a few people do not have iPhones. They're very similar, but I think there are a lot of Discord features I don't take advantage of, mainly because there seems to be so much in the sidebar that overwhelms me a bit.
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Lightning Tools
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Discord
  • Discord has allowed us to connect to students when typical email & text would not work.
  • Discord has allowed easy creation and communication for small group leaders and their students.
  • Discord is free and so many students have access to it.
Read full review
Lightning Tools
  • We signed up for a 3 year contract and hope to do another 3yr contract when this one is up. :)
Read full review
ScreenShots

Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board Screenshots

Screenshot of MODERN, RESPONSIVE SHAREPOINT DISCUSSION BOARD
Discussion Forums can be created for a variety of different reasons. This example is a Forum Group for the Microsoft 365 technologies such as Teams, Planner, and SharePoint. Forums are then created within the Forum Groups for more specific discussions. Under the SharePoint Forum Group, there is a Forum for SharePoint On-Premises and SharePoint Online. Anyone looking to ask a question regarding SharePoint 2019 for example would be able to post their question under SharePoint On-Premises rather than SharePoint Online. This also allows subject matter experts to focus more on the questions that they can respond to and provide value.Screenshot of SHAREPOINT DISCUSS BOARD – TOPICS VIEW
When navigating into a forum, the topics and discussions that are taking place are shown. Any new topics that not yet read will be highlighted. It also displays whether topics have been answered, their average ratings, how many views and posts are within the topic, and also provides the ability to subscribe to the forum to be notified of new posts within it.Screenshot of READING DISCUSSIONS AND PROVIDING FEEDBACK
Social Squared offers a threaded discussion view with the ability to provide feedback to other users.

Posts can be rated, voted upon, or liked by users in order to give feedback to the user creating or responding to a post. Additionally, replies can be marked as answered or marked as featured, which gives readers of forums assurance that the response they are reading is validated to be the correct answer.

Users also receive feedback through the earning of badges. The more users post or mark posts as answered, the more points are rewarded. This makes it easy to spot subject matter experts.Screenshot of SUGGESTED TAGS
Social Squared provides a rich text editor for creating and replying to topics. The Rich Text toolbar provides functionality such as inserting images, YouTube videos, Stream Videos, Formatted Code Inserts, as well as font formatting.

While typing, suggestions on how to tag a post appear. Selecting an existing tag will provide consistency in the tags used making it easier for other users to discover the post.Screenshot of SOCIAL SQUARED TAG CLOUD VIEW
The Social Squared Tag Cloud view makes it easy to navigate to posts within a specific category even if they span multiple forums. The more a tag appears in different posts, the more prominent it will be in the tag cloud. Users can navigate to posts with the tag in one click.Screenshot of DISCUSSION BOARD WITHIN MICROSOFT TEAMS TAB
Social Squared is a Discussion Board App for Microsoft Teams Tab’s and Microsoft Teams Personal Apps. Social Squared provides information workers the ability to post questions within relevant forums, and receive answers from their team. The Discussion Board layout for posts makes it easier to find answers to questions that may have already been asked before. Through features such as “Mark as Answered”, “Forum Moderation”, “Post Rating”, “Post Likes”, “Post Voting”, users will be assured that the answers they are reading are validated.