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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Khoros Communities

    Score8.2 out of 10
    Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
    Khoros Communities is a fully-featured community platform, built for self-service support, education and collaboration. Organizations can host a vibrant space where customers can find answers, develop expertise, share experiences, and connect with their brand.N/A

    Salesforce Experience Cloud

    Score7.8 out of 10
    N/ASalesforce Marketing Cloud Engagement (formerly Salesforce Experience Cloud or Salesforce Community Cloud) is an online forum powered by Salesforce that enables businesses to connect with their employees, customers, partner organizations, and prospects. Designed to help facilitate communication and information sharing, customers can ask questions and request help, administrators can integrate data from third-party apps, and employees can collaborate across projects and…N/A
    Pricing
    Khoros CommunitiesSalesforce Experience Cloud
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Khoros CommunitiesSalesforce Experience Cloud
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional DetailsPricing is variable based on the needs of the customer.—
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Khoros CommunitiesSalesforce Experience Cloud
    Considered Both Products
    Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
    Chose Khoros Communities
    I could not find Salesforce Community in the list.
    Incentivized
    Chose Khoros Communities
    Khoros Communities was always one of our frontrunners during the selection process. Some communities had more integrations or better UI/UX for admins on the backend. Ultimately we went with Khoros because it integrated better with some 3rd party tools we already use and it had …
    Incentivized
    Chose Khoros Communities
    Experience Cloud is (was) a community in name only. Trying to club Chatter and Knowledge together in a web frontend was near impossible to make work for any of the most essential community functions; analytics was impossible, changes were extremely slow/burdensome as they are …
    Incentivized
    Chose Khoros Communities
    • Khoros had a clear migration path for Jive users.
    • Khoros is a platform that can scale.
    • Khoros allows us to spread and share knowledge while allowing us to continue to build trust and credibility with all our loyal fans.
    Incentivized
    Chose Khoros Communities
    Khoros's features are more robust, interface is more user-friendly and analytics are better. It's the clear leader in the space right now.
    Incentivized
    Chose Khoros Communities
    Khoros is much more established and feature-rich than Salesforce's Community offering. E.g., gamification is implemented well in Khoros (except for Missions and Journeys) whereas Salesforce's offering is rudimentary.
    Jive is mainly used for internal communities, whereas Khoros …
    Salesforce
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    95%
    Would buy again
    69 Answers
    93%
    Would buy again
    26 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    98%
    Delivers good value for the price
    47 Answers
    95%
    Delivers good value for the price
    21 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    86%
    Happy with the feature set
    63 Answers
    93%
    Happy with the feature set
    26 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    88%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    30 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    14 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    80%
    Implementation went as expected
    37 Answers
    83%
    Implementation went as expected
    15 Answers
    Features
    Khoros CommunitiesSalesforce Experience Cloud
    Security
    Comparison of Security features of Khoros Communities and Salesforce Experience Cloud
    Feature
    Khoros Communities
    -
    Ratings
    Salesforce Experience Cloud
    10.0
    1 Ratings
    20% above category average
    Role-based user permissions00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Platform & Infrastructure
    Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Khoros Communities and Salesforce Experience Cloud
    Feature
    Khoros Communities
    -
    Ratings
    Salesforce Experience Cloud
    10.0
    1 Ratings
    18% above category average
    API00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Internationalization / multi-language00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Web Content Creation
    Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Khoros Communities and Salesforce Experience Cloud
    Feature
    Khoros Communities
    -
    Ratings
    Salesforce Experience Cloud
    9.3
    1 Ratings
    20% above category average
    WYSIWYG editor00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
    Code quality / cleanliness00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Admin section00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Page templates00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Library of website themes00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
    Mobile optimization / responsive design00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Publishing workflow00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Form generator00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
    Web Content Management
    Comparison of Web Content Management features of Khoros Communities and Salesforce Experience Cloud
    Feature
    Khoros Communities
    -
    Ratings
    Salesforce Experience Cloud
    8.6
    1 Ratings
    18% above category average
    Content taxonomy00 Ratings9.01 Ratings
    SEO support00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
    Bulk management00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
    Availability / breadth of extensions00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
    Community / comment management00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Results and Analysis
    Comparison of Results and Analysis features of Khoros Communities and Salesforce Experience Cloud
    Feature
    Khoros Communities
    -
    Ratings
    Salesforce Experience Cloud
    8.0
    1 Ratings
    6% below category average
    Conversion tracking00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
    Test reporting00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
    Funnel Analysis00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
    User Segmentation00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
    Digital Experience Platform
    Comparison of Digital Experience Platform features of Khoros Communities and Salesforce Experience Cloud
    Feature
    Khoros Communities
    -
    Ratings
    Salesforce Experience Cloud
    10.0
    1 Ratings
    8% above category average
    Campaign management00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Cloud enablement00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Content aggregation00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Content classification00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Multi-channel content personalization00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Customer data analytics00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    DXP Third-Party Integrations00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Multi-website management00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Digital asset management00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Editorial workflows and task management00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Khoros CommunitiesSalesforce Experience Cloud
    Small Businesses
    Higher Logic Thrive
    Score7.8 out of 10
    Yext
    Score8.9 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Higher Logic Vanilla
    Score6 out of 10
    Sitecore Digital Experience Platform
    Score8.7 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Verint Community
    Score9.9 out of 10
    Progress Sitefinity
    Score6.8 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Khoros CommunitiesSalesforce Experience Cloud
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.5
    (94 ratings)
    10.0
    (52 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    5.8
    (7 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Usability
    8.0
    (3 ratings)
    9.4
    (4 ratings)
    Availability
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (5 ratings)
    Support Rating
    5.0
    (5 ratings)
    7.7
    (17 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Online Training
    4.5
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    9.4
    (4 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    8.5
    (85 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Khoros CommunitiesSalesforce Experience Cloud
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
    Khoros Communities is my go-to when I'm part of a big company with lots of customers who want to help each other. It's awesome for talking about products, giving ideas to make them better, and getting help when I need it. If my team is spread out or we're working from home, Khoros Communities is handy for sharing updates and working together. It's also a good tool for events, helping with planning and discussing what happened. But if my group is small or not very active, or if I just need a simple place to chat without too many extras, Khoros Communities might be more than I need. Plus, I've got to be ready to keep an eye on things to keep the community positive, and it works best when I have a plan to grow and keep the community lively.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    Salesforce Experience Cloud is well-suited for organizations that have clients who periodically or routinely need to access historical data or documents. The product also offers an exceptionally effective tool to engage with customers around support/service issues and the entire Case management functionality built into the Salesforce platform. The product might be less well-suited in environments where there is exceptionally high staff turnover within customer accounts, or where there is a substantial lack of very basic computer skills.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
    • Increase in suggestions from our clients to know what we should improve.
    • Reduce technical support costs and incredibly increase sales.
    • It helps to interact with customers and we receive positive and negative reviews and based on their comments we can make changes that increase sales.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    • Complete integration with the Salesforce ecosystem. Data displayed in your Community portal reflects records from a Sales Cloud organization
    • Highly customizable. A Community Cloud portal can be totally customized both visually and with different funcionalities with little to no coding skills required
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
    • Self Service, Low and No Code. The Community Managers should be able to some UI Tasks by self with doing any code updates.
    • Salesforce Integration: The basic Integration should also include the basic level of business requirement. (Contacts and Accounts Mapping)
    • Slack Connector Update: There is no update on this connector till the time its launch. The other team has lot of options to push the notification in multiple slack channels. And unfortunately Khoros does not. This creates a lot work for Community team to bring internal teams to the community to respond or acknowledge an post.
    • More Integrations: Since now the Khoros communities does not comes up with the integrations with basic support tools like JIRA, Confluence, Github etc.
    • Search Improvisation: Apart from last search update there is no updates we see in this feature. The team should think of Putting Some AI based Search into the community which helps the Community managers to manage the content accordingly
    • Some update on AI and Gen AI: Khoros communities did not shared any thoughts about their plans for putting these technology in community
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    • The documentation for implementing Experience Cloud can be a bit confusing as their rebranding hasn't made it's way into all articles, resulting in different terminology being used to refer to the same thing
    • Some things are not as intuitive regarding their customizability, so there's a bit of a learning curve (i.e. Lightning apps can't be used to customize layouts in Experience Cloud)
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
    On a scale of 1 to 10, I'd give Khoros Communities a solid 8. The system is extremely easy to use, enabling our team and community members to navigate and interact with the platform with ease. The wide range of features offered by Khoros Communities has greatly enriched our online interactions and improved the efficiency of our customer service. The technical support team has also been extremely helpful, could be quicker sometimes for answering our questions but they efficiently resolving any problems we have encountered. The platform is perfectly scalable, capable of handling our growing user base without any performance problems. What's more, Khoros Communities offers excellent integration capabilities with our other software tools, making our operations smoother and more efficient
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    No answers on this topic
    Usability
    Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
    Like every backend, it can always be improved upon. The excellent thing is that Khoros have a hugely active customer support community as well as a fantastic case management system to triage support issues and requests. So regardless of your level of knowledge or familiarity, you're well supported out of the box.
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    Usability is pretty streamlined, especially if you're familiar with other Salesforce products, but even if not, take it from me, as I just entered the technological space about two years ago, that this product is pretty simple to learn. You don't have to jump in with your head underwater. Small wins and learnings along the way are what foster long-term understandings and enable your evolution alongside the product. I definitely recommend Salesforce Trailhead along with it
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
    I've hardly ever seen downtime in any of their production communities. There's the occasional reboot needed for config reasons or if patches are applied, but these take place after customer approval and typically last only a few minutes.
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    No answers on this topic
    Performance
    Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
    No answers on this topic
    Salesforce
    It's delivered on our original requirements and we've found ways to grow its usage. We continue to build on our original success and we can report our data out to leadership to show a true return on investment which is great for growing support and expanding uses for the system.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
    They are responsive and proactive. They are really on top of things. They send personal emails to check in on you. It feels like they really know you. You only get emails from 3-4 people at Khoros – they must be customer assigned.
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    We have weekly calls with our Salesforce reps. They bring new ideas to the table and help with taxonomy builds. They have also answered many questions and connected us to the right people for us to grow our knowledge and utilization of the platform. They are a good partner overall in comparison.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    In-Person Training
    Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
    I think it is engaging and has good instructors.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    No answers on this topic
    Online Training
    Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
    It was out of the box training - pre-recorded/ not live. There was nothing for more advanced topics like APIs. They do have a good knowledge base and community that you can access and folks in there are responsive. I would however like more advanced training options.
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation Rating
    Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
    We were up against a hard stop with Jive’s contract ending and Khoros connected us with a deployment partner to do accelerated deployment using a template approach. It could have happened in 2 weeks. We did not end up going that way since we wanted more customization. Lithium handled technical stuff like migration, but a lot of the process is self-deployment. It’s one of the ways they teach use of the system is having the user self-implement.

    Overall, the implementation was super easy to do. Doing single sign-on (SSO) was the only hard part. The implementation ended up taking nine weeks total, but in hindsight, we could have done in it six. Most of the implementation time was spent in course work, which consisted of on-demand training - approximately 7-8 hours that you are required for you to do, before they turn on the system. During this nine week period, about 50% of my time was spent on implementation.

    We had a deployment manager who we were able to email 1-1. I leaned on him heavily. He was great at all hours, for example, they would call back at 7pm PST. They were very responsive.

    Content migration strategy is important to consider. Moving from an existing community you need to strategically choose how your layout will be. Two different systems will have two different ways to format communities. For example, Jive has communities with sub-communities, whereas Khoros has community, category, and boards.

    Contact migration is also an important consideration. You need to think through how you are going to move contacts from your old community to a new one. For example, are you going to create new logins and passwords? We were hoping to use the integration with Salesforce.com to be a portal, but ended up using an in-house solution that works well to maintain same the same logins. The next related question is are you going to be able to keep them connected to all the posts in your old community? We migrated old posts. If you have a tech-savvy team, you can do a self-migration. Khoros has a migration services team that we utilized. It cost us $10k to move content and posts were kept tied to the user.

    The next consideration is your launch/promotion plan. Khoros helped us out and gave us a lot of examples. They shared pre-launch email dates, follow-up emails, FAQ pages (e.g. to explain why switching, why better).
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    Salesforce
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
    Large companies and organizations with complex community needs are well served by Khoros communities. The platform's advanced analytics and reporting features helps organizations seeking deeper insights. The gamification is the best way to boost user engagement, Khoros Communities has a rich feature set. Also with customization options offered by Khoros Communities, companies can develop a unique and customized community experience.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    I have used Datatel/Colleague/Recruiter before. There were issues because only one person at the institution was able to have the student's record open at a time. This was problematic when collaboration between departments was necessary especially in the case of admissions, financial aid, and registration. We also had to do our work and then log out before asking a questions of another department. Sometimes simultaneous use was necessary. However, this was years ago and they may have since updated the program.
    Incentivized
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    Scalability
    Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
    I think I would give Khoros an overall 7, while there were things we really liked about it. I also saw things that just did not work well for us. We like using iG but it was not the friendliest in using it on that platform. Sometimes the software would glitch or lag which is not helpful during high critical moments
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
    • We are able to see what our different cohorts of customers are doing within the community, and we are able to create content and programs based on the engagement we get from these different groups.
    • We have been able to start an Idea Exchange space where our customers can share, vote, and comment on features they would like to see in our products. It quickly became a very popular place within the Community.
    • With the discussion forums, we are able to use the Accepted Solutions functions to help deflect tickets and Support interactions working on a 1-to-many scale.
    Incentivized
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    Salesforce
    • Improved online admission application completion rates from mid-60%s to mid-80%s.
    • Positive user experience from start-to-finish to leverage one data system for all prospective student data
    • Fewer data integrations transforming and loading sensitive student data by leveraging Salesforce Community Cloud to access already existing data
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    Khoros Communities Screenshots

    Screenshot of the Khoros Communities solution, and some of its tools available to build an enterprise-class online community and scale member engagement.Screenshot of discussions, which can be enabled to connect product experts and brand-enthusiasts through peer-to-peer discussions. Both newbies and experienced users can read, post, and easily respond in forums.Screenshot of where community members can submit, vote on, and discuss ideas to improve products, and share insights, all while driving engagement, and building brand loyalty. Idea boards deliver value for product managers, marketers and customers.Screenshot of events, that provide a platform to schedule, announce, inform, and discuss everything from the smallest group gathering to the largest user conference. These community-hosted activities harness the enthusiasm generated by interactions between members, company, and brand ambassadors and foster deeper connections with audiences. Users can integrate Zoom meetings and webinars within the community, or host live-stream video outside the community with URL links to any video hosting platform like YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook or others.Screenshot of where to design a brand-approved community without custom code. It includes expert-created templates and a drag-and-drop interface to customize page layouts, navigation, and brand themes.Screenshot of some of the dashboards, reports, and benchmark data used to track visitors, usage, trending topics, interaction preferences, and agent responsiveness.