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Pros
Cons
John M.
YC
Yael C.
Joe B.
JP
Julian P.
AR
Anonymous Reviewer
Don F.
62 reviews
Recommended
Jose Julio L.
Internet, 51-200 employees
Used other for 6-12 months
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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.
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.
Christine H.
Used daily for less than 6 months
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It's very easy to moderate the debate, help users out when they're having problems logging on etc., Great support from Vanilla - quick replies and competent people. Very flexible forums - we can costomize the forum to our specific needs.
The dashboard can be a bit overwhelming and difficult to navigate at first. It takes a little bit of getting used to, but after a while it becomes easier.
Michael W.
Verified reviewer
Airlines/Aviation, 201-500 employees
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Having outgrown free forum software, a paid solution was searched for. Vanilla provided an easy transition into something more robust and secure with the support to back it during the transitional period.
Great customer support and ease of use.
Search feature can require extra work to find what you're looking for. Results often buried in nested conversations.
Brittany H.
Verified reviewer
501-1,000 employees
Used daily for 1-2 years
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Easy way to manage community inuitively
- Simple for users - Great CSM - Team is open to building new functionality with us strategically
- Felt like we needed to do a lot of custom work for features I felt should have existed - Requires a bit of CSS knowledge on the admin side - Bare bones onboarding/training program - we would've appreciated more walk-through sessions
Katie F.
Verified reviewer
Computer Games, 201-500 employees
Used daily for less than 6 months
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Easy to use software, phenomenal customer support
Dashboard is very intuitive, clean, and easy to use. We've experienced no down time with our forums, and the feature list is quite extensive. It's highly customizable and an excellent solution for our gaming community.
Some of the user permissions are a bit confusing, the UI could be improved slightly in the back-end to resolve this.
Joel S.
Sporting Goods, 1,001-5,000 employees
Used daily for 6-12 months
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Implementation of our new forum has been easier than originally expected due to working with Vanilla Forums. The support team has been very helpful in answer questions and troubleshooting issues. While I've only been using this platform for a short while, I find it easy to use and navigate.
- Customization of the appearance and layout is difficult unless you're fluent in HTML and CSS coding. - Editing text within a new discussion or comment is more difficult and not as agile as desired.
Rebecca G.
Verified reviewer
Biotechnology,
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I'm a volunteer community manager for a sizable web-based community. We switched from a software that was unable to handle the size of our growing community, and it was causing issues with stability.
My favorite feature is the reaction system!
No cons were added to this review
Luke B.
Information Technology and Services, 1-10 employees
Used daily for 6-12 months
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One designated area for all member needs.
The customer service support has been stellar. Overall flexibility and design control is positive.
I would like to see continual improvement of sign-up features. Our members are slow to sign-up and having an easier way to force add individuals would be great.
Gill M.
Computer & Network Security, 501-1,000 employees
Used weekly for less than 6 months
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The Vanilla Forums software is intuitive and easy to use. Our Success Manager at vanilla has been very responsive to questions and has always tried to find an answer or solution to whatever our question or problem was.
We're still in process of setting up our community but so far we've not found any big ones. There have been a couple of specific customization requests that we've had that we've not been able take care of ourselves but our Success Manager has taken care of these requests for us with the team at Vanilla.
Toby M.
Education Management, 11-50 employees
Used daily for less than 6 months
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We are still building our community numbers, but once rolling, it will be a great connection point between us and our customers. Still learning some of the finer points and I look forward to have more customer data and testing built-in analytics.
Ease of use and set up. Having private groups and product ideas are very important features for us. Our contact, Brigitte, is very helpful and always responsive.
We experienced slight problems implementing SSO, but after a few calls, we solved the problem. Will need to learn how Vanilla can be used for document management.
Blair W.
Used weekly for less than 6 months
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Mirrors the functionality of your typical social media platform. Ease of posting mobile photos. The "gamification" feature.
It seemed there were a lot of add-on features that I thought would be standard. It was difficult from an admin perspective to determine what features were standard when trying to learn the system.
Ashley P.
Used monthly for 6-12 months
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We all love it so much it's so easy to use and everyone I've spoken to really likes it a lot. Plan on using it for very long time
No cons were added to this review