Discord vs. CommUnity by Personify

Discord is completely suited for any tech server needs - and a million times better than Facebook. It's still lLess suited for non-tech but for sure it's getting better and with some support from Discord that could be fixed easily (just don't dumb-it down or take away features please). I have it open all day, on a separate monitor if I'm not using that one for something else. It'd be great - and maybe I've missed this - if there was a way to have an overview of messages posted in various channels. Despite using it for years now, I've never dug deeply into notifications, so maybe it's possible already. But it should be highly customisable - ie, put all messages from chosen slow servers in the feed, but only highlights from busy ones, and no messages from certain servers etc , so it remains manageable.

Incentivized

You can tell from the CEO and all staff that this is a very competent company that wants you to succeed with integrity. There is a strong
support and services team that works collaboratively with us to make
sure we are always getting what we need. They provide
24x7 emergency support, online ticket support, email support, a client
community, and the ability to call and talk to the same account manager or
community consultant every time (I even have Mariano's skype and he replies on weekends!). They recently launched a client community - so they are now even practicing what they preach. Our questions in the client community are always answered quickly.

• 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.

Incentivized

• Design of your community through the admin panel is very easy to pick up. Drag and drop functionality on the site admin allows you to make quick changes to your community on the fly. Easy to modify the look and feel of the site and keep pace with the changing needs of our membership.
• The platform is updated on an ongoing basis with new exciting functionality added with each release.
• The mobile version of the platform is very easy to use and looks great on all devices and operating systems.
• Feedback on enhancements to the platform are taken very seriously and often suggestions from customers end up on the roadmap for the platform for future enhancements.

• Adding friends for DMing is a little confusing.
• Joining new servers can have some roadblocks.
• Notification setup can be difficult, some individuals were only notified if tagged.
• Archiving a channel without losing everything.
• Having to upload images before sharing instead of accessing everything in my own library.

Incentivized

• Not much to say in this section. Anything that the product doesn't currently do is quickly identified and prioritized appropriately on their road map.
• Chat room functionality doesn't exist yet, but has been placed on roadmap.
• Instant messaging between users doesn't exist yet, but is roadmapped.
• We're unable to run a couple of specific reports, based on what's available in the reporting tool. There's a workaround that our community administrator can perform that is a little more time consuming.

Small World Labs has been a great partner in relaunching our community. They have had great ideas of new ways to use our community to better service our members. They are very knowledgeable in the world of online communities and are forward thinking about new functions to enhance the user experience.

Because it is easy to use, its fun, it has everything you need to comunicate, voice, text, screen sharing, images, emojis, gifs, stickers, and even personalized ones. It also has comunication through integrations like games and music, that i think that brings people together. It is also great for keeping records of the conversations at work

Incentivized

There are a multitude of options to configure the exact user experience you want and what you want to emphasize.

Uptime has never been an issue.

Speed is not an issue.

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,

Incentivized

The people at Small World Labs are very accessible. I can email, open a ticket, or call and they are there. I'd also point out that senior management is quite available too. We frequently have talks about potential strategies and new things we might be doing, which is great. I think the whole organization genuinely likes what they do and likes helping us succeed.

In-person training is more ad-hoc based on if they are traveling to you or you are going to visit them. I imagine that if I paid for in-person training that it would be set up as well, but I've just used the standard training that comes with the initial set up and ongoing support.

Online training is through online webinar & how-to posts and videos in the client community.

We had staff turnover at our own organization during the implementation. We were able to get the community up and live in a good timeframe even though that happened and we had to switch some people around for managing the project on our side.

The vast array of free features on Discord right out of the box makes it a stand-out in pricing from other chat platform options. 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 (such as Slack) or logins that are inconveniently tied to other products (like Microsoft). If you prefer to view full conversations all in one place without them "splintering" off into branches that are missed, such as is the case with Slack, Discord works great for this. If you feel seeing everything is too overwhelming or "busy", Discord may not be right for you. Discord is great for lean organizations or startup companies, but will likely not feel "professional enough" for larger, traditional "corporate" enterprises.

Incentivized

We evaluated a few different community platform vendors over the course of a couple of months. I believe we also evaluated Jive, Lithium, KickApps, and Powered.

• Very feature dense on a free-level.
• Easy to build a good sense of discourse and community.
• Generally a more casual vibe than similar platforms.
• Channels with a large number of users can be overly hectic to the point of diminishing returns.

Incentivized

• Our community has had more than 100,000 interactions within the first 7 months of launching - and the product has been stable.
• Small World Labs even contributes to the conversations in the community by participating with our community members and moderating, when necessary.
• Our community experiences a high level of knowledge sharing (one of our goals), and is resulting in more informed and creative volunteers.