TrustRadius Insights for Higher Logic Thrive are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.
Pros
Responsive and Knowledgeable Product Managers: Several users have praised Higher Logic's product managers for being among the best in the industry. They appreciate that the managers are knowledgeable about their products and not pushy in trying to sell them. The professional and thorough demonstrations and explanations of fees provided by the product managers have also been commended by users.
Top-Notch Technical Support: Many users have highlighted the helpfulness of Higher Logic's technical support team. Not only do they resolve issues efficiently, but they also provide valuable insight and assistance with non-issues. Users have particularly appreciated receiving guidance for mini-redesigns using their own skills along with the Higher Logic platform.
Continuous Updates Based on User Feedback: Numerous users have commended Higher Logic for continuously updating their software based on user feedback. These updates are implemented quickly, sometimes within hours, showcasing a commitment to improving user experience. This responsiveness to user suggestions demonstrates Higher Logic's dedication to providing a platform that meets their customers' needs.
We cannot easily replace or edit the search functionality.
Customization is allowed but with limited scope.
We can add localization in the latest versions but still, there are lots of limitations with it.
Likelihood to Recommend
We use Higher Logic Community for building communities for our customers, it is cost-effective as compared to other competitors in the market and offers a lot of customizations and Out of the Box features, we can quickly add from the palette given. Also, we can redesign and customize the community as per the business requirements of the company. A limitation is we have fewer options for localization of community in different languages.
VU
Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology (1001-5000 employees)
We use Higher Logic Community to create a primary community for all our members to communicate with each other as well as to form focused communities based on people's professional interests and personal communities. This has allowed us to give our members private groups to communicate with their peers, ask questions and establish relationships with other members from all over the country.
Pros
Allows a safe space for community members to communicate with each other
Offers the organization an area to provide updates that are relevant and timely to the community members
Connect members with similar interests with online events and, when Covid allows, in person events
Cons
It would be nice if it could integrate with non-Higher Logic marketing automation platforms to better monitor communication limits
A more visual interface would be nice so it would be easier to maintain brand integrity
Better analytics is always something the marketing department is looking for
Likelihood to Recommend
The online communities we have implemented with Higher Logic Community have the highest level of member engagement we see among any of our communication efforts. The members who use this tool are some of our organization's best champions. If you are looking to build online communities for your members to communicate with each other then Higher Logic Community may be the right fit for your organization.
Higher Logic is used as the private social network platform for the members of the organization. It addresses the issue of privacy and relevant discussions according to member level and status. As it contains groups, the synchronization from the CRM enables functionality for private discussion forums, as well as micro websites that are specific to target groups, such as committees and chapters.
Pros
Private groups
Private discussions
Document libraries
Microsites
Cons
CMS for websites could be more user-friendly.
Can be hard to integrate in some instances.
Integration with traditional social media outlets would be great.
Likelihood to Recommend
Well suited for private organizational discussions, private websites, groups, granular levels of access by member types. Less appropriate for mass information distribution, since members tend to gravitate towards using traditional social media outlets, such as Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook. As a content management system, it could be more developed to provide organizations with an all in one solution, in particular, for organizations that are small and don't require a sophisticated CRM integration.
VU
Verified User
Director in Information Technology (11-50 employees)
We use Higher Logic for our email marketing efforts. The communications department actually facilities the sending of these emails, but we send emails on behalf of the entire organization, including all of the other departments. It integrates with our association's membership database and we send a weekly e-newsletter to our distribution list of about 150,000 individuals. We also send about 10 other one-off emails each week to smaller subsets of our full distribution list--such as certain targeted interest groups or event registrants, etc.
Pros
Integration: Higher Logic does a nice job of integrating with our membership database and management software. This allows us to identify specific interest groups and types of members to send them targeted emails that actually pertain to them. The info then goes back into our membership management software so we can keep track in there who has opened and clicked on emails.
Analytics and Reporting: Higher Logic's analytics and reporting are great for what we need. You can easily see a basic overview of the email performance such as open rate and click rate, but you can also drill down further to see exactly who has opened the email, who has clicked it, what links were clicked the most, etc. There is also a heat map that gives you an idea of where people clicked the most. This is especially useful for our weekly e-newsletter which contains multiple different story items because it allows us to see which types of content performed the best.
Easy to Set Up: Each email is easy to set up and there are a lot of different formatting options. It gives you the option to just drag and drop items as needed, but then you can also edit the HTML if you'd like. Setting up A/B testing is also very simple, and so is adding in your distribution lists and interest groups.
Intuitive: The software, in general, is very intuitive and easy to use. Things are where you think they should be and everything is easy to find within the platform.
Cons
Customer Service: Maybe we're just unlucky, but we've had very sub-par customer service when dealing with Higher Logic. They've been hard to get in touch with, difficult to schedule meetings with, and when we finally did have a meeting with a representative, she seemed very disgusted to have to be talking with us--and then rushed us off of the call because she had another call immediately afterward (we understand things like this happen, but it was just even more discouraging after an already poor experience).
Down Time: The platform seems to be down more often than I'd like it to be. They often have scheduled downtime for system maintenance at off-hours, and this is totally fine. But somewhat often, it seems to be down in the middle of the day when I try to login to create or schedule an email. And it takes a little while (sometimes even several hours) for it to come back up. This is very disappointing when you're trying to get something done (especially when it's time-sensitive) and have to wait around to do it because the system is down.
Inconsistent Data: When the analytics and data are correct, it's great! But we've noticed this isn't always the case. There are several different places on the platform that report data, and sometimes they don't match up. Or the percentage data and the raw data numbers don't equal each other and are totally different, so clearly, at least one is incorrect, but how do we know which one it is? Additionally, the numbers on the heatmap are sometimes way different than the numbers in the general data report. We brought this to their attention and they said they were aware of the problem but we're working on other more important things at the moment and would maybe get around to fixing it later (this goes back to the previously mentioned poor customer service). As of a few weeks ago, I thought it was indeed finally fixed, but then again last week we noticed it was back to being inconsistent.
Likelihood to Recommend
Higher Logic is great for email marketing as long as you don't require much customer service or super-precise analytics data. It's easy to use, intuitive, integrates with other platforms, and provides a broad range of analytics and reporting data. But like I said, just be wary that sometimes the analytics are inconsistent. Luckily, we mostly use it to compare mailings and their subject lines and the various stories within our weekly e-newsletters, so we just need more of a broad overview of the data. If you need very specific data that is 100% accurate, then this might not be the platform for you. Also, if you're someone who likes superior customer service, you probably want to avoid this as well. But if you need an easy-to-use platform that will get the job done, then go ahead and give this a try.
We currently use Higher Logic as a primary means of sending out large-scale communications to our members. This includes important messages, surveys, and demographically targeted outreach.
Pros
Very thorough: Higher Logic works precisely as advertised and can do many things to provide insight into your membership.
Data-driven: Higher Logic gives you a ton of insight into how customers interact with your messages. This is extremely beneficial information if you know how to interpret it.
Price: Higher Logic is priced fairly for the features you get.
Cons
Clunky-- Higher Logics' user Interface can use some work. At first glance, it can be tough to navigate.
Ease of use-- it's a robust program so there is definitely a learning curve. Some of their competitors are a little better "out of the box."
Customization-- at least from my perspective there is a little to be desired from a branding standpoint.
Likelihood to Recommend
Higher Logic is a great tool for collecting data on your communications to clients/customers/stakeholders. Insights such as open rates are helpful. It leaves a little to be desired as an all-in-one tool. For example, it was not a great fit for our newsletter.
We use Higher Logic to manage our online community. It's used by just one department to facilitate the community, share information and moderate discussions. It gets our members, who are doctors, to ask questions about procedures and patients that our staff otherwise couldn't answer.
Pros
Higher Logic is responsive to help desk questions or addressing problems or situations we may not understand. It's great because we always have support.
The platform is easy to explain to members how to use. They don't have to go through a lot of steps to get set up and are able to move around the platform quickly.
Cons
The admin dashboard (which is already going to be changing). I think the new setup will be really beneficial for new staff members who may come on to assist with the community.
Likelihood to Recommend
Higher Logic is great for our members across the world to engage and ask questions about patients or cases. The online platform allows more open discussion than an email chain would, especially because they have the opportunity to discuss people they may not otherwise have the chance to.
Our association uses the Higher Logic Connected Community as a communication tool for our committees, board of directors, staff, and other special interest groups within our association. This has helped us keep our volunteer committee members engaged and communicating between in-person meetings on a secure, central platform. Previously, each committee had its own method of communicating - Basecamp, Facebook groups, and more. Now, with Higher Logic, we are able to keep those communications centralized and on a consistent platform from year to year.
Pros
Easy to use - with just a few short informational handouts that we created in-house even our members who are less computer-savvy have been able to engage and connect on our site.
Cons
This may seem a small detail, but when tracking through our pages of communities, the user has to manually scroll back to the top after navigating to the next page. This can be a little frustrating!
Sometimes the load time can be slow.
We've experienced more outages with the site than we thought we might. Our members and leadership get frustrated when this happens. They don't want a break in their communications!
Likelihood to Recommend
Higher Logic works very well for our business purposes. We can very easily create new communities when we need to (and this is often!). Our association isn't as concerned with driving engagement, but the tools Higher Logic provides allows us to take a closer look at the engagement level of our committee members when needed.
It is being used by about 1/4 of our organization internally and a large portion of our members externally.
Pros
Holding their annual conference for the users; the Higher Logic User Group Super Forum. It's a great way to meet some of the people you've interacted with online or over the phone and get to the bottom of problems you're having in a relatively short amount of time.
The online community onboarding program has been particularly helpful for me so far, while a different use than is typical, I'm new to the platform and needed extensive training to learn about and improve our site.
Utilizing automation rules to make me feel engaged in their HUG community and encourage my participation.
Cons
The support ticketing system has an outrageous number of options that make it almost impossible to figure out what I'm supposed to input every time I experience an issue with the platform, which causes further frustration for fear of not knowing if you are sending your concern to the wrong place.
When moving around pieces of information on an individual's profile it automatically moves that piece to the top of the section you are working in, leading to tedious reordering or demographic pieces.
You have to copy/paste sections when trying to edit navigation of your pages instead of a simple, intuitive drag & drop. They claim to be changing this soon.
Likelihood to Recommend
The Higher Logic platform is very well suited for an association.
VU
Verified User
Administrator in Customer Service (51-200 employees)
We started using Higher Logic (HL) for our online community about 6 years ago. When I came on board, we were integrating the HL community with another CMS platform hosting our website. It wasn't the best relationship, so when we redesigned our website we also switched to HL for our website CMS and hosting. These are the basis of our communication with and between our membership, so a reliable platform for both was necessary.
Pros
Higher Logic product managers are probably some of the best in the industry. They know their products and aren't pushy in trying to sell them to you. Don't get me wrong, they do try to sell you a product, but they understand that not everyone who is tasked with learning more is also a decision maker. That doesn't stop them from being professional and thorough in their demonstrations or explanation of fees.
Their technical support is top notch. Not only do they work to resolve issues, they also work with you to help you with non-issues. Our initial redesign was done by an agency that worked with HL directly to set up the new site. When I was tasked with a mini-redesign this year, HL technical support offered me a lot of insight on how to best do this using just my skills and HL.
They offer training on their platforms to ensure your success as an administrator. There is no cost and you can either go to their onsite two days "boot camp" or you can access a plethora of training videos and webinars through their online users' community.
Cons
They work with our AMS, but the version of our AMS isn't supported for all of their products which prevents me from using some of the products they offer that would make our organization's processes much easier to manage than they are today.
Since they are a SaaS organization, each of their products is designed to work together. This is great. What isn't great is that they don't offer any kind of bundle pricing or combined billing. So each product is billed at its own rate, individually each year. This makes it hard for smaller and non-profit organizations to utilize a large number of their products because the cost can be steep in the long run and it's a billing nightmare since you might not get the invoices for all of the services at the same time (or in our case they might not be sent to the same person(s) for each invoice).
Likelihood to Recommend
Higher Logic is a great solution for a lot of different needs. If you are looking for a website CMS or an online community, my experience makes me feel like they are a top-notch organization that is well suited for these needs regardless of the industry you are in. They offer a lot of add-on software that I don't currently use because they aren't right for my organization.
We currently use Higher Logic as a community site for various committees, collaborative and member groups for our association integrated with our current AMS system. This gives us one platform for our members to seek out resources and discussions with other members on current industry issues.
Pros
Integrates well with various database systems as well as email messaging systems.
Excellent support staff. They are professional and quick in their responses.
Security is a plus for us. Higher Logic's individual communities on each site can be as public or secure as you need it to be.
Cons
Additional reporting capabilities for the community admin. I know they are working on this piece so it will get there eventually.
Likelihood to Recommend
The security of only allowing those members that need to see a particular resource or discussion is very valuable to us.
