Hey there! Thinking about moving over to Hall? Or trying to decide which platform to use for the first time?
If you’re wondering what the differences are between Hall, inSided, and Gainsight Customer Communities for companies looking to create a customer community, we put together this no-nonsense overview.
What was inSided?
In January 2022, inSided was acquired by Gainsight for an undisclosed sum1. Despite the website for inSided still being online, the original inSided product is no longer available for purchase.
Existing customers of inSided experienced a lot of change following the acquisition. Gainsight initially repackaged and rebranded inSided into a new product was briefly called Gainsight Digital Hub. This product was shortly rebranded again into what it is now known as Gainsight Customer Communities.
As inSided is no longer available, we have updated our overview into a more comprehensive guide for the new Gainsight Customer Communities product. Keep on reading to learn more about how Hall compares.
Beautiful modern product people love
Hall is a modern customer community platform designed to be simple, highly intuitive, and eliminate any friction for community members to sign up, engage, and participate – right out of the box.
On the other hand, Gainsight Customer Communities is highly customizable and configurable, which can be an advantage depending on your requirements. However, more customization and configuration can create more opportunity for inconsistency and bad user experiences.
In research with hundreds of community end-users, we found users generally have certain expectations for how a community should look and feel. The customization in Gainsight Customer Communities can allow their customers to deviate from accepted best practices and user experiences which can affect adoption and hinder engagement by community members.
When we tested several of Gainsight’s customer’s communities, we also found they scored poorly across a number of Google’s PageSpeed insights2 that measure the performance, user experience, and accessibility of web experiences.
The design of a community built with Hall.
Gainsight’s own customer community3 has been customized to ask their customers if they “need a navigation rescue?”, presumably to help them navigate the complex user experience of Gainsight Customer Communities.
The features you need, the bloat you don’t
Gainsight Customer Communities is integrated tightly with Gainsight’s Customer Success platform and their complementary products, enabling the exchange of data and automation of community workflows with the broader Gainsight portfolio of products4.
This can be an advantage if you’re looking to integrate your community efforts with other customer success programs in Gainsight. However, if you are just looking for a community platform without adopting the range of Gainsight products, you may be better served by a different vendor that is exclusively focused on building the best product for customer communities. Gainsight’s investments to integrate with their entire platform may distract from innovating on the core communities product for customers who are not interested in adopting (and paying significant money for) the entire Gainsight platform.
Hall is a customer community platform first-and-foremost. We’re focused on building the best possible product for building a customer community, and the investments and improvements we make to our features and functionality reflect this focus.
Made for customer communities
Is the platform designed for customer communities? Does the platform have the features to support the needs of their users?
Modern product and user experience
Is the platform simple, easy, intuitive, and enjoyable to use by members? Does the platform designed to drive engagement?
Affordable pricing
Do they cater to companies of different sizes and budgets? Are they going to keep pricing consistent?
Easy to trial and buy
Can you sign up and trial the product self-serve? Do you need to go through a long sales process just to get a demo?
A bet on future product innovation
Gainsight Customer Communities was formerly known as inSided, before it was acquired by Gainsight in January 20221. Just two years earlier, Gainsight itself was acquired for over US$1 billion by Vista Equity Partners5 – a private equity firm specializing in buying up enterprise software businesses. It’s important to keep in mind who owns a platform and how this might impact an ongoing relationship with them. Some vendors are incentivized to increase prices annually, invest minimally in improving product, and scale back customer support.
Hall on the other hand, is an upstart and challenger platform. We’re investing aggressively in design and development to build a modern product people love, and we are not optimizing to maximize profitability or cut costs. We’re focused on building the best possible product for our customers, backed with funding from Australia’s largest venture fund, Blackbird Ventures, who shares our vision and has a track record investing in other much-loved products like Canva and Dovetail.
Don’t just take our word for it
Before selecting a vendor, consider researching verified reviews from independent review platforms like G2.
Sales/Onboarding service is by far the worst we’ve worked with, its level has a huge gap compared to the price of the tool.
Lack of consistent communication, extreme delays in requestsed changes, and no solid resources to help with community activation.
I’m trying to build a community of practice and for that it’s really hard to use – it’s not matching my use case too well, but we’re locked in so we’re making the most of it.
Certain features promised to me during the sales cycle (Email Campaigns) were unavailable when starting our community. I was allowed access to the feature beta program but it was not available for our launch which contributed to a poor onboarding experience for some of our new members at launch.
The platform is missing basic aspects of a community designed for member engagement. There’s no threading in conversations (the reply to replies) that you see on platforms from LinkedIn to Slack and that most users expect.
Avoid expensive enterprise pricing
Like most enterprise products, the pricing for Gainsight Customer Communities is opaque and only accessible upon request. Their pricing page does not provide any detail, and getting pricing information requires you to talk to a salesperson. Because Gainsight Customer Communities intentionally tries to hide how much their platform costs, it’s difficult to source reliable pricing information. However, with an enterprise platform like Gainsight Customer Communities, you should expect to pay at least five figures, and upwards of over six figures depending on additional modules, support and customization – every year. The pricing of Gainsight Customer Communities has been reported as ranging from US$90,000 to US$200,000 annually in FeverBee’s 2024 Buzz Report: Evaluating the Top Enterprise Community Platforms.6
Hall’s pricing is transparent and clearly available on our pricing page. We will be upfront and open with you about how much our platform costs, and there are no hidden fees or charges. We believe that customer communities can be incredibly impactful for companies, regardless of their size and budget – which is why we have designed our pricing to ensure affordable packages for earlier-stage companies who can’t afford to drop $100K on software. We’re not here to nickel-and-dime our customers.
Easy to trial and evaluate
With Gainsight Customer Communities, you can’t sign up for a free trial and see how their platform works by yourself and in your own time. There’s no way to kick the tires. The only way you can evaluate is by contacting their sales team and going through their enterprise sales funnel.
With Hall, you can sign up entirely for free, in just a few minutes with just an email address and no credit card. You can even get started with our platform with our free plan, and only upgrade when you’re seeing value and ready to scale your community. Of course, if you need additional support or prefer one of our experts shows you around the product, you can also book a personalized demo.
The verdict
When it comes down to it, Hall is the clear choice for companies looking to build an engaged customer community who care about giving their customers a modern user experience. With its modern design and focus on building the best product for customer communities, Hall delivers on the features you need without the bloat and complexity. And with transparent, affordable pricing and the ability to easily trial the platform, you can feel confident in your decision.
While Gainsight Customer Communities may be a fit for larger enterprises already invested in the Gainsight ecosystem, for most companies, Hall offers a compelling alternative that puts the experience of your customers first.
Common questions about Gainsight Customer Communities and inSided
We’ve collated all the frequently asked questions to help answer your questions quickly.