Hi 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 and Khoros Communities for companies looking to create a customer community, we put together this easy-to-understand overview.
A bet on future product innovation
Khoros was formed as part of the merger of community platform Lithium and social media marketing software Spredfast in 2019 under the direction of Vista Equity Partners1 – a private equity firm specializing in buying up enterprise software businesses. The Khoros Communities product available today is an artifact of the original Lithium product that is no longer available today. 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.
In FeverBee’s independent review of Khoros2, community expert Richard Millington highlights that Khoros has been “ponderously slow to launch new features”, noting that their most recent user experience project codenamed “Aurora” has been pushed back several years – and had still not launched at the time of his review.
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 significant funding from Australia’s largest venture fund, Blackbird Ventures – whose investments include other much-loved products like Canva and Dovetail.
Affordable pricing
Do they cater to companies of different sizes and budgets? Are they going to keep pricing consistent?
Modern product and user experience
Is the platform simple, easy, intuitive, and enjoyable to use by members? Does the platform designed to drive engagement?
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?
Easy to configure and customize
Is it easy to configure settings? How accessible and simple is customization?
Simple customizations
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. We’ve designed Hall to be simple to customize, with customization options that can be made in the admin dashboard by yourself without the need for professional services.
On the other hand, Khoros Communities is highly customizable and configurable, which can be an advantage depending on your requirements. However, this customization requires the engagement and support of the Khoros professional services team – which can make it be particularly restrictive (and costly) when trying to evolve your community. In fact, a key insight from FeverBee’s 2024 Buzz Report: Evaluating the Top Enterprise Community Platforms3 was that Khoros has been “perceived as restrictive due to the high service fees involved with making any changes”.
Avoid expensive enterprise pricing
Like most enterprise products, the pricing for Khoros 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 Khoros Communities intentionally tries to hide how much their platform costs, it’s difficult to source reliable pricing information. However, with an enterprise platform like Khoros Communities, you should expect to pay over six figures depending on additional modules, support and customization – every year.
Another key insight from FeverBee’s 2024 Buzz Report: Evaluating the Top Enterprise Community Platforms3 was that Khoros is “increasingly seen as an overpriced option with consistent complaints about the ‘nickel and dime’ approach for every change.
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.
Don’t just take our word for it
Before selecting a vendor, consider researching verified reviews from independent review platforms like G2 or Gartner Peer Insights.
Lithium seems slow to innovate. The core tool is great but I would like to see them continue to improve the UI. I’d also like to see servers around the world to better support global business.
At the time, they offered us a good deal. But that cost grew and grew each year to the point where it was over $200k per year with minimal improvements/updates/changes to the product. Totally unreasonable cost now.
The community features are old and not keeping up with the industry or customer needs. I have features I can't measure, like component use and email sends.
The ROI is low as it’s very expensive and they didn’t make any updates on communities for a couple of years after they went through a few acquisitions and started focusing on social media support. The platform is robust and flexible...with a catch...which is to either have an in-house developer team to support you or use Khoros’s technical consultants = more $.
Khoros using old technologies in the community (ex: Angular1.x, JQuery). Khoros need to improve API response time (ex: we are getting an error if we update multiple metadata)
Easy to trial and evaluate
With Khoros Communities, you can’t sign up for a free trial and see how their platform works by yourself and in your own time. The only way you can evaluate is by contacting their sales team and going through their enterprise sales funnel. Even after purchasing, the complexity of the Khoros platform can mean it could take several months to see value and launch your community. In fact, in FeverBee’s 2024 Buzz Report: Evaluating the Top Enterprise Community Platforms3 report, Khoros scored poorly with “customers spending up to six months to launch the platform”.
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 without breaking the bank. While Khoros Communities may appeal to large enterprises with complex customization needs, its dated user experience and lack of transparent pricing make it a risky long-term bet.
Hall, on the other hand, is purpose-built for modern customer communities. Its intuitive interface and thoughtful design make it effortless for your customers to participate and engage. And withaffordable, transparent pricing and the ability to easily trial the platform, you can feel confident in your decision.
So if you want to create a thriving customer community that delights your customers and drives engagement, Hall is the compelling alternative that delivers on the essentials without the enterprise bloat.
Common questions about Khoros Communities
We’ve collated all the frequently asked questions to help answer your questions quickly.