Choosing the right community platform is crucial for businesses of all sizes. A community platform is a digital space where businesses can interact with customers, partners, and employees. It is a place to share information, ideas, and feedback. Salesforce Experience Cloud (formerly the Community Cloud in Salesforce) has emerged as a leading choice. However, businesses can also consider several alternatives.
In this article, we break down the Community Cloud in Salesforce and its upgraded version, the Salesforce Experience Cloud. Most importantly, we discuss the best alternatives to the Salesforce Experience Cloud. These include Bettermode, Titan, and custom development (building your own community platform). We compare the strengths and weaknesses of each platform. We also show how they differ from Salesforce Experience Cloud.
Don’t worry if you are still undecided. We also address common questions about community platforms, and we show how Salesforce Experience Cloud answers these concerns. Ready to choose the right community platform? Keep reading to find out more!
Digital Community Platforms: Community Cloud in Salesforce, Salesforce Experience Cloud, vs Salesforce Experience Cloud Alternatives in 2023
A digital community platform is a virtual space where people with shared interests or goals meet, connect, and build relationships. It gives them a place to share information, ideas, and feedback. Community platforms are essential for businesses of all sizes. They give businesses a digital space to interact with customers, partners, and employees.
Community Cloud in Salesforce
The Community Cloud in Salesforce helps businesses connect with their customers, grow their business, and optimize performance. It gives businesses and their partners a complete channel management solution with a dynamic PRM site. It also lets marketers create engaging microsites and landing pages. These generate leads for a new product launch, an upcoming event, and more.
In addition, it offers a responsive portal where users access articles, update their accounts, and create and manage cases and claims. It is a digital experience platform that helps businesses customize digital experiences for many types of people. It connects those experiences with customer data. Also, it integrates data from any source, including Salesforce, third-party, or legacy sources.
Salesforce Experience Cloud
On the other hand, Salesforce Experience Cloud is a powerful digital experience platform. It helps businesses create personalized digital experiences with connected data, prebuilt apps, and low-code tools. It is a Salesforce-integrated tool for creating online communities for partners, customers, or employees.
Compared with other Salesforce sites, Experience Cloud goes beyond creating communities. It lets businesses create portals, forums, sites, help centers, and mobile apps, and manage content seamlessly. It helps businesses build customer journeys. It also lets them quickly create secure websites, portals, and apps with connected data. Finally, Experience Cloud is built on Customer 360, which helps businesses connect with their customers, grow, and optimize performance.
In summary, to choose the right community platform, consider these points about Salesforce Experience Cloud:
Advantages of Salesforce Experience Cloud
1. Customizable: Salesforce Experience Cloud is highly customizable and can be tailored to meet the specific needs of your business.
2. Ease of use: Salesforce Experience Cloud is user-friendly and easy to navigate, making it accessible to users with varying levels of technical expertise.
3. Scalability: Salesforce Experience Cloud is highly scalable and can accommodate businesses of all sizes.
4. Integration: Salesforce Experience Cloud integrates seamlessly with other products, such as Sales Cloud and Service Cloud.
5. Analytics: Salesforce Experience Cloud provides robust analytics and reporting capabilities, enabling businesses to gain valuable insights into customer engagement and community performance.
Disadvantages of Salesforce Experience Cloud
1. Cost: Salesforce Experience Cloud can be expensive, especially for small businesses.
2. Complexity: Salesforce Experience Cloud can be complex to set up and manage, requiring a dedicated team of experts.
3. Limited customization: While Salesforce Experience Cloud is highly customizable, there are some limitations to what can be achieved without extensive coding.
4. Training: Users may require extensive training to fully utilize the features and functionalities of Salesforce Experience Cloud.
5. Security: Salesforce Experience Cloud stores sensitive customer data, which can be a security risk if not properly managed.
Best Alternatives to the Salesforce Experience Cloud
Better Mode
Bettermode is a customizable community platform that enables users to build unique customer communities. It offers premade templates that make building a community with spaces for common use cases easy. The Design Studio allows customers to visually build unique communities using blocks such as CTA, announcement bar, posts, members, and leaderboard. Bettermode’s strengths include its flexibility, customization, and ease of use. However, it has some weaknesses. These include limited integrations, a lack of advanced analytics, and a relatively high price point.
Bettermode is a great option if you want a customizable and easy-to-use community platform. Salesforce Experience Cloud is a better choice if you need a more robust and scalable solution with advanced integrations and analytics.
Titan
Titan is a no-code digital experiences platform for Salesforce. Users create custom docs, forms, apps, e-signatures, and surveys with Titan’s suite of enterprise applications. These applications integrate with Salesforce data across the entire organization. Titan’s strengths include a drag-and-drop builder that requires no code, fully branded custom themes, and mobile readiness.
Titan can have an edge over Salesforce Experience Cloud in some cases. Its no-code platform lets users create custom digital experiences without coding skills. This is a significant advantage for businesses that cannot hire developers or learn to code. Additionally, its suite of enterprise applications integrates with Salesforce data across the organization. As a result, it can offer a more comprehensive solution than Salesforce Experience Cloud.
However, remember that Salesforce Experience Cloud is a native Salesforce solution. It offers all the benefits of direct Salesforce integration. It also provides ready-to-go templates, full access to Customer 360 data saved in Salesforce, and an easy drag-and-drop builder that requires no code.
Salesforce Experience Cloud is also a well-known platform with a proven track record of success. Titan, in contrast, is a relatively new platform and is not as well-known. Because it is new, its pricing is not as transparent as other Salesforce Experience Cloud alternatives of 2023.
Custom Development: Building Your Own Portal
Custom Development is a software approach that lets organizations create applications that match their business objectives. It covers designing, creating, deploying, and maintaining software for specific business needs, such as a community platform. It gives greater flexibility and customization than off-the-shelf solutions and can be faster than commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) solutions.
However, it can also cost more than COTS solutions. It also needs more technical expertise and resources to develop and maintain. For this reason, it may not suit organizations with limited resources or those that need a quick solution. Our custom software development team can help if you go this way.
The Need to Choose the Right Community Platform
Salesforce Experience Cloud? Or Salesforce Experience Cloud Alternatives in 2023? Why does it matter?
The right community platform is critical for your digital business because it can significantly affect its success. According to a study by Smart Insights, customers spend 19% more after they join a company’s online community. This shows why a thriving digital community matters. It engages customers, boosts brand awareness, and offers a competitive advantage.
Ultimately, whether you choose Salesforce Experience Cloud or one of its alternatives, the right community platform should help you build that kind of community.
Best Practices for Choosing the Right Community Platform
When you choose the right community platform, consider several questions and concerns. Here are some common ones:
What are my business objectives?
Defining your goals is crucial when you pick a platform for your customers, clients, business partners, and employees. Then you can identify the features that are essential and make sure they match your business objectives.
Consider your audience
Choose a platform that fits your target audience’s needs and preferences. Tailor the community platform to your customers, clients, business partners, and employees. As a result, you improve engagement and build stronger relationships with your stakeholders.
What are the features and functionalities that I need?
Consider the features that are essential to your business objectives. Each platform has its own unique features, so choose the one that best fits your objectives.
What is the cost of the platform?
The cost of the platform is an important consideration, especially for small businesses. Some platforms offer free plans, while others require a monthly or annual subscription fee. It’s important to choose a platform that fits within your budget.
How easy is it to use and manage the platform?
The platform’s ease of use and management is an important consideration, especially for businesses with limited technical expertise. Some platforms are user-friendly and easy to navigate, while others require a dedicated team of experts.
What is the level of security provided by the platform?
Security is an important consideration, especially if you store sensitive customer data. Choose a platform with robust security features to protect your data.
To answer these questions, research and compare different community platforms. Look for reviews, case studies, and customer testimonials to understand the platform’s features and performance. You can also consult field experts like those from Zehntech for their recommendations and insights.
Harvard Business Review on Community Platforms
The article titled “When Community Becomes Your Competitive Advantage” published in the Harvard Business Review discusses how companies can use communities to create a superior business model and unlock extraordinary competitive advantages. The authors, Jeffrey Bussgang and Jono Bacon, argue that a company can reap several benefits if it moves from simply delivering a product to building a community.
Strong communities support the ideal business model. They reduce customer acquisition costs, increase member retention, and generate high gross margins due to a lower cost of service. The result is very real network effects. As engagement grows, the community gets smarter, responds faster, becomes more globally available, and generates more value.
The article also highlights that powerful communities are alive and booming, and that they form around businesses and brands. The authors conclude that companies that build and maintain strong communities will have a significant competitive advantage over those that cannot.
Final Thoughts
Choosing the right community platform for your business needs is important. This article covered the Community Cloud in Salesforce and its upgraded version, the Salesforce Experience Cloud. It also covered the strengths and weaknesses of each platform and how they differ from Salesforce Experience Cloud.
We also discussed Bettermode, Titan, and custom development (building your own community platform). We also covered common questions about community platforms and how Salesforce Experience Cloud answers them. Now it’s time to take action. Apply what you learned and explore the options available to you. Choose the community platform that will help your business grow and thrive. Good luck!
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