![]() ![]() Scalability and governance are less of a concern at this stage.Īt this point, chat platforms can start to feel unmanageable for a few reasons. In the early stages of a community’s life, it’s important for the organizers to build strong connections with the first handful of members, since early adopters are more likely to join discussions, answer questions, and contribute in ways that make the community seem active and vibrant. Note: Discourse offers a plugin for integrating with chat platforms.Want separate spaces for distinct groups, for example a chat for your champions and a forum for everyone else.Have the bandwidth to manage multiple platforms.You want indexed content (Discourse) along with realtime vibes (chat).Use both chat (Discord or Slack) + Discourse if… For new members, starting a new thread in a forum can be perceived as a higher barrier of entry, versus simply saying “hello” in a chat channel.There are many technical options for starting a community on Discourse, including deploying the open source code on your own servers, paying a third party for hosting, or paying for a fully hosted solution.You want to use an open source platform.You don’t mind paying to host the forum software, or are capable of hosting it yourself.Synchronous communication isn’t important, for example, if your community is distributed across many time zones.You have enough community members for chat to be counterproductive.Moderation and fine-grained permissions are important. ![]() This helps new members discover the community while reducing the core team’s support burden. You’d like community-generated content to be indexed (and thus findable in search engine results).Many community members will likely have similar questions or issues, and you’d like to point them to a library of common answers.Editor's note: Since this article's publication, Discord has dialed back the gamer-centric messaging and is now promoting itsel as " Your place to talk." We expect the gamer vibes to play an increasingly small part of the Discord experience as it seeks to expand beyond the gaming community. Discord’s design and copy is playful and gamer-centric, which could be confusing for community members who aren't familiar with Discord’s gaming roots. ![]() It’s possible that some might not want to use their stormtrooper headshot in a professional setting. But it means it’s impossible to use different avatars for different communities, which could be a concern for folks who have used Discord primarily for gaming in the past. This user model means you can join new communities with a single click (versus creating a new user account for every community). With Discord, community members use a single account to login to multiple communities.Integrations and bots are less important.Making users sign up for yet-another-Slack group is a concern.You need realtime chat with advanced permissions and moderation.It’s specifically designed for workplaces, and they don’t appear interested in building features for moderation. Slack offers no real tooling for moderation.Every community we’re aware of uses the free plan. Slack paid plans start at $8 per user per month.On the free plan, Slack only retains the most recent 10,000 messages, which means they automatically archive messages above that threshold.You and your community members already use Slack for work.You don’t care that only the last 10,000 messages are retained (on free plans).You want threaded conversations in your realtime chat.You want to take advantage of Slack’s large library of integrations and bots (limited to 10 on free plans), or use their no-code workflow builder (only paid plans).We’ll discuss plenty of details, but here are the high-level recommendations. The 3 key factors to consider when choosing.In this article, we’ll discuss the key factors to consider when choosing a community platform, compare the three most popular options, and make recommendations based on a few different community scenarios. ![]() While there’s no silver bullet for building and growing a community online, there are a few key questions to consider that will help guide your tooling decisions and your community strategy. There are just too many variables, including community size, engagement model, the size and capabilities of the team building the community, and more. Now is a great time to build a community online, and there’s no shortage of really great tools to help.īut despite the many options, there’s no single tool to rule them all. “What platform should I use for my startup’s community? Should I move from Slack to Discourse? Wait.there’s a Discourse and a Discord?” ![]()
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