September 2026 Edition, published · The permanent record of that edition, superseded since. The current standing is on the category page →
Index › GTM › Customer › Community › Small business · September 2026 Edition

Community platforms for small business buyers

Asked as “customer community platform”, and as “online community software for customers”, on behalf of a small B2B company. 55 first choices recorded across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, twelve models each.
Standing · first-choice share
31%
Contested · Bettermode 29%
31Circle29Bettermode18Discourse22others

31% of first choices, contested.

By buyer segment

The same question asked on behalf of a different buyer. Each standing is computed within its segment; they sit side by side and are never added together.

The standing

Share is the count of first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, over all twelve models, for a small B2B company. Ordered by share.
ProductFirst-choice shareNegative rateLabelsQuadrant
01Circle31%13%61endorsed leader
02Bettermode29%16%49accepted challenger
03Discourse18%5%41accepted challenger
04Discord9%41%29criticized challenger
05Facebook Groups4%41%17criticized challenger
06Zendesk Community2%8%12accepted challenger
07Slack2%50%20criticized challenger
08Higher Logic Vanilla2%50%22criticized challenger
Show the five products at 0%, ordered by negative rate
13Khoros Communities0%80%20criticized challenger
11Salesforce Experience Cloud0%75%12criticized challenger
12Gainsight Customer Communities0%68%22criticized challenger
09Mighty Networks0%16%37accepted challenger
10Skool0%11%18accepted challenger
Bars are the share of first choices, 0 to 100Every product with at least 10 labels here. Every product name links to its product page.
Head to headHead-to-head pages are published for mid-market buyers, so these open on mid-market figures, not small business.
All twenty-eight head-to-head pages: the top eight products, each against each

Recommended versus criticized

Every product with at least 10 labels here, on both axes. The 30% line names a quadrant, not the verdict above: that one needs more than 40%.

Criticized challengerCriticized default
Negative label rate →
01
02
03
04
05
06
07
08
09
10
11
12
13
Accepted challengerEndorsed leader
0%First-choice share → · lines at 30% share and 25% negative50%
Key
01Circle31%
02Bettermode29%
03Discourse18%
04Discord9%
05Facebook Groups4%
06Zendesk Community2%
07Slack2%
08Higher Logic Vanilla2%
09Mighty Networks0%
10Skool0%
11Salesforce Experience Cloud0%
12Gainsight Customer Communities0%
13Khoros Communities0%

What they warned about

Three of twelve models held their first choice under the paraphrase. Claude Haiku 4.5, Grok 4.20, Mistral Small, DeepSeek V4 Flash, Llama 4 Maverick, Qwen 3.7 Flash, Kimi K2, GLM 4.7 FlashX and MiniMax M2.5 changed. A high negative share on a product with few labels is a warning. A low share on a product with many labels is salience, not sentiment.
Discord
41%
12 of 29 labels negative · 9 of 12 models · 1 hard negative
“Slack or Discord... they are poor choices for customer communities” Gemini 3.5 Flash, paraphrase prompt
Gainsight Customer Communities
68%
15 of 22 labels negative · 8 of 12 models · 11 hard negative
“Platforms like Gainsight Communities are designed for mid-market and enterprise businesses and are not well suited to small businesses” Claude Haiku 4.5, negative prompt
Higher Logic Vanilla
50%
11 of 22 labels negative · 8 of 12 models · 3 hard negative
“Verdict: Avoid for small businesses - too complex and expensive for SMB needs” Mistral Small, negative prompt
Khoros Communities
80%
16 of 20 labels negative · 7 of 12 models · 10 hard negative
“Platforms to Avoid ... Enterprise platforms like Khoros ... Khoros averages $165K/year per Vendr data” Grok 4.20, negative prompt

What they cite

Four of the twelve models returned a source list in this edition: four return the pages they cited.

Sites the answers cite

20 of 72 answers in this category came back with a source list, from 4 of 12 models: citations where the model returns them, or the search results it consulted. 287 links across 111 sites, every framing counted. Ranked by the number of answers carrying the site or page. The other 8 models searched through a gateway that returned no source list on this edition.

vendor site · Circle13 answers · 14 citations · 4 models
vendor site · Higher Logic13 answers · 14 citations · 4 models
vendor site · Bettermode12 answers · 18 citations · 3 models
vendor site · Guideflow9 answers · 12 citations · 3 models
9 answers · 10 citations · 3 models
8 answers · 11 citations · 3 models
vendor site · Gartner8 answers · 8 citations · 4 models
vendor site · Reddit7 answers · 10 citations · 2 models
6 answers · 8 citations · 2 models
6 answers · 6 citations · 3 models
5 answers · 5 citations · 2 models
vendor site · YouTube4 answers · 10 citations · 1 model

Pages the answers cite

The ten pages named in the most answers, by full address. A page here is one the models returned with a recommendation, not one the index endorses.

Search against answers

Each company's standing in the answers beside its site's footprint in Google search, one row a site: the products the models named on it with their shares, and the share they add up to; monthly searches on Google, and DataForSEO's estimate of AI search demand (modeled from search signals, directional, not a count of queries to any assistant), for the most-searched of the company's and its products' names (the name is in each row's hover text); estimated monthly organic visits to the site; and its best position in Google's top ten for “best customer community platform”, “customer community platform”. US estimates from DataForSEO and Google's Ads Transparency Center. A small company's site, or a mid-sized company's site for its flagship, is marked company; a product on a large parent's site (Google, Microsoft) has no site figures. A column with no figures for this category is left out, and an empty cell means none were seen, not none exist. Two measurements side by side: neither is read as the cause of the other.
Company and productsShareOwn site citedName searches, GoogleAI search demand, est.Organic visitsPaid search a month, est.Google ads, last 30 daysBest Google position
Circle circle.so31%138301,000242,528215,494$1,570558
Bettermode bettermode.com29%1308801613,7807
Discourse discourse.org18%12249,5003,505134,3463
Discord discord.com9%746,120,000159,4218,388,8399
Facebook Groups facebook.com4%3012,1007,6203,412,145,496$39,31830
Slack slack.com
Slack Communities 2%, Slack 2%
4%851,000,00030,8501,672,555$27120
Zendesk Community zendesk.com2%1414025,365,445$16,18163
Disciple disciple.community2%4
Higher Logic Vanilla higherlogic.com2%119110012,921$10,173234
Mighty Networks mightynetworks.com0%6812,10025553,7932

Google's top ten for the two searches hold 16 sites; 5 of them are among the sites the models cited here (circle.so, gartner.com, higherlogic.com, reddit.com, youtube.com). The first result for “best customer community platform” is uscreen.tv.

How they answered

Six framings of the same buying question, each sent to every model in a fresh session with search on. One row per model, so a row shows whether it held its answer under rewording, what it named when cost was the constraint, and what it argued against. Computed from the raw judge labels.
ShowHide
ModelDirect“What is the best customer community platform for a small B2B company?”Paraphrase“Which online community software for customers would you recommend to a small business that sells to other businesses?”Comparative“What are the top customer community platforms for a small team and how do they differ?”Budget-constrained“What is the best customer community platform for a small company with a tight budget?”Scale-constrained“We are a 30 person company evaluating a customer community platform. What should we look at?”Negative“Which customer community platforms should a small business avoid or be cautious about?”
Claude Haiku 4.5Discord, Slack Communities
One alternativeTribe.so
against: LinkedIn Groups, Zappi
SlackChanged
Two alternativesDiscord, Mighty Networks
Bettermode
Nine alternativesCircle, Disco, Gainsight Customer Communities, Higher Logic Vanilla, Influitive, Kajabi Communities, Skool, Swarm, Zendesk Community
against: Salesforce Experience Cloud
Bettermode
Two alternativesCircle, Facebook Groups
against: Disciple
no first choiceagainst: Disciple, Discord, Facebook Groups, Gainsight Customer Communities, Hivebrite, Reddit, Slack, Telegram
GPT-5.4 miniCircle
One alternativeHigher Logic Vanilla
against: Gainsight Customer Communities
CircleHeld
Two alternativesBettermode, Discourse
against: Higher Logic Vanilla, Khoros Communities
Circle
One alternativeZendesk
against: Khoros Communities
Discourse
Two alternativesCircle, Website Toolbox
against: Bettermode
no first choiceagainst: BuddyBoss, Higher Logic Vanilla, Khoros Communities, Salesforce Experience Cloud, Sitejabber Business Suite
Gemini 3.5 FlashBettermode
Two alternativesCircle, Discourse
against: Gainsight Customer Communities, Higher Logic, Skool, Slack
BettermodeHeld
Three alternativesCanny.io, Circle, Discourse
against: Discord, Gainsight Customer Communities, Higher Logic, Khoros Communities, Salesforce Experience Cloud, Slack
Bettermode
Five alternativesCircle, Discourse, Heartbeat, Mighty Networks, Swarm
Discourse
Four alternativesDiscord, Flarum, Heartbeat.chat, Skool
against: Circle, Slack
Circle, Discourse
Two alternativesBettermode, Mighty Networks
against: Gainsight Customer Communities, Higher Logic, Khoros Communities, Salesforce Experience Cloud, Slack or Discord
against: BuddyBoss, Discord, Facebook Groups, Gainsight Customer Communities, Khoros Communities, Mighty Networks, Salesforce Experience Cloud, Self-Hosted Discourse, Skool, Slack
Perplexity SonarBettermode
Two alternativesCircle, Discourse
against: Higher Logic Vanilla
BettermodeHeld
Three alternativesDiscourse, Higher Logic Vanilla, LoftOS
Bettermode
Four alternativesCircle, Discourse, Gainsight Customer Communities, Zendesk Community
Circle, Discourseagainst: Bettermode, Discord, Facebook Groupsno first choiceagainst: Gainsight Customer Communities, Higher Logic, Hivebrite, Khoros Communities, Salesforce Experience Cloud, Sprinklr
Grok 4.20Circle, Discourse
One alternativeBettermode
against: Discord, Gainsight Customer Communities, Hivebrite, Khoros Communities, Slack
DiscourseChanged
One alternativeCircle
against: Bettermode, Higher Logic Vanilla
Circle, Discourse
Four alternativesBettermode, Mighty Networks, Skool, Zendesk Community
against: Gainsight Customer Communities, Khoros Communities
Discord, Discourse
Two alternativesFacebook Groups, Flarum
against: Bettermode, Circle, Mighty Networks
Discourse
Three alternativesBettermode, Circle, Zendesk Community
against: Gainsight Customer Communities, Khoros Communities
against: Angi, Bevy, Circle, Disco, Discord, Discourse, Facebook Groups, Gainsight Customer Communities, Higher Logic, Hivebrite, Kajabi, Khoros Communities, Mighty Networks, Nextdoor, Reddit, Slack, Thumbtack, Yelp, phpBB
Mistral SmallBettermode
Two alternativesCircle, Jatra
against: Discord
CircleChanged
Four alternativesBettermode, Discourse, Mighty Networks, Tribe
against: Higher Logic Vanilla
Circle
Four alternativesBettermode, Disciple, Discourse, Mighty Networks
Discord, Facebook Groups
Five alternativesCircle, Discourse, GroupApp, Mighty Networks, Telegram
Circle
Four alternativesBettermode, Discourse, Mighty Networks, Skool
against: Axero, Discord, Higher Logic Vanilla, Lounjee, Zapnito, vBulletin Cloud
DeepSeek V4 FlashDiscourse
Three alternativesCircle, Featurebase, Jatra
against: Bettermode
CircleChanged
Three alternativesBettermode, Discourse, Mighty Networks
Circle, Discourse
One alternativeMighty Networks
against: Bettermode, Discord, Slack
Bettermode
Five alternativesDiscord, Discourse, Facebook Groups, GroupApp, Skool
against: Circle, Gainsight Customer Communities, Higher Logic Vanilla, Mighty Networks
Bettermode, Circle, Disciple
One alternativeZendesk Community
against: Bettermode, Higher Logic Thrive, Higher Logic Vanilla, Khoros Communities, Mighty Networks
Llama 4 MaverickHigher Logic Vanilla
One alternativeCircle
BettermodeChanged
Three alternativesCircle, Mighty Networks, Skool
Gainsight Customer Communities
Four alternativesBettermode, Influitive, Salesforce Experience Cloud, Zendesk Community
Circle
Three alternativesBettermode, Discourse Basic hosted, Zoho Desk
no first choicenothing named
Qwen 3.7 FlashBettermode
Three alternativesCircle, Mighty Networks, Slack
against: Microsoft Teams
CircleChanged
Two alternativesDiscourse, HubSpot Community
against: Slack
Circle
Three alternativesBettermode, Discourse, Mighty Networks
against: Discord
Bettermode
Three alternativesDiscord, Facebook Groups, Mighty Networks
against: Circle
Bettermode, Circle
Four alternativesDiscourse, Mighty Networks, Salesforce Experience Cloud, Zendesk Community
against: Aurora, Circle, Cisco Community, Discourse, Facebook Groups, Highrise, Hivebrite, Kajabi Communities, LinkedIn Groups, Mendix, SMF, Shopify Forums, Slack, WooBoard/WooCommerce plugins, phpBB
Kimi K2Circle, Discourse
One alternativeBettermode
against: Gainsight Customer Communities, Khoros Communities
CircleChanged
Three alternativesBettermode, Discourse, Mighty Networks
Circle, Discord
Three alternativesBettermode, Discourse, Slack
Bettermode
Three alternativesDiscord, Discourse, Facebook Groups
against: Circle
Bettermode, Circle
Three alternativesDiscourse, HubSpot Service Hub, Zendesk Community
against: Khoros Communities, Salesforce Experience Cloud
against: Circle, Discord, Facebook Groups, Gainsight Customer Communities, Gather, Higher Logic Vanilla, Hivebrite, Influitive, Khoros Communities, Mighty Networks, Salesforce Experience Cloud, Zendesk Community
GLM 4.7 FlashXZendesk Community
Three alternativesGainsight Customer Communities, Influitive, Salesforce Experience Cloud
against: Discord, Higher Logic Vanilla, Khoros Communities
BettermodeChanged
Two alternativesCircle, Mighty Networks
against: Influitive, Zapnito
Circle, Mighty Networks
Three alternativesDiscord, Discourse, Slack
against: Bettermode
Discord, Facebook Groups
Two alternativesSkool, Slack
no first choiceagainst: Facebook Groups, Gainsight Customer Communities, LinkedIn Groups, Reddit Communities, Salesforce Experience Cloud, Twitter Spaces
MiniMax M2.5Circle
Three alternativesBettermode, Discourse, Skool
BettermodeChangedagainst: Higher Logic VanillaDiscord, Skool
Three alternativesCircle, Heartbeat, Mighty Networks
Circle, Discord
Three alternativesDiscourse, Mighty Networks, Slack
no first choicenothing named
Bold is the first choiceAlternatives are counted; the count opens them.What the answer argued against

The record

One row per call: the version string exactly as returned, whether the model searched, sources cited, and latency.
Seventy-two rows: every prompt, every model, every answer.
PromptModelVersion stringTime (UTC)SearchedSourcesLatency
Direct recommendationClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-15 02:57no05 s
Direct recommendationGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-15 04:16yes36 s
Direct recommendationGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-15 03:37yes1723 s
Direct recommendationPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-14 23:05yes205 s
Direct recommendationGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex (asked for grok-4.20-non-reasoning; the API answered as this version)2026-09-15 02:28yes09 s
Direct recommendationMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-15 00:34yes07 s
Direct recommendationDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-15 02:04yes015 s
Direct recommendationLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-15 04:27yes02 s
Direct recommendationQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-15 01:13yes043 s
Direct recommendationKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-15 04:32yes025 s
Direct recommendationGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-15 01:26yes027 s
Direct recommendationMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-15 00:14yes017 s
ParaphraseClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-15 04:24no04 s
ParaphraseGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-14 23:10yes45 s
ParaphraseGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-15 02:03yes921 s
ParaphrasePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-15 02:20yes205 s
ParaphraseGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex (asked for grok-4.20-non-reasoning; the API answered as this version)2026-09-15 01:07yes07 s
ParaphraseMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-15 00:17yes06 s
ParaphraseDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via deepinfra2026-09-15 00:35yes040 s
ParaphraseLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-14 23:14yes01 s
ParaphraseQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-15 01:56no038 s
ParaphraseKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-15 00:36yes027 s
ParaphraseGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-15 00:07yes087 s
ParaphraseMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-15 01:44yes013 s
ComparativeClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-14 23:10yes88 s
ComparativeGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-15 03:23yes35 s
ComparativeGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-15 02:51yes2129 s
ComparativePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-15 01:49yes2010 s
ComparativeGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex (asked for grok-4.20-non-reasoning; the API answered as this version)2026-09-14 23:18yes08 s
ComparativeMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-15 00:23yes08 s
ComparativeDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via deepinfra2026-09-14 23:15yes031 s
ComparativeLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-14 22:53yes02 s
ComparativeQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-15 00:34yes038 s
ComparativeKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-15 01:01yes043 s
ComparativeGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-15 05:01yes038 s
ComparativeMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-15 01:43yes018 s
Budget constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-15 02:39yes97 s
Budget constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-15 02:04yes44 s
Budget constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-15 01:04yes3233 s
Budget constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-15 00:20yes2017 s
Budget constrainedGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex (asked for grok-4.20-non-reasoning; the API answered as this version)2026-09-15 02:06yes07 s
Budget constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-14 22:55yes08 s
Budget constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-15 04:44yes017 s
Budget constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-15 00:52yes02 s
Budget constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-15 04:15yes047 s
Budget constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-15 04:05yes031 s
Budget constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-15 03:20yes034 s
Budget constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-15 04:46no08 s
Scale constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-15 04:40no07 s
Scale constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-15 00:44no06 s
Scale constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-14 23:45yes1222 s
Scale constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-14 23:58yes178 s
Scale constrainedGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex (asked for grok-4.20-non-reasoning; the API answered as this version)2026-09-15 03:53yes08 s
Scale constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-15 02:16yes010 s
Scale constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-15 02:56yes016 s
Scale constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-14 23:18yes02 s
Scale constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-15 01:40yes028 s
Scale constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-14 23:01yes043 s
Scale constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-15 03:07yes0105 s
Scale constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-14 22:52no08 s
Negative framingClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-15 01:39yes2712 s
Negative framingGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-15 01:07yes55 s
Negative framingGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-14 23:26yes1623 s
Negative framingPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-15 00:22yes205 s
Negative framingGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex (asked for grok-4.20-non-reasoning; the API answered as this version)2026-09-15 02:53yes09 s
Negative framingMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-14 23:57yes010 s
Negative framingDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-15 03:02yes021 s
Negative framingLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-15 04:20yes01 s
Negative framingQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-15 00:44yes073 s
Negative framingKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-14 23:06yes050 s
Negative framingGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-15 00:02yes040 s
Negative framingMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-14 23:16yes015 s

Normalization in this category

Every judgment call made between the raw labels and the numbers above, listed so it is visible and reversible.

ShowHide
Category-scoped readings
Gainsight read as Gainsight Customer Communities
Gainsight CC read as Gainsight Customer Communities
Gainsight Communities read as Gainsight Customer Communities
Gainsight Community read as Gainsight Customer Communities
Khoros read as Khoros Communities
Salesforce read as Salesforce Experience Cloud
Salesforce Community Cloud read as Salesforce Experience Cloud
Unresolved, counted raw
Aurora (IgniteTech)
Canny.io
Cisco Community
Discourse Basic hosted
Discourse Cloud
Drry
Forumbee
HubSpot Community
Lounjee
MS Teams
Mendix
SMF
Shopify Forums
Sitejabber Business Suite
Slack or Discord
Tribe.so
Tribes
Twitter Spaces
Website Toolbox
WooBoard/WooCommerce plugins
Discontinued, still offered
No shut-down product was recommended here.
← Client onboardingContact center →