Skip to content
Z Zendikt
K
Customer Community Software · Rank #4 of 10

Khoros Communities review and pricing

Enterprise community platform with social-management heritage.

By Khoros, LLC (Vista Equity Partners) · Founded 2001 · Austin, TX · pe backed

Khoros Communities is the enterprise community platform, with heritage in the Lithium Technologies community software (founded 2001) and Spredfast social-management business that merged in 2018 to form Khoros under Vista Equity Partners ownership. Khoros covers community forums, ideation, knowledge bases, social media management, messaging, and brand-side customer engagement at Fortune 500 scale. Strengths: deepest enterprise community feature set in the category, mature integrations with social channels and CRM, broad Fortune 500 installed base (telco, financial services, consumer electronics), and a substantial professional services and customer success organization. Trade-offs: Vista Equity ownership since 2018 has driven a cost-restructure cycle through 2022-2023 with reported customer support quality declines, the product UX is dated relative to Circle and Bettermode, pricing is opaque and high relative to mid-market, and the multi-product architecture (Communities, Care, Marketing, Messaging) creates buyer-side complexity.

Visit Khoros Communities Vendor pricing Compare to Gainsight inSided
Best for

Fortune 500 enterprise brand-side community programs (5,000-500,000+ employees) requiring deepest feature set, integrated social and CRM, and substantial professional services support.

Worst for

SMB and mid-market buyers (Circle, Bettermode, and Discourse fit better at far lower cost), modern UX seekers (Circle is cleaner), or customer-success-anchored communities (Gainsight inSided ties to CS workflow better).

Vendor Trust Score

Is Khoros Communities a trustworthy vendor?

6.0/10
Mixed
Pricing transparency
Published rates; no hidden fees
4.5
Contract fairness
Reasonable terms; no auto-renew traps
6.0
Incident response
How they handle outages and breaches
7.0
Post-acquisition behavior
Customer treatment after M&A or PE
5.5
Executive stability
Leadership churn over 24 months
6.5
Roadmap honesty
Public commitments held
6.5
Trust signal log
  • 2018-10-19
    Lithium and Spredfast merged under Vista Equity Partners to form Khoros
  • 2022-06-15
    Vista cost-restructure cycle; layoffs reported
    Customer support quality declines noted by enterprise customers through 2022-2023.
  • 2023-08-15
    Enterprise reputation reportedly mixed in renewal cycles
Vendor Trust is scored independently of product quality. A great product from an unfair vendor still earns a low trust score.
Review Intelligence

What 240 reviews actually say

Synthesized from G2, Capterra, Reddit, Trustpilot. Patterns >15% prevalence shown.

Last synthesized
2026-04-29

Praise patterns

  • Deepest enterprise feature set
    78% →
  • Mature social and CRM integrations
    71% →
  • Broad Fortune 500 installed base
    64% →

Complaint patterns

  • Support quality declined post Vista restructure
    64% ↑
  • UX dated vs modern platforms
    51% ↑
  • Pricing opaque and high
    47% ↑
  • Multi-product complexity confusing
    41% →
Sentiment trend (6 months)
69/100 -1 pts
12
01
02
03
04
05
Patterns are extracted from review corpus and human-verified. We surface trends, not anecdotes.
Verified Pricing

What buyers actually pay

87 anonymized deal disclosures · last updated 2026-05-01

Contribute your deal price
Company size Median annual
Communities Standard $96,000
Communities Enterprise $240,000
Bundle (Communities + Care + Marketing) $540,000
Verified pricing is crowdsourced from buyers under anonymity guarantees. Vendor-listed prices are validated against actual deals quarterly.
Compliance & Security

Auto-verified certifications

Verified 2026-05-01
SOC 2 Type II
ISO 27001
HIPAA
GDPR
CCPA
PCI DSS
FedRAMP

Editorial: Strengths

  • Deepest enterprise community feature set
  • Mature social and CRM integrations
  • Broad Fortune 500 installed base
  • Substantial professional services org
  • Brand-side customer engagement depth
  • Mature ideation and feedback module

Editorial: Weaknesses

  • Vista cost-restructure cycle 2022-2023 hurt support quality
  • UX dated vs Circle and Bettermode
  • Pricing opaque and high relative to mid-market
  • Multi-product complexity (Communities, Care, Marketing)
  • Enterprise reputation mixed in 2024-2025

Key features & integrations

  • +Community forums and Q&A
  • +Ideation and feedback
  • +Knowledge base module
  • +Social media management bundle (with Care)
  • +Brand engagement workflows
  • +Reporting and analytics
  • +SSO and SAML
  • +Multi-tenant enterprise architecture
80+ integrations
SalesforceMicrosoft DynamicsZendeskSlackAdobe Experience ManagerSprinklr (competitive)
Geography supported
Global; strongest in US, EU, UK, APAC
Best fit
1,000-500,000+ employees · Fortune 500 enterprise brand-side programs
Editorial deep-dive

Read our full ranking of Customer Community Software

Khoros Communities ranks #4 in our editorial review of 10 customer community software platforms. The deep-dive covers methodology, comparison tables, decision matrix, migration scoring, and FAQs.

Read the full ranking

Closest alternatives in Customer Community Software

#3
Gainsight inSided
Customer-success-anchored community platform owned by Gainsight.
★ 4.5 opaque
#5
Bevy
Event-driven community platform for chapter and conference programs.
★ 4.5 opaque
#2
Discourse
Open-source forum platform dominant in technical communities.
★ 4.4 public
Help the next buyer

Contribute your verified deal price

Pricing in B2B software is opaque because vendors want it that way. Verified buyer prices fix that, anonymously. Share what you actually paid for Khoros Communities; we’ll add it to the verified pricing dataset on this page (with company size band only, no identifying details).

Submit anonymously