Bettermode vs Salesforce Experience Cloud: In-Depth Analysis for Community Builders

Whether you're an emerging business or an established enterprise, the community platform you choose for your online community can significantly impact its success. Two platforms that have been used by brands for building community are Bettermode (formerly known as Tribe) and Salesforce Experience Cloud (DXP).

First, let's check out a quick overview of the comparison, before diving into a summary of each tool:

Bettermode: The All-in-One Community Platform

Bettermode has carved a niche for itself as a comprehensive community platform. It offers an all-in-one solution that includes forums, Q&A sections, ideation, roadmaps, and help centers. The platform is designed to be user-friendly, with professionally-made templates and a powerful design studio for customization.

Key Features

• All-in-One Community Engagement: Bettermode offers a centralized platform that brings together forums, Q&A, ideation, and more. This is particularly beneficial for businesses looking to offer a seamless user experience.
• Premade Templates: The platform provides ready-to-use templates that can help you launch your community in just a few days. These templates cover common use cases and can be customized to suit your specific needs.
• Customization with Design Studio: Bettermode's Design Studio allows you to create unique layouts and designs, offering a level of customization that can be implemented in a matter of days.
• App Store: The platform features an increasing number of apps that can enhance your community's functionality. From analytics tools to social media integrations, the App Store has it all.
• Developer-Friendly: With API, webhooks, and a Liquid Template engine, Bettermode is a developer's paradise. These features make it easier to integrate the platform with your existing systems and tools.
• Embed Tools: Bettermode offers tools that allow you to embed your community into other platforms with a customizable UI, providing a continuous experience for users.
• Pricing: The platform starts at $599 per month, offering a wide array of features that provide value for money.

👉 Primary Use Cases

• Customer self-service
• Scaling customer support and success
• Product ideation and feedback
• Customer marketing and growth

Salesforce Experience Cloud

Salesforce Experience Cloud is a part of Salesforce's extensive suite of products. It offers a community platform but lacks the ability to centralize different engagement tools, which can be a drawback for businesses.

Key Features

• Customization: Salesforce offers a number of customization options. However, these can take weeks to implement, making it less agile compared to Bettermode.
• Built-in Analytics: The platform comes with built-in analytics tools that can help you track user engagement and other key metrics.
• Integration: Being a Salesforce product, it integrates seamlessly with other Salesforce solutions, offering a unified experience.
• Limited Embedding: Unlike Bettermode, Salesforce offers limited options for embedding your community into other platforms.
• Pricing: Salesforce starts from $2 per login/month or $5 per member/month, making it a more expensive option for communities with a large number of members.

👉 Primary Use Cases

• Discussions and Q&A
• Customer self-service
• Knowledge base

If you’ve researched some platforms already, you’ll already have seen there are significant differences between each one. 

But what are the biggest differentiators? Let's take a look in the following sections below.

1. Templates and user experience

Bettermode 

Whether you're an administrator, moderator, or community member, Bettermode’s platform is designed to provide an intuitive and seamless experience. The platform offers a wealth of customization options, a stunning template gallery, and an extensive set of social community management tools. But that's not all. An App Store is available for effortless integrations with third-party business apps and straightforward embedding options.

Imagine having different spaces for various community needs, from forum discussions and ideation to help centers and events. Bettermode offers exactly that. It's not just about providing a platform; it's about delivering a holistic experience that allows for different community engagement options like product roadmaps and events.

With all these features under one roof, Bettermode succeeds in user engagement. The platform helps create a thriving online community that encourages peer-to-peer support and interaction. This community dynamic enables engagement, helping businesses to gather and use user-generated content and drive organic traffic.

Salesforce Experience Cloud

Salesforce Experience Cloud aims to interact with customers across multiple channels, be it websites, portals, or applications. It understands the importance of engaging any audience rapidly and offers interactive, industry-specific sites and apps for just that.

Salesforce Experience Cloud streamlines the user journey by consolidating all data in one place. This allows the delivery of personalized content quickly and makes it easy for customers to access their data and take necessary actions.

In a world where trends change in the blink of an eye, scalability and adaptability are crucial. Salesforce Experience Cloud offers the luxury to evolve quickly using either clicks or code. A host of easy-to-use tools, coupled with AI and a variety of apps, means the platform can easily adapt and scale.

🔎 The verdict: As an all-in-one customer community platform, Bettermode offers a more intuitive and seamless user experience through its easy-to-navigate interface and tools tailored for admins, moderators and members. Reviewers praise Bettermode's focus on UX, with the platform meeting business needs better than competitors. In contrast, Salesforce Experience Cloud, while feature-rich, can have a steeper learning curve due to the complexity of the product suite.

2. Customization

Bettermode 

One of Bettermode’s key strengths lies in its customizable features that allow you to truly make it your own. Here's a deep dive into how you can tailor Bettermode to align perfectly with your brand and community objectives.

The block-based builder

Designing the layout of your community can often be a daunting task, but this is made easy with Bettermode's block-based builder. You get to choose from a range of blocks, including text, image, video, forms, and social feeds. Simply drag and drop these blocks wherever you want to create a layout that’s not just visually appealing but also serves your community's specific needs. 

Ready-to-use templates

If you need to roll out your community space in record time, Bettermode's premade templates come to the rescue. Whether for events, ideation, job boards, or product updates, the templates are designed with a nuanced understanding of what works best for each category. And don’t worry; you can tweak these templates to reflect your brand’s unique style and color schemes.

An ecosystem of apps

Bettermode’s app ecosystem opens doors to features like polls, surveys, quizzes, events, blogs, and forums. Your community can now be an interactive space where members engage deeply with the content and with each other. Need to integrate with business tools? No problem. Bettermode allows seamless integration with popular business software like HubSpot, Salesforce, and Zendesk, effectively becoming an extension of your existing tech stack.

Developer platform

For those who require an even greater level of customization, Bettermode's developer platform is a treasure trove. It offers APIs, webhooks, SDKs, and code snippets that can help you extend your community capabilities beyond the usual. Whether it's a unique feature that you want to introduce or an external service you want to integrate with, the developer platform provides all the tools you’ll need to build custom solutions.

Salesforce Experience Cloud

Salesforce Experience Cloud also has robust customization options. In the following sections, we'll delve into its customization features—from user-friendly templates to drag-and-drop builders and advanced coding frameworks.

Templates

Salesforce also offers pre-built templates to kick-start the community building process. These templates cater to a broad spectrum of needs—be it help centers, account portals, partner relationships, or even specialized industry solutions. Their Experience Builder allows for low-code customization, to adjust the site layout, navigation, and content.

Lightning community builder

The Lightning Community Builder uses a drag-and-drop interface where you can pick from a variety of Lightning components, to add text, images, video content, social feeds, or forms. Branding sets also enable the application of different styles and themes.

Visualforce

Visualforce is a framework to build dynamic, complex pages using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Apex. This does require some coding, but the result is complete control over appearance and functionality. It will integrate with external services and data sources for an even more cohesive ecosystem.

🔎 The verdict: Bettermode enables greater customization through its block-based builder for customizable layouts, ready-made templates for quick setup, a wide range of apps to expand functionality, and developer tools like APIs and webhooks. This allows you to create a tailored community aligned to your brand identity. While Salesforce also provides some customization via templates, drag-and-drop builder and coding, they may require more time and technical resources.

3. Embed tools

Bettermode 

From easy-to-use widgets and robust APIs to a bustling App Store brimming with third-party integrations, Bettermode allows you to effortlessly bring your online community to life. Whether a business or an experienced developer, there's something here for everyone to create a unified and engaging customer community platform.

Widgets: Your shortcut to community engagement

Widgets are an effortless way to bring community features like discussions, polls, and events to a website, Bettermode's widgets are your go-to solution. These are compact pieces of code that can be directly embedded into a site's HTML, allowing the display of an array of community elements. Not only do these widgets bring valuable content, but they're also fully customizable. 

APIs: For tailored integrations and advanced workflows

For businesses looking to create highly customized community features, Bettermode's APIs provide the flexibility needed. APIs act as a bridge between Bettermode's platform and a website or application, enabling seamless communication and data sharing. This means you can create custom workflows, integrate unique features, and design the exact experience you envision for your community. 

The App Store: Connect with third-party tools you love

Bettermode understands that your community doesn't exist in a vacuum—it's part of a broader business ecosystem. That's why their App Store offers easy integration with popular third-party services like HubSpot, Salesforce, Zendesk, Mailchimp, and Slack, among others.

Salesforce Experience Cloud

Salesforce Experience Cloud also has applications and services, to enrich users' experience. In this section, we will explore the different methods to achieve this.

Canvas

Canvas enables secure communication between Salesforce and the external application, encapsulating it within an iframe. 

Lightning Web Components

Lightning Web Components (LWC) are another tool in Salesforce’s toolbox, providing a set of custom HTML elements optimized for Salesforce. They follow modern web standards and use JavaScript to create performant UI components. LWC can connect to external services, pull in additional data, or even embed videos, charts, and graphs directly into an Experience Cloud site. 

Power BI

You can also embed Power BI, a business analytics service, directly into the Experience Cloud platform. The process involves creating a single-page application (SPA) that hosts Power BI reports.

🔎 The verdict: Bettermode offers easy embedding into external sites through versatile widgets, and advanced custom integrations via APIs. It also has an App Store for third-party integrations. Salesforce Experience Cloud has some embed options like Canvas and Lightning Web Components, but they are more limited compared to Bettermode's extensive toolkit.

4. Apps and integrations

Bettermode

Bettermode has all the best apps and integrations that bridge the gaps in your tech stack, which empowers you to craft an all-inclusive, seamless customer experience. Let's dive deeper into how you can make the most of Bettermode's apps and integrations.

The power of automation: Zapier and Appcues

With Bettermode's integration with Zapier and Appcues you can effortlessly connect Bettermode with hundreds of other platforms through Zapier, automating routine tasks and data transfers. Appcues further adds a layer of personalization, allowing you to build custom user experiences that align with your brand values and objectives.

Transform customer service: Salesforce and Zendesk

If you’re struggling with keeping your customer relationship management (CRM) and support systems in sync with your community data, the Salesforce and Zendesk integrations are your solution. These powerful integrations offer real-time data syncing, ensuring that your customer service and CRM departments always have up-to-date information. This results in quicker issue resolution, leading to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Drive informed decisions: Amplitude and FulStory

Knowing how your community interacts with your platform is the cornerstone of optimizing performance. Integrations like Amplitude and FulStory offer in-depth insights into user behavior and community metrics. From individual user pathways to broader engagement trends, these tools give you a panoramic view of your community’s dynamics, helping you create informed strategies.

Custom integrations: API and Webhooks

Sometimes, you need something tailor-made to suit specific business needs. That’s where Bettermode's API and webhooks come into play. With these, you can create your own custom integrations, whether it’s connecting to a niche tool or building a bespoke community feature. The sky's the limit when it comes to customizability.

Explore and expand: Bettermode's community page

If you’re ever curious about what new integrations are available or want to request an addition, Bettermode’s community page is your go-to resource. Here, you’ll find a list of available apps and integrations and a responsive team ready to listen to your needs.

Salesforce Experience Cloud

Salesforce Experience Cloud also integrates with a host of apps and tools to provide a multi-dimensional experience to customers, partners, and employees.

Salesforce CMS

Salesforce CMS allows you to target audiences with content tailored based on your CRM data. Now you can align your content strategy effortlessly with customer data, delivering meaningful experiences at every touchpoint.

Salesforce Connect

Data is often scattered across various platforms and databases. Salesforce Connect eliminates this hurdle by allowing you to access and modify data from multiple sources without the need for copying or syncing.

Salesforce Lightning

Salesforce Lightning serves as a comprehensive framework to design for mobile or desktop, embed custom apps, or create unique publisher actions.

Salesforce AppExchange

For businesses looking for out-of-the-box solutions, Salesforce AppExchange allows you to install an array of apps and solutions designed to address common challenges. Additionally, you can explore industry-specific Lightning Bolts — templates, process flows, and components aimed at resolving specific problems within your industry.

API and Webhooks

Salesforce Experience Cloud provides API and webhooks for developing tailor-made integrations.

🔎 The verdict: Bettermode allows easy integration with hundreds of business apps for workflow automation, CRM and helpdesk syncing, analytics and more. It also has developer tools for custom integrations aligned to specific needs. While Salesforce Experience Cloud offers some integrations like CMS, Lightning and AppExchange, it has less flexibility for customization of the actual interface.

5. Developer platform

Bettermode

In the age of digital customer experiences, a unified community platform is a game-changer. Bettermode understands this and goes the extra mile by providing a developer platform, designed to give developers the tools they need to extend and enhance community experiences.

Get complete flexibility with GraphQL API

GraphQL API is at the core of Bettermode's developer platform, providing a strong and adaptable API for all your data needs. You can use it to execute a range of operations, from basic CRUD tasks (Create, Read, Update, Delete) to advanced queries, such as filtering, sorting, and pagination. What does this mean for you? Absolute control over how you interact with resources like members, posts, comments, and spaces.

Stay in the know with Webhooks

Webhooks act as your eyes and ears, notifying you of events happening within the Bettermode platform. These triggers can be used to initiate actions or workflows in your systems or even in third-party services. Imagine automating an email each time a new member joins your community, or updating a CRM entry whenever a purchase is made. 

Get creative with Liquid Template Engine

The Liquid template engine allows you to customize the platform even further. Inject custom scripts to create dynamic content or implement logic within your community pages. From displaying personalized messages to conditional elements and even calculations, the sky's the limit.

Tailor-Made Experiences with React SDK

Looking to develop custom user interfaces that resonate with your community? Bettermode's React SDK has got you covered. This software development kit helps you create custom user experiences suited for any device. You can even embed third-party apps to extend functionalities and offer more to your community members.

In summary, Bettermode's developer platform is not just an add-on; it’s an ecosystem that empowers developers to bring their community-building visions to life.

Salesforce Experience Cloud

Salesforce Experience Cloud's developer platform has features and functionalities that make it customizable.

Experience Builder

The Experience Builder is a low-code development environment that allows you to create and tailor data-driven websites, portals, and applications. Drag and drop components, add fresh content, and adjust settings to meet your brand's needs. 

Salesforce Connect

This data integration tool allows you to access and modify data from external sources without the hassle of copying or syncing. Integrate data effortlessly from legacy databases, ERP systems, or third-party APIs.

Flexibility with APIs and Webhooks

If off-the-shelf solutions don't cut it for you, Salesforce Experience Cloud also offers API and webhook capabilities for custom integrations.

🔎 The verdict: Bettermode's developer platform offers advanced customization via GraphQL API, webhooks, Liquid templates and React SDK. You can build custom experiences, integrate external services, automate workflows and more. Salesforce Experience Cloud has tools like Experience Builder and Lightning, but less control compared to the expansive capabilities of Bettermode's dev platform.

6. Pricing comparison

Bettermode

Bettermode offers a flexible pricing model, with plans starting from $599 per month. This comes with a wide array of features out-of-the-box including:

• Advanced apps
• Single sign-on (SSO)
• Fully white-label
• API and webhooks
• Staging environment
• Customer success manager

Alternatively, there is an Enterprise package, with pricing available on request, for large businesses or those in regulated industries. This comes with:

• Enterprise-grade security
• Data residency
• Audit and activity log
• Uptime SLA
• Master service agreement
• SAML authentication

Put us to the test with a demo, and get started with a free-trial.

Salesforce Experience Cloud

Salesforce Experience Cloud has different pricing plans depending on the features and use cases you need. Here are some of the pricing options:

• Self-service: This plan allows you to create connected portals and communities for your customers to access self-service resources, such as knowledge articles, case management, and chat. The pricing for this plan starts from $5per user per month.
• Partner Relationship Management: This plan enables you to empower and collaborate with your indirect sales teams, such as distributors, resellers, and agents. You can provide them with tools to manage leads, opportunities, orders, and more. The pricing for this plan starts from $25 per user per month.
• External Apps: This plan lets you build custom portals and sites to engage your external audiences, such as prospects, alumni, or donors. You can create branded experiences with data integration, personalization, and analytics. The pricing for this plan starts from $75 per user per month.
• Salesforce Content Management System: This plan helps you deliver connected content and sites across every digital experience. You can create, manage, and distribute content from a single platform. The pricing for this plan starts from $15 per user per month.

🔎 The verdict: Bettermode has flexible and scalable pricing starting at $599/month with robust features included out-of-the-box. Salesforce pricing is user-based starting at $5/user/month but can get expensive for large communities. Bettermode offers more value especially for large, customized communities.

7. Customer reviews and testimonials

Bettermode 

Want to hear about Bettermode from the people who know it best—its customers? Bettermode is not just another customer community platform; it’s an all-in-one solution aimed at enhancing customer experience, boosting engagement, and building lasting relationships. Below are some reviews from satisfied customers that prove just how much of a game-changer Bettermode is.

User-friendly and flexible

"Bettermode is a very easy platform to use, both for Admins and users. The interface is clean and easily configurable. In terms of establishing an easy-to-use community for our clients, Bettermode has fit like a glove! The Bettermode support team are very helpful regarding improvements and even with specific requirements; they will try to make the upgrade when possible."

Excellent alternative to Facebook Groups

"Bettermode provides an excellent alternative to Facebook groups. It's very easy to set up, very easy to customize, and very easy to manage. It's also very affordable compared to other platforms. I highly recommend Bettermode for anyone who wants to create a community around their brand or product."

A comprehensive review by Ciroapp

"I personally believe Bettermode is run by an amazing leadership team. They also have good customer support in place. I spent 2-3 days writing this review of the Bettermode community software platform because I believe in this product. So, give it a try."

Whether you are a brand looking to create a robust community around your product or an organization aiming to drive higher customer engagement, these reviews indicate that Bettermode is a compelling choice. In a crowded marketplace, it's genuine user feedback like this that sets Bettermode apart. 😊

📗 You can see more customer success stories here too. 

Salesforce Experience Cloud

Salesforce Experience Cloud is a digital experience platform that helps you create connected portals, communities, and sites for your customers, partners, and employees. It has different pricing plans depending on the features and use cases you need. Here are some of the reviews from satisfied customers who have used Salesforce Experience Cloud:

• A verified current user of Salesforce Experience Cloud wrote on Gartner that “Overall, Salesforce Experience Cloud is a comprehensive and feature-rich digital experience platform that empowers businesses to create personalized and engaging experiences for their customers, partners, and employees. However, organizations should carefully consider their specific needs, resources, and budget constraints before committing to the platform.”
• A reviewer on Capterra said that “Overall: I have noticed it is much easier to contact a long list of patients per day and speeds us the process by making the call data more organized. Pros: I thought Salesforce to be very user friendly and easily navigable."
• A reviewer on TechRadar gave Salesforce Sales Cloud CRM a 4.5 out of 5 stars rating and concluded that “Salesforce Sales Cloud is one of the most robust and customizable CRM options available on the market.”

🔎 The verdict: Bettermode draws consistent praise for its usability, flexibility, features and support. Users highlight it as being an easy platform for both admins and members. Salesforce Experience Cloud has mixed reviews, with some users citing inconsistent support and a steep learning curve.

Bettermode vs Salesforce Experience Cloud: The final verdict

As you can see, overall, Bettermode clearly stands out as the more comprehensive and flexible community engagement platform between the two options. While Salesforce Experience Cloud offers some valuable features, Bettermode's user-friendly interface, extensive customization capabilities, and range of embedding tools provide community builders with an unparalleled toolkit to create bespoke experiences.

Bettermode enables businesses to unify different community touchpoints like forums, Q&A, ideation, help centers, and more under one roof. This creates a seamless community hub that encourages deeper engagement and organic growth. 

In contrast, Salesforce Experience Cloud caters more to standalone forums and lacks Bettermode's ability to bring different solutions together. It is also more suited for existing Salesforce customers as opposed to those looking for an independent platform.

Moreover, Bettermode's stellar customer support, transparent pricing, and positive user reviews give it an edge over Salesforce Experience Cloud. The availability of multiple contact channels, expert guidance, and incorporation of user feedback into product development has led to consistently satisfied customers.

For businesses looking to build an interactive, customized, and brand-aligned online community, Bettermode is undoubtedly the top choice. Its holistic feature set, intuitive UX, agile workflows, developer-friendly integrations, and excellent customer service make it the ideal community platform.

If we’ve convinced you to put Bettermode on your shortlist, you can see Bettermode in action for yourself here.

Looking for more?

📖 Check out our resources and elevate your community engagement skills:

• Community Management with Generative AI (+ 10 ChatGPT Prompts)
• Your Essential Guide To Customer Engagement Platforms in 2023
• Selecting a community platform? Consider this 15-point checklist