We are a B2B consulting firm and we use Hoop.la for our online client community. This has allowed us to evolve away from hourly and project services to a much more efficient and interactive model where all clients have access to a library of documents and videos ("clips" in Hoop.la terms), discussion forums, calendars, live chat events, etc. You create permission groups ("circles") and set what members can and can't do; new members are assigned to one or more circles. Very easy to set up and customize even if, like me, you do not know a lot about CSS or HTML. Their support staff are amazing - they know the product inside and out and they are fast, cheerful and professional. Our community is professional rather than social in nature so we needed some customization to meet the needs of our clients, and they accomplished these on time and on budget, with great results. I highly recommend Hoop.la. I stumbled on them when looking for a live chat system, and then realized they did that plus almost everything else we needed to make a new online community a reality.

Easy set up ' customization; permissioning; moderation; live chat; forums, and calendars, A+ support

It solved a huge visibility issue and we've been able to increase engagement for online events significantly. It has created a much higher awareness of our work and what we have to offer.

It is just too easy to use and manage as an administrator. It is really an excellent communication, collaboration, and marketing platform that enables us to grow and reach our audience seamlessly.

I do wish I could cross post between subgroups and the main page.

Hoop.la has definitely given us the opportunity to create a very exclusive community for our members. I will admit that the RightStart process was not as intuitive as I'd hoped, and it's more of a "learn as you go" type of experience, but we're super excited with what we're going to be able to accomplish!

The robust set of features and customization is incredibly attractive. The sky is the limit when it comes to creating an environment exactly how you envisioned it.

The backend of the site could be a lot more intuitive. There are lots of workarounds that you need to do in order to implement certain actions. It's critical that you have a staff of Dev and Design cohorts working on this project - the functionality of Hoop.la on its own is not enough.

We completed an exhaustive search for the solution to our secure partner portal. We had a clear list of requirements that we needed, and we shared those requirements with a variety of vendors. We narrowed it down to three vendors. The demonstration of Hoop.la was the third we completed. Because I work for a large, name brand company, the other two vendors were too busy trying to upsell into the larger organization, and didn't take the time to find out what I was looking for and needed. They had an agenda that I wasn't really part of. Not Hoop.la. Their agenda was to understand what we wanted, and show us how to do it. Hoop.la listened to our needs, clearly demonstrated how to do what we needed, answered millions of questions and made suggestions about best practices. The contract and pricing process was simple, the setup was quick and the ongoing customer support is incredible. We had our portal ready to done in record time. A great experience at the beginning, middle and I don't see an end in sight! We use Hoop.la to run multiple partner groups, all of which are interrelated under the larger organization of strategic alliances, but all offer unique solutions. As a result, we opted to use hidden groups that fall under the umbrella of our larger all-inclusive partner portal, but provide the ability for each partner type to quickly access only the information that is most relevant for their needs. We are adding new partners regularly and appreciate how easy it is to add new groups and make them usable in short order. Because we had scoped out a phased approach, we needed the ability to turn on or off features that we aren't currently using - without having to re-architect the entire portal. Even more Hoop.la is constantly innovating, so we are pleased to see new features rolled out before we can even ask for them to be considered.

Easy to use once you get over a short learning curve. Our team is not technical, and we have limited technical support from the larger team, yet we had no problem getting things up and running.

User documentation could be better, especially in the area of registration and enrollment and theme creation.

Crowdstack has helped us determine the best options for our online community. They have been a wonderful resource and very responsive to emails and questions as we look to expand our community reach!

The product takes a bit of time to get familiar with, but it's definitely worth it!