TL;DR – Our analysis of the top 13 community platforms is now available here.
What’s the best community platform in 2026?
Back in 2024, we published our most detailed breakdown of community platforms at the time.
Looking back, so much has changed. Khoros imploded, new platforms arose, and AI is becoming increasingly central to the community management experience.
Today, after six months of platform reviews, sandbox verifications, and speaking to dozens of customers across almost every platform, we can finally publish our Buzz Report 2026.
It covers 13 platforms (vs. 6 previously) and broadens the evaluation criteria.
We evaluate each platform against nine objective platform capabilities (Discussions & Q&A, Ideation, Content and Knowledge, Events, Gamification, Moderation, AI, Mobile, and Analytics/Reporting), and two subjective criteria (Customer Experience and Vendor Trajectory).
In my opinion, the result is the most comprehensive community platform guide available today.
If you want to check that you’re on the right platform, how different platforms compare, and which platform best suits your needs, download this report!
A huge thanks to Gainsight for once again sponsoring the Buzz Report 2026 and making it available to all for free.
Note on sponsorship: Gainsight was invited to sponsor only after the scoring was complete and had no editorial input.
Note on AI usage: AI was used extensively for the design and some points of technical verification (notably on AI features/MCPs, etc.), not for the main editorial.