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FeverBee Intelligence

Independent research on how enterprise communities perform.

We undertake comprehensive research on community platforms, evolving customer needs, and analyses of how community is perceived and measured. Commission us to analyse your community, your sector, or your audience. 

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Why we publish

Decisions Are Being Made Without Data

Too often, community teams are choosing platforms, setting targets and defending budgets with limited independent analysis. We have spent 16 years gathering data on enterprise communities.

Which platform should you select?

Our platform reviews score each platform on the same nine capabilities, in a live admin sandbox wherever a vendor will give us one, so you can compare like for like.

How do you compare to others?

An answer rate or a retention figure only means something against a comparison set. Ours comes from the communities we have measured across 350+ organisations.

What should you do about AI?

Search traffic is falling and organisations want to know what their community’s knowledge is worth to their AI plans. We share the latest trends and cutting-edge research.

What we publish

The Research Programme

This is what we produce each year. Some of it is free, some sits behind an email address, and the deeper editions are paid.

1

The Buzz Report

Our annual review of the enterprise community platform market. The 2026 edition scores 14 platforms against a nine-capability rubric, with the evidence grade shown next to every score.

Read this if you are choosing, renewing or leaving a platform.

2

Platform reviews

Long-form written and video reviews of individual platforms: Khoros, Higher Logic Vanilla and Thrive, Discourse, Gainsight CC and Gradual so far, with more in production.

Read these once you have a shortlist.

3

The Platform Comparison Tool

Score the major platforms against the community model you are building. It is free and takes a few minutes.

Use it before you write an RFP.

4

The Modern Member Report

We surveyed a representative sample of 1400+ Americans to determine how they prefer to engage in communities, what features they prefer to use, and how they want to engage with brands.

Read these to see what your peers are doing.

5

Benchmarks and datasets

Health, impact and ROI benchmarks built from our client work. They set the targets in every diagnostic and strategy we run, and the aggregate numbers appear on the blog.

Clients get the full set.

Want the reports first?

New research goes to our newsletter before it goes anywhere else. More than 20,000 community professionals read it.

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Selected studies

Research You Can Read Today

A sample of what we have published. Everything here is free to read, and each one changed how we advise clients.

The Buzz Report 2024

We evaluated six enterprise community platforms and gathered satisfaction scores from the people who use them. The 2026 edition, covering 14 platforms, is due in September 2026.

Download the report →

Enterprise Community Platform Reviews 2026

We reviewed Khoros, Higher Logic Vanilla and Thrive, Discourse, Gainsight CC and Gradual in writing and on video, each scored on the same nine capabilities.

Read the reviews →

What Is A Login, Post Or Download Worth?

This analysis puts a monetary value on individual community behaviours, using data from the communities we have measured.

Read the analysis →

The Modern Member Report

We surveyed 1,400+ people about what they want from brand communities. The results show a sharp divide in who engages, how they engage, and what they get from it.

Read the report →

Is Engagement Declining In Hosted Communities?

We looked at traffic and activity data across hosted communities: what is falling, what is not, and what it means for your targets.

Read the analysis →

Community Benchmarks And Standards

This is the benchmark set we use to score community health: response rates, answer rates, retention and more. It is free to download.

Get the benchmarks →

How the research is done

Same Rubric, Every Platform

01

Sandbox

Where a vendor gives us a live admin sandbox, we test every capability ourselves. Where they do not, we say so and grade the evidence lower.

02

Rubric

Every platform is scored on the same nine capabilities against a platform-neutral 1 to 10 rubric. The justification for each score is published beside it.

03

Survey

We ask the people running communities what they pay, what breaks and what they would change. We publish the verbatim answers, not a vendor’s summary of them.

04

Publish

The written review, the video and the comparison tool are updated together, so the score on the site matches the score in the report.

Reach

Who Reads It

20k+

newsletter subscribers

350+

organisations in the dataset

14

platforms scored in 2026

16+

years of community data

The research draws on our work with community teams at Apple, Google, Microsoft, SAP, Salesforce and 350+ other organisations, and it is read by the vendors they buy from.

“

“FeverBee really went into the data, identifying trends, researching what our members responded to, helping us move to a new platform. They helped us look at what we were doing, provided insights, and created a detailed plan for us.”

Manuel Oliveira, Community Manager, Pipedrive

“

“FeverBee helped us develop a rock-solid ROI for the activity happening in our community. They analysed the value of alumni spending time in our community and put a value to each specific behaviour.”

Georgina Donahue, Director of Community, Pragmatic Institute

Commission Research Or Sponsor A Study

If you are a platform vendor, or a community team with a question the sector needs answered, tell us what it is.

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