Top 5 Best Community Chat Platforms for Engaged Collaboration

Community chat platforms are virtual spaces where people meet, connect, and build relationships with friends, colleagues, customers, vendors, and other stakeholders.

Finding the right community chat platform for your business is important because it streamlines interactions and helps sustain a thriving online community. It should facilitate your business needs to be affordable and scalable enough to accommodate your growing online community.

There are countless online community chat platforms on the market today, but unsurprisingly, the best and most recommended are the oldies but goodies. These platforms have been around for at least a decade and have streamlined their processes to help you grow and engage with your community.

This guide shares the top online community chat platforms you can use to create and nurture a strong and engaged online community.

1. Facebook Groups

Facebook Groups is a familiar community chat app embedded on Facebook. Because Facebook is already familiar among many audiences, it’s easy to create Facebook Groups to mobilize employees and customers.

It’s the perfect place to gather small communities who are looking for regular updates, to share feedback, and to ask questions about your products or services. Unfortunately, Facebook Groups are not ideal for larger communities because they are more challenging to manage.

Here are some examples of Facebook Groups for business owners in New York City:

The groups make your business more accessible to customers and provide many functionalities, including planning events and having private and public discussions. However, you have limited control over the tools you have to engage your community because the groups are subject to Facebook’s algorithms and policy changes.

Let’s compare the pros and cons of using Facebook Groups for business community management.

2. Discord

Discord is a feature-rich online community chat platform initially developed to allow online gamers to talk to their friends while gaming. Today, businesses use Discord to engage customers and employees through text channels, voice, and video rooms. Here’s a look at Discord’s top communities:

It’s available as a downloadable app or browser with a user-friendly interface. Discord’s most impressive feature is the voice channels, which are always-on phone calls and allow team members to talk to each other throughout the day, allowing seamless collaboration.

Discord offers multiple customization options, including breaking down channels into threads focused on specific topics. You can also customize member roles to allow some people to invite members and lead conversations.

The following table highlights the main advantages and disadvantages of choosing Discord as your community chat platform.

3. Slack

Slack is a popular communication and collaboration app that’s viable for businesses looking to engage their online community, including employees, customers, and vendors. It’s a user-friendly tool that allows businesses to create workspaces with different channels where the stakeholders can have organized communications.

The biggest appeal of Slack is its ability to integrate with over 2,500 third-party software applications to ensure a seamless experience. Teams can share files, photos, audio, and video on Slack to promote community building and enhance productivity.

Here’s a preview of the Slack user interface:

As a real-time community chat platform, members can send and receive messages to groups or individuals instantly, but you can mute notifications to minimize distractions during periods of deep work. Slack has flexible pricing plans, with the free plan being ideal for small teams.

However, there’s a limit to the number of private channel guests and messages stored.

4. Microsoft Teams

If you’re already using the Microsoft 365 apps for team communication and collaboration, then Microsoft Teams is a valuable resource. With the Microsoft 365 license, businesses get Microsoft Teams for free and access to all the premium features of the platform.

You can create channels around specific topics, projects, and departments with different team members and project stakeholders. A unique feature of Microsoft Teams is that it allows for easy navigation through your channel content.

It’s a central hub for file sharing, messaging, audio calling, and video conferencing without switching between apps in the Microsoft ecosystem. Mircosoft Teams boasts a secure cloud infrastructure that provides enterprise-grade security, multi-factor authentication, and end-to-end encryption.

The table below compares the main pros and cons of Microsoft Teams as a community chat platform.

5. Google Chat

Google Chat, previously Hangout Chats, is Google’s proprietary software and an effective team communication platform. It’s part of the Google Workspace that supports text conversations, video meetings, group chatting, and participation in discussion spaces.

It integrates with Google’s Ecosystem of applications to improve communication and productivity across an organization. An impressive feature of Google Chat is that team members can easily access their chats directly from their Gmail inbox or chat on the web app.

On Google Chat, conversations are broken down into rooms, like Slack channels, and organized into threads.

Let’s take a look at the main advantages and disadvantages of Google Chat for businesses:

Comparing the Top 5 Community Chat Platforms

The following table highlights the main differences between the top community chat platforms to help you narrow down your decision.

FAQs about the best community chat platforms

Below we answer some common questions people have when looking for the best community chat platform.

When should you choose Discord?

Discord is the perfect platform for startups that are more willing to adopt new technologies. It also works great for distributed teams looking for constant voice communication, which is possible through the always-on voice channels.

Which one is more popular between Facebook Groups and Slack?

Facebook, with over 3.6 billion monthly active users worldwide, is highly likely that most of your employees, clients, and vendors have already interacted with the platform. Therefore, it’s easier for them to follow and participate in community conversations.

On the other hand, Slack has 10+ million active users daily — a fraction of Facebook’s audience. However, whether your community members have been on Slack before or not, it has a simpler user interface than Facebook Groups that’ll give them a positive experience.

Which is better between Microsoft Teams and Google Chat?

Microsoft Teams and Google Chats have many of the same features and integrations. However, they’re made for different workspaces. If you primarily use Google Workspace for communication and collaboration and want a tool that integrates seamlessly, then Google Chat is the best choice.

In contrast, Microsoft Teams is the best option for organizations that are already using the Microsoft 365 ecosystem to improve productivity and collaboration.

Let WebFX help with online social community development

Having the best community chat platform is the first step to managing online communication and collaboration with employees and other stakeholders. Next, you need to find ways to keep them engaged to foster stronger relationships and loyalty.

Above, you have options that can help you reach your engagement goals. However, if you want a platform customized to your unique business needs, WebFX can create an online discussion community targeted to your business.

We can help you create a platform that connects you directly to the people you want to reach in a way that’s convenient for them. This customized solution may be a forum or a full website to maximize your brand’s online presence.

Contact us online today or call us at 888-601-5359 to discuss your needs for an online social community platform.