Quick answer: Big brands are moving their communities because their old platforms and playbooks no longer fit. Khoros's sale to IgniteTech in 2025 sent many enterprise teams back to the drawing board, members now expect AI-powered answers, and smaller teams need faster, more flexible tools. Migrations work best when strategy comes first and platform selection second.
Key takeaways
Salesforce, Atlassian, Amplitude, and PTC have all moved their communities to new platforms, and the shift is still underway across enterprise brands.
IgniteTech's acquisition of Khoros in May 2025 pushed many large community teams to reassess their technology.
Members increasingly search or ask an AI tool before they ask a peer, so platforms now need to support AI-assisted answers.
Teams that define their strategy before comparing features avoid rebuilding their old community on a new platform.
The hardest parts of a migration are accounts and payments, content, member communication, design assets, and leader engagement.
If you lead a brand community, you have probably watched a peer announce a platform move this year and wondered whether you are next. In September 2026, Salesforce announced it is reimagining its Trailblazer Community on Slack after 20 years of online forums. This post is for community leaders weighing a move of their own.
Why so many brand communities are changing platforms right now
Brand communities are moving because two pressures hit at once: a shake-up in the enterprise platform market and a hard look at community strategy inside most companies. Salesforce is only the most visible example. Atlassian moved its forums from Khoros to Higher Logic Vanilla in September 2026, PTC moved from Khoros to Gainsight, and Amplitude moved its community to Higher Logic Vanilla.
The market shake-up traces back to Khoros. For years, Khoros was one of the top enterprise community platforms, alongside Gainsight, Vanilla by Higher Logic, Discourse, Gradual, and Salesforce Experience Cloud. It formed in 2019 from the merger of Lithium Technologies and Spredfast, and it powered many of the world's largest brand communities. In May 2025, IgniteTech acquired Khoros. When a platform changes hands like this, product direction tends to shift fast and prices tend to rise. Every Khoros community builder I have talked to since then has gone back to the drawing board on their technology, and because Khoros sat underneath so many large communities, the ripple effects are reaching all of us now.
The second pressure is internal. The old community playbooks have grown stale, and many community teams have been cut and asked to do more with less. So teams are reassessing two things at once: their strategy, and the whole member experience, including the technology underneath it. Smaller teams have also leaned harder on AI tools, and with that, technical and design skills have spread across our profession. I find that one of the most exciting changes in years.
Why the migration wave is good for community builders
All this movement is a healthy shake-up for the profession. Nothing is returning to the way community worked a few years ago, and a migration forces a team to accept that and question its old assumptions instead of carrying them forward.
The wave of relaunches has also raised the bar. Each public migration gives the rest of us a new model to study and a case study to share with our own leadership. And a migration puts community under a microscope inside a company. It pulls in IT, support, marketing, and product, and it shows how much community actually contributes, which is usually far more than the organization assumed.
A fresh start only pays off, though, if the new platform fits how members behave today. And the biggest change in member behavior is AI.
How AI is changing what a community platform needs to do
AI is replacing a share of the peer-to-peer product and support questions that used to fill community forums. Members now search existing content or ask an AI tool first, and turn to a peer or a staff member only when that fails. A Gartner survey of 5,801 customers in early 2025 found that 51% of customer service journeys now begin on third-party platforms such as Google, YouTube, and ChatGPT.
So before any migration, community owners should answer three questions about AI:
Will the platform support members who want to ask an AI agent or search past discussions before they talk to a person? This matters most for product education and support communities. If your strategy has moved away from support, look at other ways AI features could serve your members.
Will the platform work with the AI tools your company already uses? Some industries keep these tools tightly locked down, so check compatibility early.
Is the platform company keeping up with the pace of AI? Look for a team that ships features quickly and listens to customers while it builds.
That third question has become a deciding factor. Community builders want platform companies that move faster. In our work with Gradual and Tightknit, Kelly Shetron, our Director of Research and Client Experience, and I have watched both teams ship features for entirely new use cases in weeks, and ask for our feedback early. That kind of work used to take months or years, so teams are now shopping for platform partners who will build with them in mind.
Start with strategy, then choose a platform
The most common migration mistake is starting with a feature comparison. Teams line up platforms, check boxes, and end up rebuilding their old community on new software, problems included. Strategy comes first. Platform selection comes second.
Kelly and I have guided many migrations. In the last year alone, we helped 10% with Dan Harris move from Substack to Circle and helped Stripe move from Luma to Gradual, which was less a classic migration than a rebuild, but it raised the same questions. A current client is moving from Facebook Groups to Circle now. In every case, the teams that did best took time before the move to ask bigger questions:
Who are our most engaged and valuable members today? This is the most important one. What technology do they already use, and what have they told us they want? Which segments should we honor, which should we serve better, and which should we let go?
Are our current programs helping members make progress? And are they the most effective programs we could run to serve the business?
Where do members get stuck? Where does activity drop off, and how could we design experiences that keep people involved?
What data do we have, and what do we need? Which data points must we keep, and which have we always wanted but could never access?
Do our workflows still work? Are we happy with our tech stack and how we divide resources, or is there a better way to get the work done?
Aligning on these answers can and should take a few weeks. Once a team has them, it can write real requirements and compare community platforms, third-party tools, and custom-built options against what members and the business need.
Strategy tells you where to go. The next challenge is getting there, and some parts of the move take far longer than teams expect.
The parts of a platform migration that take the longest
Five workstreams take the most time, resources, and care in a community platform migration. Kelly has seen the first three stall teams again and again, and I would add two more that teams often miss.
| Workstream | What it involves | What to plan for |
|---|---|---|
| Accounts and payments | Moving member logins, subscriptions, and payment details | Safe, tested transfer so no member loses access or gets charged twice |
| Content | Moving what the team and members built on the old platform | Deciding what can move, what should move, and what stays behind |
| Member communication | Informing, educating, and moving members to the new platform | More messages, in more channels, than feels necessary |
| Design assets | Banners, icons, thumbnails, and other visuals for the new space | A clear visual identity for the community before production starts |
| Leader engagement | Bringing community leaders along through the move | Clear roles for leaders in the launch |
Design assets are the workstream most teams forget. A new platform needs a full set of new visuals, and a migration is the right moment to revisit the community's visual identity. AI tools have sped up production from days or weeks to hours, especially through MCPs, the connections that let AI tools work directly inside other software. Two of our clients are doing this right now. They built in extra time up front for design strategy, then connected the results from Brandfetch or Figma to their platform through its MCP. Now they can create banners and icons that match the brand on demand and upload them straight to the new space. It is the coolest setup advance I have seen in my career.
Member communication deserves more attention than any other workstream. Communicate more than you think you need to, through more channels and at more touchpoints than you first planned. Cover at least these:
Email
Direct messages
The company blog
Social media
PR outreach, for larger brands
The old platform
The new platform
Give community leaders their own plan. They should follow the journey closely and have clear roles in the launch. Let them lead.
Once the logistics are handled, the bigger question is what kind of community you are building on the other side. The strongest relaunches point to an answer.
What the strongest community relaunches have in common
The best relaunches we see are simpler, more human, and faster to help members find their place. Many of these changes are long overdue, and it is refreshing to see teams finally make them.
Kelly has noticed that communities are being built with far fewer spaces and channels. No one has time to navigate a bloated sidebar, so relaunched communities keep only the spaces members actually want, often five or fewer.
In-person connection is also back at the center. Communities are investing in distributed event programs, ambassador training, and support for leaders who gather members locally. People are hungry for in-person connection, and online communities are embracing it.
More community builders are also writing code. With so few enterprise platforms to choose from, teams are custom-building their own tools and apps, and I have started doing some of this myself.
Finally, identity systems such as member journeys, tiers, and badges are rolling out much earlier in a community's life. These systems help future leaders recognize themselves sooner, and leaders who step up early are what allow a community to scale.
Frequently asked questions
Why are companies moving off Khoros? Many enterprise community teams began reassessing Khoros after IgniteTech acquired it in May 2025, since ownership changes often bring shifts in product direction and pricing. Atlassian moved its forums from Khoros to Higher Logic Vanilla in September 2026, and PTC moved from Khoros to Gainsight.
How long should you plan before a community platform migration? Plan a few weeks just to align on strategy before you compare platforms. Decide who your most valuable members are, which programs help them, where they get stuck, and what data you need. Then write requirements, and build in extra time for design assets and member communication.
What is the hardest part of migrating an online community? Accounts and payments, content, and member communication stall teams most often. Teams also underestimate design assets, such as new banners and icons for the space, and the work of bringing community leaders along with clear roles in the launch.
Should a community platform have AI features? For most product and support communities, yes. A 2025 Gartner survey found that 51% of customer service journeys start on third-party platforms such as Google and ChatGPT. Look for a platform that supports AI-assisted search or answers, works with your existing AI tools, and ships new features quickly.
How many spaces should a relaunched community have? Keep it small. The strongest relaunches we see use five or fewer spaces or channels, limited to what members actually want to see and do. A bloated sidebar makes members work to find their place, and most will not take the time.
Focus on what creates belonging
Everything in community is speeding up, so if it feels dizzying to keep up, you are reading the moment correctly. You do not have to do it all, whether you migrate or not. Start by identifying what actually creates belonging in your community, and focus there first.
Where is your community right now: cozy in its current home, itching to move, or somewhere in between? Uplevel your community with the CMJ Group
AI disclosure: We believe transparency about how we use AI is non-negotiable. This post is adapted from our newsletter, which Carrie and Kelly write without AI. We used a CMJ-proprietary Claude Skill to restructure it for readers and AI search based on the latest AEO research, and to verify and add sources. Carrie Melissa Jones reviewed and edited every sentence before publishing.
