Why big brands are all moving their communities
What we’re unpacking today:
Why every community seems to be moving (and why that's good news)
What to ask before you migrate platforms
The trends shaping community relaunches
We—Carrie and Kelly from Team CMJ—use these interviews to explore trends, tensions, and issues related to community building (and those em dashes are human-written; no AI is used to create these newsletters).
We share more about our goal for these conversations in our “community newsletter experiment” post.
KELLY here! 👋🏻 Platform migrations. Community owners fear them. Avoid them. Try to prevent them. Understandably so! But sometimes—actually, often—a community outgrows its platform and needs a new home.
And really, a migration doesn’t have to be that bad. In fact, it can be a sorely needed reimagining.
That’s the word Salesforce recently used when it announced the migration of its eminent Trailblazer Community to Slack. It’s big news and comes on the heels of a string of other big-name migrations happening across companies in the last 12 months, like:
Atlassian and Amplitude to Vanilla
Asana to Discourse
Airbnb from Facebook Groups to a bespoke platform
(Apparently there’s a trend among companies starting with the letter “A”…)
What do you make of all the moving-and-shakin’ happening out there, Carrie?
Ross from Friends carrying a couch and saying “Pivot!”
CARRIE: I think it’s a necessary shakeup. Nothing is returning to “normal,” and I think we’re finally accepting that broadly. The old community playbooks have grown stale. Many community teams have also been reduced and asked to do more with less. This means these teams are going back to the drawing board to assess (1) their strategies and (2) the overall member experience, including the tech on which their communities are built. With staff reductions, teams’ AI tool dependency has also increased (and, with it, technical and design know-how among brand community builders has also spread, which I think is an exciting direction for our profession!).
Another big reason for this major migration is fallout from Khoros’ acquisition by private equity (PE) firm IgniteTech in 2025. You won’t see this talked about publicly, but every Khoros community builder I’ve talked to has gone back to the drawing board to reassess their tech this year.
For those who don’t yet know, Khoros is a community platform that has historically been one of the top enterprise options, alongside Gainsight, Vanilla by Higher Logic, Discourse, Gradual, and Salesforce Experience Cloud (fka Community Cloud). It came about in 2019 with the merger of Lithium (a community platform giant in the 2010s) and Spredfast (a social media listening tool). Over the years, Khoros has powered brand communities like Sephora, Atlassian, Pinterest, Apple, and many, many more.
When a PE acquisition happens, the reality is this: The product will shift jerkily, and the price will increase drastically. That’s what PE firms do: their job is to squeeze as much profit as possible from the companies they acquire.
So, starting about a year ago, many enterprise firms began searching for new community homes. Since Khoros powered most of the world’s largest brand communities, this shakeup has created major ripple effects we’re hearing about now.
I think the overall effect is positive. Migrations give us room to question old assumptions and start fresh. And all the relaunches have set the bar high across the profession, giving us new models to refer to and case studies to share.
Plus, migrations force cross-team collaboration and put a microscope on community’s impact, which is typically much larger than most organizations imagine.
Alexis from Schitt’s Creek packing an overflowing suitcase and saying “Pretty sure I can figure this out”
KELLY: You mentioned an increase in AI usage and technical/design know-how among community teams. I’ve seen that with our own team: AI is accelerating what we do (like drafting proposals for potential clients) and expanding what we offer. As we speak, we’re using Claude Code to experiment with an interactive and data-informed content calendar dashboard for clients. It’s super exciting. Can you say more about how changes like these are influencing the decision to migrate?
CARRIE: So not only is AI usage increasing on community teams internally, but it’s also increasingly replacing the need for peer-to-peer product- and support-related discussion forums among users.
As community owners contemplate future migrations, they need to ask themselves three things:
Will the platform support their users’ increased desire to speak to an AI agent or search existing discussions/content before interacting with a peer or staff member? (Note: This desire doesn’t hold in all communities, and you may be contemplating a strategy no longer focused on product education or support, in which case, consider other ways AI features may support your community.)
Will the platform be compatible with their existing AI tools (some quite locked down, depending on industry)?
Is the platform keeping up with the pace of AI development and shipping features rapidly to keep up with constant market changes?
On the third point, community builders are hungry for platform companies to pick up the pace and ship features faster. Working closely with Gradual and Tightknit, for example, we’ve seen them ship features that serve entirely new use cases in weeks, and get feedback very early in the process. That work used to take months or even years. So people are shopping around to find responsive teams who will build with them in mind.
KELLY: We’ve guided clients on migrations many times. Just in the last year, we helped 10% with Dan Harris transition from Substack to Circle, Stripe move from Luma to Gradual (not a traditional migration, but it had the flavor of one), and a current client is moving from Facebook Groups to Circle. For any teams out there reading this who think a migration might be in their future, what else should we tell them?
Jim from The Office taping up a large box
CARRIE: I think a lot of people start by evaluating features and compatibility, but I would strongly caution teams from doing that. Do not just recreate your old community on a new platform. Strategy first, then platform selection!
Take the time before the migration to ask bigger questions and then determine if you want new feature sets or if the status quo is serving you well. Questions I’d encourage:
Most important: Who are our most engaged and valuable members today? What technology are they already using? What have they told us they really want? Are there segments we need to honor, some we need to better serve, and others we need to let go of?
Are the programs we run today helping them make progress? And are they the most effective programs we can run to serve the business?
Where are people getting stuck in their journey today? Where is there drop-off in activity? How might we design experiences to keep them involved?
What data points do we currently have access to and need to keep? Are there data points we dream of getting access to but are currently unable to access?
Do we like our workflows, tech stack, and the division of resources? Are there better ways to get our work done?
Once you answer these questions (which can and should take a few weeks to align around), you can go back to creating a list of requirements or looking at a new community platform, third-party tech, and self-built solutions.
KELLY: Yep. And if you do decide to migrate, we’ve learned a thing or two about what takes the most time, resources, and consideration, like:
Payment and account migration (making sure members’ logins, subscriptions, and payment details are preserved and safely transferred)
Content migration (making sure what you and members built on the last platform gets moved to the new one, if possible)
Member enablement (informing, educating, and transferring members to the new platform)
What else would you add to the list?
CARRIE: I agree those are the 3 areas where people get roadblocked most often, and I would add two other notes.
First, there’s another layer many don’t consider around uploading new content, especially graphic design assets (think banners, icons, thumbnails, and so on). MCPs are speeding up the process significantly (from days or weeks to hours), but you still need a solid brand identity for your community before you create all the new assets, and a migration is the perfect time to consider revisiting your visual identity.
We have two clients doing exactly that right now, and it means they need to build in extra time on the front-end for design strategy, and then they can take the outputs of that via Brandfetch or Figma, tie them into their platform’s MCP, and create infinite new banners, icons, etc. that match that brand, then upload them to the new space. It’s the coolest setup advancement I’ve seen in my career!
Secondly, I’d just emphasize how important that third item is: member communication. You should communicate even more than you think you have to, in more channels and with more touchpoints than you initially think. A few channels to make sure are covered:
Email
DMs
Company blogs
Social outreach
If your brand is large, consider PR outreach
The old platform
The new platform
Also, have a distinct strategy for engaging your leaders in the process. They need to follow the journey closely and be given clear roles with the launch. Let them lead!
A cat “typing” on a laptop
Now, beyond the logistics, I’m curious what patterns or trends you’re seeing among these relaunches and migrations that you think everyone else should be paying attention to.
KELLY: For one thing, within the communities themselves we’re seeing simpler architectures, meaning fewer spaces or channels (finally!). No one has time to navigate a bloated sidebar. The spaces in these communities are strategically streamlined, targeted to exactly what members want to see/do and nothing more. Think 5 or fewer spaces.
Another trend we’re seeing is a renewed focus on in-person connection, as we wrote about in our last newsletter. Communities are prioritizing distributed event programs, ambassador training, and a multitude of ways of supporting leaders as they gather members locally. We’re all hungry for in-person connection, and online communities are embracing that.
CARRIE: Yes, many of these changes are long overdue, and it is so refreshing to see teams finally make these changes.
One thing I’m seeing is more community builders flexing their technical capabilities (even if nascent, like mine) to custom-code solutions and build their own apps. There still aren’t many platforms to choose from for enterprise communities, so it makes sense more custom-built alternatives are cropping up.
I’m also noticing identity systems (journeys and tiers and badges) are rolling out much sooner, which allows leaders to self-identify faster, which is the lynchpin for scaling.
Everything is speeding up, so if it feels dizzying and hard to keep up, it’s because it is.
But you don’t have to do it all, migration or not. It’s about identifying what actually creates belonging in your community, and focusing there first.
We’d love to hear where your community is right now—cozy in its current home or itching to move, or somewhere in between? Leave a comment and let us know—we always love hearing what you have to say!
With Care -
Carrie and Kelly
