Alternative To BuddyBoss?

Well, hello there! Busy weekend, which means I didn’t get a head start on the newsletter and wrote this whole bad-boy this morning. So, just a bit later than usual.

Today, I want to take a quick look at FluentCommunity as a potential alternative for BuddyBoss. A full review of this one is forthcoming.

I also want to take a quick look again at…. why WordPress and not something like Webflow? This is something I’ve been seeing some renewed rumbling about with the whole drama between Mullenweg and WPEngine.

So, let’s just jump right in, shall we?

A Quick Look At FluentCommunity

FluentCommunity is the newest plugin from WP Manage Ninja… the same team behind FluentCRM, Fluent Forms, etc. And this is one I’ve been eager to check out. People with community-driven membership sites should pay attention.

My desire has always been to see a strong competitor to BuddyBoss. BuddyBoss is awesome and a very mature product. But, it is also beefy and requires you to go “all in” with BuddyBoss to use it. You pretty much have to use their theme, which requires Elementor to modify (unless you love coding child themes by hand). And the server requirements for BuddyBoss are high.

Can FluentCommunity take on BuddyBoss?

I will do a more thorough review and video of FluentCommunity soon, but I wanted to make a few quick comments about it as I’ve had some time to play with it.

FluentCommunity has all of the core functions of a community, including an activity feed, groups, private messaging, discussion threads, user profiles, etc. It even has a simple course system so that you can integrate your courses right into your community and create a community-driven learning environment. Interesting is that this is NOT being done as an integration with something like LearnDash or TutorLMS, but instead FluentCommunity literally has it’s own course system. Bold move on their part.

One of the issues with BuddyBoss is the speed. FluentCommunity is coded from the bottom up for speed so it is inherently much faster than BuddyBoss. BuddyBoss was originally created as a fork off of BuddyPress and BBPress, so the way it stores it’s data is using the standard tables. FluentCommunity does it far more efficiently using custom tables and much more efficient code, so the effect is that FluentCommunity is very fast and won’t require beefier server requirements.

The look and feel of FluentCommunity is very Facebook-ish. It looks pretty good, actually. But, it is also important to note that FluentCommunity doesn’t integrate with your existing theme. It has it’s own look and feel, so when people are on your site and click to enter the community, they will see a decidedly different interface. It is a standalone portal which just happens to be on WordPress.

Obviously, too, this community will be fully integrated with FluentCRM. This means you’re going to have your community email list fully integrated in, with full marketing automation capability and everything.

This is an early-stage product, so there will be a lot of enhancements to come. There are definitely aspects of this right now that feel too basic…. even lacking. It is natural at this stage in the product life cycle. Some things I think they definitely need to do are:

• Set up some ways to take more control over the look and feel, branding colors, etc.
• Perhaps ways to be able to show some of the core pages of the community within one’s existing theme so that one isn’t forced to have a completely different interface
• It is currently lacking integrations with much of anything. We need a way to bring in the functionality of some other plugins into this setup.

That’s probably the theme of where I think FluentCommunity falls short right now. At the moment, it is too self-contained and doesn’t provide much flexibility.

Right now, FluentCommunity could indeed be useful as a way to introduce a community portal to your site. But isn’t nearly as full-featured as BuddyBoss. At least not yet. However…

I see where this is going. And overall, I think this is a much better approach to things than what BuddyBoss does. The problem with buddyBoss is that it is now so big that making core changes to it’s structure is like trying to drive a large cruise ship. It isn’t nimble at all. The fact that FluentCommunity is being built from the ground up versus starting off as a fork off other products means that it is going to be purpose-built and…. fast.

And it is. It is pretty fast.

FluentCommunity has not yet been launched publicly, but I want Concierge clients to know that I have secured an agency license for it already. Once I have reviewed it completely, it will be a part of the Concierge Toolkit.

This Week In Concierge

This week, I thought it would make sense to once again highlight the Concierge Toolkit. After all, some new stuff has been added and will likely soon be added.

The Concierge Toolkit is a collection of premium plugins that I offer as part of my support for Concierge clients. This way my clients don’t have to bother going out and acquiring a bunch of licenses to these quality plugins.

Some of the most popular tools in the toolkit are FluentCRM, WP Fusion, CartFlows, Presto Player, Fluent Forms, Kadence Pro, FluentBooking, ACF Pro, etc.

Lately, I have acquired an agency license for the brand new CommandUI plugin, so will be adding that to the toolkit.

FluentCommunity will be added to the toolkit.

I’m likely to be adding Conversion Bridge to the toolkit soon. Using that in conjunction with Fathom Analytics will provide clients with a gorgeous combination.

As the toolkit develops, I may need to institute tiers to it. Not sure yet. Where some plugins are only available to clients on higher level Concierge plans. After all, costs need to make sense on my side, too.

But, Concierge often ends up saving money for clients due to the fact that hosting and these premium plugins are included automatically. Every situation is a little different.

WordPress Quick Bits

Matt’s Vendetta Continues. Mullenweg launched a site called WP Engine Tracker which does nothing but track the number of websites that have left WP Engine hosting. It even has a downloadable CSV file of sites on WPEngine so (I’m guessing) people can bully them into switching. How… freakin’…. childish.

Is Matt Spying On You? A post was made on X (link on X) that talked about the API payload when one updates plugins from the WordPress.org repository. And he raised questions about whether they were using that tracking data to build the WPE tracker site. From my perspective, though, there’s nothing being tracked here that isn’t public already anyway. Also, FWIW, Matt chimed in and said it has nothing to do with it anyway and they’re using DNS data, not .org data.

A Culture of Fear. WordPress pros have been opining on this whole Matt/WPEngine fiasco for awhile now. The Repository talked about concern of a “culture of fear“. Here’s my take: I think Matt has handled this whole thing very poorly and unprofessionally. That said, I also think too many WordPress pros and developers are being overly alarmist and sitting in their own echo chamber. For most of the WordPress world, this “culture of fear” literally doesn’t exist and everything just runs like normal. And, if anything, this will inspire some changes that are likely to be improvements to the ecosystem. So, people need to chill out.

Kinsta Boosts Resources. Kinsta hosting has renamed their hosting plans and boosted resource limits. See the announcement here. Good to see them raise the limits because Kinsta has always been stingy about it.

WordFence Price Increases. WordFence will be increasing prices come December 5th. About a 25% price hike across the board. A lot of people just use the free version, though. And I will say, if you use solid hosting and proper maintenance, you probably don’t need WordFence.

Conversion Bridge Divi Support. Conversion Bridge 1.4 offers new enhancements and Divi integration. I haven’t talked about this plugin much yet, but will be. Conversion Bridge is very nicely done and really makes tracking things across your WordPress site so much simpler. In fact, very strongly considering adding this tool to our Concierge toolkit.

2024 ACF Survey Results. ACF has released their 2024 numbers for their annual survey which was started last year. Some interesting numbers, much of it focused around usage of ACF (which is to be expected). I’m sure this angers Matt. After all, ACF is run by WPEngine.

WordPress vs WebFlow

Lately, I’ve seen a little bit more talk about WebFlow. Most likely as a result of some of the ruckus between Automattic (the company behind WordPress) and WPEngine.

I actually had one client decide to leave WordPress and switch to WebFlow.

To be clear, I think people need to choose the platform they prefer and works best for them. If that happens not to be WordPress, then that’s fine.

However, moving to WebFlow does remove one of the core selling points of WordPress. And that is digital sovereignty.

I’ve talked a lot about digital sovereignty in the past. It means owning and controlling your own data and your own platform. It means that if you want to change something, you can just do it. And it means you’re not tied to any proprietary systems that are going to keep you from doing what you want with your own website.

NOTE: I have a whole masterclass on digital sovereignty in the video library.

WordPress has it’s pros and cons. It is incredibly powerful, highly flexible, has a large community, is very extensible, etc. It is all these things that have turned it into the most popular content management system on the entire internet. By far.

But, WordPress has annoyances. The constant plugin updates, the issue of potential plugin conflicts, potential security issues, etc. Also, the fact that it is SO flexible with all the plugins can lead to user confusion.

Compared to that, the ease and simplicity of something like WebFlow can seem welcoming. And, it would be. They have a fantastic editing experience. It also includes hosting. So, there’s just less to think about when you’re using WebFlow.

But, that said, WebFlow is very proprietary. It is a website as a service, essentially. Your site is not portable, especially if you use any of the dynamic site capabilities of the platform.

WebFlow can get expensive pretty quickly. If you want to sell anything, the entry-level ecommerce plan is $29/mo if you pay annually. Prices go up from there. There are also account add-ons, all which add to your monthly bill.

Being that you’re kind of “stuck” there, you’re really beholden to their price decisions. In 2023, WebFlow caused a lot of discussion by raising their prices fairly substantially. A lot of people didn’t like it. Problem is, you’re stuck with a decision on whether to just accept the price hike… or literally needing to re-build and re-code your site elsewhere. That’s not a situation I’d ever want to be in.

I’ve heard some horror stories of sites on WebFlow that grew to a point where they had enough traffic where WebFlow suddenly tried to hit them with enterprise-level billing. Which can literally cost tens of thousands of dollars per year. Can you imagine that?

WordPress is inherently different.

Most all plugins are GPL licensed. Even if you don’t renew your support licenses for premium plugins, they will almost always continue to work.

You can choose your own hosting. If a host tried to increase your bill to a point you don’t like it, you just migrate the site elsewhere. You’re not stuck. You’re not faced with a decision on needing to re-build it somewhere else. You can just migrate the site almost as easily as moving your car to a different parking lot.

So, with WordPress, you keep control. The site is your’s.

If one likes the editor experience of WebFlow more than WordPress, that’s fine. But, you can also just pick a different editor. That’s the nice thing about WordPress. There are numerous page builders to choose from. Personally, I use the native block builder with Kadence Blocks. But, if one wants to use Elementor, Beaver Builder, Thrive Themes, Bricks, GenerateBlocks…. you get to pick the one you like the most.

If you don’t want to deal with any of the hassle of WordPress, that’s what services like Concierge are for. But, the great thing even about that…. is that it is optional. And there are a ton of different people out there who can help, not just me.

So, WordPress is about control, ownership, and flexibility. That’s not something you’re going to have using a proprietary site platform, even as nice as it may be.

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