Featured case study
The problem: an established professional community of 2,000+ free members was stuck in Slack. Conversations vanished, onboarding was chaotic, and Slack’s limits were shaping what a globally scaling free community — one that might one day split into local chapters — could become.
What we did: wrote the strategy first, then chose and migrated the platform against that strategy, rather than a feature checklist.
The outcome: a platform built for a free community at global scale, with clearer onboarding, structure that could support local chapters later, and member trust protected through the migration.
the starting point
The community lived in Slack, and Slack’s limits were deciding what the community could be: conversations vanished, onboarding was chaos, events lived somewhere else, and nobody could see the whole picture. The team’s first instinct was to shortlist platforms.
Instead, we wrote a strategy document first. The software decision came out of it, not the other way around.
Four questions, answered in this order. Only then did we look at a single platform.
the day-to-day jobs the platform has to do
Reliable spaces for member conversation, event promotion and follow-up, searchable answers to recurring questions, and a place new members can land without getting lost. Slack was doing some of this, badly, and expensively.
pulled from surveys, DMs and event feedback
Easier ways to find people with shared challenges, better event discoverability, threads that don't disappear after a week, and a clearer sense of what's happening in the community without checking five channels.
a free community that scales globally
A platform built for a large free membership: reliable onboarding at scale, engagement that doesn't depend on staff being in every thread, and a structure that could eventually support local chapters without the whole thing falling apart.
buy for where you're going
Local chapters, sub-groups, resource libraries, clearer pathways for members who want to go deeper. Choosing software that only fits today's Slack workaround means migrating again in eighteen months, and migrations cost trust as well as money.
The software choice came last.
A platform chosen against the strategy, rather than a feature checklist.
A migration planned around member trust: champions first, clear timelines, nothing lost in the move.
Onboarding rebuilt so new members found value in their first week, not their first month.
Structure designed for a free community that could scale globally and, later, support local chapters.
“The platform question answered itself once we knew what the community needed to become.”
If your community, content or email setup feels like it’s working against you, the fix usually starts upstream of the software.