GTM AI Index

Index › Vendors › Vanilla Forums · September 2026 Edition

1 category · Named, not ranked

Vanilla Forums

11Judge labels

1First choices

4Negative labels

7 of 12Models named it

1Category

September 2026 Edition. Every number here is derived from the raw labels under vendor table v2026-09-16.3, every buyer segment counted.

Standing

4 labels, too few to rank

A product needs 10 labels in a category before a share or quadrant is stated. Vanilla Forums was named 4 times in Community, where Higher Logic Vanilla led with 23%. The labels and the evidence are below, counted exactly.

By buyer segmentRead the same way at every buyer size.

Small business18 of 90

under the label threshold

Mid-market66 of 74

under the label threshold

Enterprise12 of 52

under the label threshold

In community · each standing computed within its segment · bars are 0 to 100 · the accent bar is the product's own best reading

Standing by category

Every category where a model named Vanilla Forums for a mid-market B2B company. Share is first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts; rank is within every product named in that category.

Category	Function	Share	Rank	Negative rate	Labels	Quadrant
Community platforms	Customer	0%	66 of 74	50%	4	under 10 labels · led by Higher Logic Vanilla at 23%

Movement

This is the first edition on this tier, so no move can be computed for Vanilla Forums yet. The next is due October 1, 2026. From the next edition this section shows, per buyer segment, whether its share moved by more than the measured noise floor.

By model

How each model treated Vanilla Forums across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Twelve models, six prompts per category.

Model	Alternative	Mention	Negative	Labels
Claude Haiku 4.5	0	0	0	0
GPT-5.4 mini	0	0	0	0
Gemini 3.5 Flash	0	0	0	0
Perplexity Sonar	0	0	0	0
Grok 4.1 Fast	0	0	0	0
Mistral Small	1	0	1	2
DeepSeek V4 Flash	0	0	1	1
Llama 4 Maverick	0	0	0	0
Qwen 3.7 Flash	0	0	0	0
Kimi K2	0	0	0	0
GLM 4.7 FlashX	0	1	0	1
MiniMax M2.5	0	0	0	0

By framing

Which of the six questions produced the naming. By model says how often; this says asked what. The first-choice count on the right carries the marks of the models that produced it.

FramingLabels by classFirst choices

Direct2 labelsNone

Paraphrase0 labelsNone

Comparative3 labelsNone

Budget-constrained0 labelsNone

Scale-constrained3 labels1

Negative3 labelsNone

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative11 labels in all, every segment counted; 1 of the 1 first choices count toward share, since the comparative and negative framings do not. The bar is one segment per label class, to scale within the framing.

What the models said for it

Verbatim evidence the judge attached to positive labels.

“Best for: Customizable discussion communities” Mistral Small · Community · comparative prompt · alternative

And against it

Verbatim evidence attached to negative labels. A warning on a product with few labels is a warning; on a product with many, it is one voice among them.

“The open-source Vanilla Forums is effectively abandoned, so avoid that specific variant.” DeepSeek V4 Flash · Community · negative prompt · hard negative

“Cons: Opaque pricing, enterprise-focused” Mistral Small · Community · direct prompt · soft negative

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as Vanilla Forums, over the 11 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Vanilla Forums was named but was not.

ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

Discourse10 of 112Not in the top three

Circle8 of 112Not in the top three

Gainsight Customer Communities7 of 111Not in the top three

Mighty Networks7 of 110Not in the top three

Bettermode6 of 113Not in the top three

Salesforce Experience Cloud6 of 110Not in the top three

Khoros Communities5 of 111Not in the top three

Discord5 of 110Not in the top three

Higher Logic5 of 110Not in the top three

Influitive5 of 110Not in the top three

A head-to-head page exists where both products are in a category's top three. The other rows are the same fact without a page behind them, so they link to the product instead.

What carried it into the answer

The sites and pages cited by the answers that named Vanilla Forums. A fact about retrieval, not a lever on the model.

Citations exist only for the models that return a source list, four of the twelve in this edition, so these counts come from 1 of the 11 answers that named Vanilla Forums and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

buddyboss.com1

cxtoday.com1

gartner.com1

guideflow.com1

standingongiants.com1

thecmo.com1

Six of the six domain citations in answers naming Vanilla Forums came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

buddyboss.com/blog/the-best-community-management-softwares1

cxtoday.com/community-social-engagement/customer-community-platforms-20261

gartner.com/reviews/market/b2b-customer-community-platforms1

guideflow.com/blog/best-community-management-software1

guideflow.com/blog/customer-community-software1

standingongiants.com/blog/community-platform-comparison-10-leading-platforms-reviewed-20261

thecmo.com/tools/customer-community-software1

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Names read as Vanilla Forums

What the judge wrote, as written, with how often. The vendor table decides that these count as Vanilla Forums; a claim can dispute any of them.

Higher Logic Vanilla / Vanilla Forums 1Vanilla Forums (Higher Logic) 1

The company

Vanilla Forums.

Website: vanillaforums.com
Headquarters: Canada
Founded: 2005

From Wikidata, fetched September 14, 2026. These describe the company, not the product's standing, and a claimed page can dispute any of them. · Wikidata · LinkedIn · Crunchbase

Is this your product?

Claim this page

Claiming is free and changes nothing in the data. A claimed page shows a verified contact who is told when each edition publishes and when Vanilla Forums's standing changes by more than the noise floor; the right to propose corrections to the vendor table, meaning names the judge wrote that should or should not read as Vanilla Forums, applied by version and listed in the change log; and a one-line description supplied by the vendor and marked as such.

It does not get any change to labels, shares or verdicts, any preview, or any say over which quotes appear. A verification link goes to your work email; an address at vanillaforums.com is approved on the spot, any other address is reviewed by hand.

Your name and company appear on the claimed page, or the company alone if you ask below. A title and a LinkedIn address appear there too if you give them, and are left off if you do not. Your email address is never published.