JomSocial
Online community management software
- Features
- Ease of use
- Ease of management
- Quality of support
- Affordability
- Market presence
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$99 one-time license
Free Trial unavailableFree version unavailable
Small
Medium
Large
- Arts, entertainment, and recreation
- Accommodation and food services
- Media and communications
What is JomSocial
JomSocial is a social networking extension for Joomla that adds community features such as user profiles, activity streams, groups, events, messaging, and media sharing to a self-hosted website. It is used by organizations and site owners that want to run a branded online community on their own Joomla infrastructure. The product is delivered as a Joomla component with add-ons and templates, and it relies on the Joomla ecosystem for hosting, security updates, and many site-level capabilities.
Deep Joomla integration
JomSocial is built specifically for Joomla and integrates with Joomla’s user management, templating, and extension model. This makes it practical for teams already standardized on Joomla to add community functionality without moving to a separate platform. It also supports typical community objects (profiles, groups, events, activity feed) within the same site architecture.
Self-hosted deployment control
Because it runs on the customer’s Joomla hosting environment, administrators control data residency, server configuration, and backup processes. This can fit organizations with specific infrastructure or compliance requirements that prefer not to use a fully hosted community service. It also allows tighter integration with existing Joomla pages, content, and navigation.
Extensible via add-ons
JomSocial supports additional functionality through plugins, modules, and third-party extensions in the Joomla ecosystem. This can enable customization of community workflows, UI, and integrations beyond the base feature set. For technical teams, the extension-based approach can reduce the need to build every feature from scratch.
Requires Joomla expertise
Implementation and ongoing operations depend on Joomla administration skills, including extension management, updates, and troubleshooting. Organizations without in-house Joomla capability may need external developers or agencies. This can increase total cost of ownership compared with more turnkey community platforms.
Operational overhead for hosting
Self-hosting shifts responsibility for uptime, performance tuning, security hardening, and patching to the customer. Community features such as media sharing and activity feeds can increase storage and database load, requiring careful capacity planning. Teams may need additional tooling for monitoring and incident response.
Limited native event/webinar stack
While it includes community events and groups, it is not primarily an end-to-end events or webinar platform with built-in registration, streaming, and event analytics comparable to dedicated event solutions. Organizations running complex virtual or hybrid events may need separate event tooling and integrations. This can add integration work and fragmented reporting across systems.
Plan & Pricing
| Plan | Price | Key features & notes |
|---|---|---|
| Standard | $99 | Entry edition. Official docs state Standard edition includes a JomSocial link-back; license/docs reference a 6-month subscription/support period for licenses. |
| Professional | $149 | Official FAQ and JoomlArt product pages identify the Professional (Pro) edition as the most popular plan; official docs state Professional edition does not include the link-back. Support/updates are provided for the subscription period (see license/docs). |
| Developer / (Developer/Ultimate) | Price not listed on current public JomSocial / JoomlArt pricing pages (see notes) | JomSocial documentation references a Developer edition, but a current explicit price for the Developer/Ultimate edition was not found on the public JomSocial or JoomlArt pricing pages; JoomlArt offers bundles/memberships that include JomSocial (e.g. JA One / Ultimate memberships). Contact sales or purchase via JoomlArt member portal for exact Developer/Ultimate pricing. |
