Open Social
Online community management software
- Features
- Ease of use
- Ease of management
- Quality of support
- Affordability
- Market presence
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What is Open Social
Open Social is an open-source community platform built on Drupal for creating branded online communities and member portals. It supports discussion, groups, events, profiles, and activity feeds for organizations that need a self-hosted or managed community experience. Typical users include associations, enterprises, governments, and NGOs that require customization, data control, and integration with existing Drupal ecosystems. The product differentiates through its open-source licensing, Drupal-based extensibility, and availability via both self-managed deployments and vendor-provided hosting/services.
Open-source and extensible
Open Social is released as open source and is built on Drupal, which enables deep customization through modules, theming, and custom development. Organizations can adapt information architecture, roles/permissions, and community features to fit specific programs. This approach can reduce vendor lock-in compared with closed community platforms. It also benefits teams that already standardize on Drupal for web properties.
Strong community feature set
The platform includes core community capabilities such as user profiles, groups, discussions, activity streams, and events. These features support common use cases like member engagement, internal communities, and program-based groups. Administrators can structure communities around topics or cohorts and manage access via roles and permissions. The feature mix aligns with typical requirements for online community management rather than course-selling or webinar-first tools.
Flexible deployment options
Open Social can be self-hosted for organizations that require control over infrastructure, security posture, and data residency. It is also available through vendor-provided hosting and professional services for teams that prefer a supported implementation. This flexibility helps organizations choose between internal DevOps ownership and a managed approach. It can be deployed in environments that match enterprise governance requirements.
Implementation requires technical expertise
Because it is Drupal-based, successful deployments often require Drupal development skills for configuration, customization, and upgrades. Teams without in-house technical capacity may need a systems integrator or the vendor’s services to reach production quality. This can increase time-to-launch compared with more turnkey community SaaS products. Ongoing maintenance (patching, module compatibility, and performance tuning) is a recurring consideration.
Feature depth varies by module
Some advanced capabilities commonly expected in community programs (for example, sophisticated advocacy, gamification, or out-of-the-box customer marketing automation) may require additional Drupal modules or custom development. The availability and maturity of needed extensions can vary, and combining modules can introduce complexity. Organizations should validate requirements such as analytics, moderation workflows, and integrations during discovery. This can lead to more solution design work than with tightly packaged platforms.
Total cost depends on operations
While the software is open source, total cost of ownership can be driven by hosting, security hardening, monitoring, backups, and support. Costs also depend on the level of customization and the frequency of upgrades needed to stay current with Drupal and dependencies. For smaller teams, these operational requirements can outweigh license savings. Procurement should evaluate both self-hosted and managed-service scenarios.
Plan & Pricing
Pricing model: Quote-based / Custom pricing (contact sales)
Free / Open-source core: Open Social’s core distribution is available as an open-source Drupal distribution (free to download and self-host).
Managed Cloud / Enterprise (official): No public list prices on the vendor site; the Cloud/managed offering is described as "flexible and fair pricing" and appears to be quoted per-customer (request a demo / contact sales).
Add-ons / Extensions: Extensions and add-ons are available (e.g., Monetization). Monetization processing notes (from official docs): Open Social collects 1.5% of payments routed through their account and Stripe processing typically ~2% (total ~3.5% deducted during processing).
Seller details
GoalGorilla
Amsterdam, Netherlands
2014
Private
https://www.getopensocial.com/
https://x.com/getopensocial
https://www.linkedin.com/company/goalgorilla
