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Enterprise community

Reign vs Khoros.

Khoros is built for large enterprises with a contract to match. Reign covers what a small ops team needs on a flat licence, and you run it yourself.

Key takeaways

  • Khoros is built for large enterprises that need contracts, certifications and a vendor to escalate to.
  • Reign covers the community features most teams actually use with four free plugins on a site you run.
  • You control the hosting, the data and the roadmap instead of waiting on a vendor release.
  • Moving makes sense when you have technical owners in-house or on retainer.

What it looks like on Reign

Screens from the live demos, with sample content. Open any of them and click around.

  • Reign BuddyPress demo home with login, activity feed, members and groups
    The home screen: sign-in, the activity feed and who is active, on one page. Open the demo
  • Reign members directory with member cards, search and sort
    The member directory: search, sort by activity, and a card for every member. Open the demo
  • Reign groups directory with public and private groups
    Groups: public and private spaces members can join or create. Open the demo

Honest take.

R

Reign wins

The community features most deployments actually use are four free plugins, against an enterprise contract with implementation on top. You control the hosting, the data and the roadmap, and you are not waiting on a vendor's release cycle for a change you need. For organisations with technical capacity, the saving funds a great deal of internal work.

K

Khoros wins

Contractual accountability. Security certifications, an audit trail, guaranteed response times, implementation services and enterprise identity integration. In regulated industries those are requirements rather than preferences, and no feature comparison makes them optional. There is also a named team who answer when something breaks at an inconvenient hour, which is exactly what the contract exists to buy.

What your members will notice.

For most users the change is cosmetic, because they only ever used the forum and the search. Power users and moderators feel it most, so bring them in during the pilot rather than presenting a finished thing. Single sign-on is what decides the perception: if it works on day one nobody thinks about the migration, and if it does not, that becomes the entire story of the project regardless of how well everything else went.

6 comparisons.

Feature Reign Khoros
Target market SMB / mid-market Enterprise
Pricing model Flat theme licence, per site Enterprise contract
Implementation You, or the Wbcom setup service Vendor services, often a project of its own
Marketing cloud integration Via Zapier / WP Fusion Native
Source code Yours, on your server Closed
Public roadmap Product Roadmap, installs free Enterprise module

4 of our own plugins, and every one installs free.

Khoros is priced as an enterprise suite. The community, the forum, the gamification and the roadmap are four plugins, all free to install.

  • BuddyNext

    Community engine

    Member profiles, activity feed, spaces, messages (with WPMediaVerse), notifications, and a moderation queue.

    Free to install, optional Pro plan

  • Jetonomy

    Forums and Q&A

    Spaces, threaded discussions, Q&A with accepted answers, voting, reputation, and a moderation queue.

    Free to install, optional Pro plan

  • WB Gamification

    Points and badges

    Points, badges, levels, leaderboards, challenges, and a rewards store, earned from real member activity.

    Free to install, no Pro plan needed

  • Product Roadmap

    Roadmap

    A public roadmap with voting, custom statuses, suggestions, comments, and a changelog.

    Free to install, optional Pro plan

You buy the Reign theme once. These are ours and they install free, so the theme stays the only purchase until one part of your community earns enough to need its Pro plan.

What you are actually choosing.

Khoros is enterprise software sold to enterprises: community, moderation, analytics and social management, with implementation services and a multi-year contract around it. Comparing it to a WordPress theme feels absurd until you look at what most Khoros deployments actually use, which is a forum, member profiles, gamification and a roadmap. That is Jetonomy, BuddyNext, WB Gamification and Product Roadmap, all free to install. What the contract additionally buys is compliance paperwork, an SLA and people, and for a regulated enterprise that is not decoration.

How you pay for it.

Khoros is an enterprise contract, with implementation often a large line of its own and timelines measured in quarters. Reign is a flat yearly theme licence with no per-member fee and no share of your sales, with four free plugins covering the community itself. The saving is real and slightly misleading: you also take on the operational work the contract used to carry, and that needs a real owner and a real budget, just a far smaller one.

See current Reign pricing

What moving actually involves.

This is a programme rather than a migration, and it starts with legal. Check the contract term, the notice period and the data clause, because those decide the timeline far more than any technical work. Khoros exports users and content, though formats vary by module, so get a sample export early and confirm it contains what you assume. Build the new community in parallel, run a pilot with a friendly segment, and cut over at renewal rather than mid-term.

When to stay on Khoros.

Stay with Khoros if procurement, compliance or legal require a vendor with contractual accountability. In regulated industries that requirement is not negotiable and no amount of saving makes it go away. You are buying an SLA, an audit trail, security certifications and someone to escalate to at 3am. Reign is a theme licence, and presenting it as equivalent to an enterprise agreement would not survive the first review.

How the pieces fit together.

Everything runs on one WordPress install, which is the part that changes how the site feels to use. One login, one member table, one set of roles. A member who joins the community is already the same person when they enrol on a course, RSVP to an event or post in the forum, because there is no integration between products, only plugins reading the same database. Against Khoros this is the unbundling of a suite. Jetonomy is the community and forum, BuddyNext the profiles and feed, WB Gamification the points, badges and ranks that drive participation, and Product Roadmap the public roadmap. Analytics and social management become separate tools of your choosing rather than modules of one contract, which is more assembly and considerably more control over what you pay for.

The first week.

For an enterprise the first week is a pilot rather than a launch. Stand up a staging environment, install the theme with Jetonomy, BuddyNext and WB Gamification, and load a representative slice of real content rather than lorem ipsum. Put it in front of a friendly internal group and your security team in parallel, because the infrastructure review will take longer than the build and starting both at once is the only way to hold a timeline.

Questions people ask before moving.

Who runs a Reign community day to day if there is no vendor team?
Your own moderators and one person who looks after the WordPress site. Jetonomy gives moderators a queue for reported posts, and BuddyNext has its own moderation queue for the feed and spaces. Updates to the theme and plugins arrive in the WordPress dashboard like any other plugin. If you would rather not do the setup yourself, the Wbcom team offers a setup service, linked from /services/, and support stays available after launch.
Can WordPress meet enterprise security requirements?
It can, and large organisations run it, but the work is yours rather than a vendor's. That means managed hosting with the right certifications, a patching policy, access control, audit logging and a named owner. The software is capable; what an enterprise contract really sells is somebody accountable when it is not.
What does Khoros include that Reign does not?
Contractual SLAs, security certifications, implementation services, enterprise single sign-on and an account team. Those are services and guarantees rather than features. If your organisation needs them on paper, that gap is the entire decision and no feature comparison changes it.
How long does leaving an enterprise platform take?
Quarters, not weeks, and most of that is contractual rather than technical. Notice periods, data clauses and internal approval usually dominate the schedule. Start with the contract, get a sample data export early, and plan the cutover around your renewal date.
Which plugins cover the Khoros community features?
Jetonomy for the forum and Q&A, BuddyNext for profiles and the activity feed, WB Gamification for points, badges and ranks, and Product Roadmap for the public roadmap. All four install free. Analytics and social management are separate tools in this model rather than modules of one suite.
Is the cost saving real?
Yes, and it is large, but only if you fund the operational work the contract used to cover. Budget for hosting, monitoring, updates and someone who owns them, in-house or on retainer. Do that and you still spend far less than the contract. Skip it and you have moved risk rather than cost.
Can this pass a security review?
It can, with the right hosting and a documented process: managed WordPress hosting with certifications, a patching policy, access control, audit logging and a named owner. Start that conversation in week one, because it governs the timeline more than any development work.
What about analytics and reporting?
Khoros bundles them; here you choose. The WordPress ecosystem covers analytics, and the community plugins expose their data in the database for your own reporting. More flexible, more assembly, and worth scoping honestly against what your stakeholders currently receive.
How do we handle a phased rollout?
Run the new community alongside the old one with a defined segment, usually one product area or region, and expand once it holds. Cutting over an enterprise community in one step is how these programmes fail. Plan the phases around your contract renewal date.
What does hosting actually cost?
Hosting is the running cost people forget to budget. A small community runs comfortably on shared or entry-level managed WordPress hosting on an entry-level plan. Past a few thousand active members you want managed hosting with object caching. The bill follows your traffic, not your member count, and unlike a subscription it buys you infrastructure you control rather than access you rent.
Who owns this internally after we move?
Somebody has to, by name, and deciding that before you start is the difference between a saving and a liability. It means a person or partner responsible for hosting, updates, backups, security and the community roadmap. Enterprises that skip this step end up with an unmaintained site in eighteen months and conclude the software was the problem.

Start free, then pay for what you outgrow.

See what installs free See pricing

One theme, the whole site

See what you can build with Reign, then try it.

Reign is the WordPress theme for building a complete community site: social network, courses, member directory, marketplace and job board on one install. Start with one, add the others when you need them, and keep one login for every member. Open a live demo, or launch a sandbox and get a fresh WordPress site to click through in about a minute.

Add more when you need it

Not sure which setup fits your site?

Tell us what you want members to do on your site. We will tell you which Reign setup, plugins and kit fit, before you buy anything.

Ask us before you buy Email support@wbcomdesigns.com

What customers say on Trustpilot

Perfect themes

I purchased Reign theme from Wbcom Designs, the support team was very helpful and I got the perfect website what I was looking for. Good work Wbcom Designs

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