Top customer forum options for Shopify include Discourse, Vanilla Forums, and XenForo. These platforms provide strong customization, integration, and engagement features to enhance community interactions.
Topic summary
A merchant seeks a customer forum for their Shopify store with specific requirements: single sign-on (SSO) integration with existing customer accounts, focus on technical product discussions rather than social features, category-based organization, easy point-and-click setup, and affordable pricing. They’ve researched multiple options but found most lacking—either with broken demos, spam issues, or unclear functionality.
Key developments:
- Xenforum emerged as the leading candidate after its developer (ChrisNguyen) engaged directly in the thread
- The merchant successfully validated Xenforum’s SSO functionality on live customer sites
- A critical feature request was made: allowing users to edit display names to protect identity (important for government/military/aerospace customers)
- The developer added the username customization feature, but this apparently broke user verification
- Trial period proved too short (7 days) for thorough testing; merchant requested extension
- Communication challenges arose with email delivery issues
Current status: Discussion remains unresolved. The merchant wants to subscribe but needs the verification issue fixed first. Later comments suggest generic forum recommendations (Discourse, Vanilla Forums, Tribe/Bettermode) without addressing the original poster’s specific situation or whether Xenforum’s technical issues were resolved.