9 Free Ning Alternatives And Some Open Source Solutions
Many people have started communities on the popular network creation site Ning since its inception. On April 15th they announced they would no longer offer their free services. Realize this isn’t the end of Ning as they point out
The tens of thousands of you who already use our paid service represent over 75% of our traffic
So I imagine most of the popular networks you belong to on Ning will remain in place.
However, for the other 25% that might navigate elsewhere you have several options. I’ve yet to see a good breakdown of some of the better free Ning alternatives out there so I thought I would give it a shot. I found most of these sites in the comments and blog posts of other despaired Ning network creators. I’ve also tried to track down these other networks reactions to Ning’s announcement. Hopefully this will help you with your own transition.
Hosted Solutions
Spruz
Spruz seems to be the network of choice for most ex-ningers. I’ve read several reports of great up time and quality service. Spruz seems to have everything Ning has and a few extras that make it somewhat unique. I’ve seen users specifically boast about its file sharing capabilities.
[Post from Spruz welcoming Ning users]
Webs
Webs gets 30 times the traffic of Spruz and any other network on this list falling short only to Ning at two-thirds its traffic. Webs promises to always be free and shares several of the main features that made Ning popular including forums, member profiles and blogs.
[Post from Webs welcoming Ning users]
WackWall
I guess being in beta it wouldn’t be fair to compare their traffic to some of the other sites on the list. However, WackWall looks very promising. They are backed by a software company and don’t rely on investments which is why, they say, they will always remain free.
[Post from WackWall welcoming Ning users]
Grou.ps
Grou.ps is another great choice based on open source software. It seems to have everything Ning has and a very reasonable pricing plan to help scale your network. They also prefer to be called a social operating system. Looks very powerful.
[Post from Grou.ps welcoming Ning users]
Grouply
Grouply looks a lot like Ning on the front end and already has FAQs on importing members from other services. Matter of fact I’ve mistaken grouply groups for Ning groups a few times. One does have to wonder why their traffic has been dropping only to be revived by Ning’s latest news.
[Post from grouply welcoming Ning users]
BigTent
BigTent may be one of the babies of the bunch but it provides all of the same services in an “integrated” approach. Users claim the support is tremendous making it worth their switch. BigTent looks like a very simple solution, maybe a little too simple for some.
[Post from BigTent welcoming Ning users]
Zerista
Still trying to wrap my brain around this one but it looks VERY cool. Imagine FourSquare meets Ning and has little mobile babies. With tons of cool features to integrate the social experience, maybe its about time you take your network to the next level and go mobile?
[Post from Zerista welcoming Ning users]
Groupsite
Groupsite (formerly known as CollectiveX) looks like an awesome network solution with some excellent features. It does seem like they find ways to lure you into buying their premium services, like limiting subgroups to 5 but overall another good solution on the free side.
SocialGo
SocialGo, like the rest has a very impressive feature list and is just as popular as Spruz traffic-wise. The site seems to have a pretty satisfied user-base as I’ve seen several people recommend the site across different blogs and networks. Definitely worth putting on the list.
Open Source Solutions
Maybe the phasing out of Ning’s free service is what it takes to get you to take ownership of your community and move to a self hosted solution. The following are all free and trusted solutions in the industry. I personally would go with BuddyPress but to each his own.
BuddyPress – [Message from Buddypress]
Conclusion
I wan’t to hear your thoughts. If you know of any other free hosted social network creation services, please share them in the comments. Also feel free to give feedback on any of the networks listed if you are currently a user or have used one in the past.
- Photo by Samuel Stroube
What I really want to know is which of this sites offer the same 10GB storage for free same as ning.
Spruz says they give you unlimited bandwidth and storage here. I’m sure some of the others probably do as well or at least matched Ning’s.
Actually, Jon, Spruz do not specifically say unlimited storage. If you drill down further here, they say storage depends on the number of “Avg Daily Page Views.” Low traffic will limit you to 100 MB.
Good catch. It’s actually a pretty interesting model, rewarding those with the most traffic.
After a lot of comparisons, we decided to use SocialGo. Overall, I give it high ratings. Creating new page layouts is very easy, even if you don’t know HTML and CSS. I find inserting pictures to be an annoying process (and that could just be me). I’m also disappointed that there are no tag clouds for the blogs. However, SocialGo includes iFrames, which lets us import a lot of external content. And the pricing is very reasonable.
Thank you Dana for sharing your experience with SocialGo. The external content thing seems like a major plus.
Great list of Ning alternatives! Spruz does seem to be the top pic, looking at the twitter buzz and news posts I’m reading.
Another free alternative is mixxt.com, offering functionalities very similar to Ning but with some additions.
Some of the advantages are:
- Strong Community Management features (e.g., newsletter system, access control)
- Powerful sub-groups
- Full collaboration features including wikis, image albums, file systems, event-management and CMS
- Advanced customization
mixxt’s philosophy is different from Ning’s: it is based on White Labeled solutions for large institutions and enterprises, as well as Freemium services.
mixxt networks are especially popular among education, work-related and event networks.
Users wanting to import their Ning network to mixxt find a useful tool in our Ning importer (http://bit.ly/migrate-ning).
Give your own mixxt network a try for free here: (http://mixxt.com)!
Thanks for sharing. Looks promising.
For me the most important thing is storage, wackwall offers 5gb free (default), grou.ps offers 10gb same as ning,
The other thing is ownership, in ning you don’t own your network.
There is another alternative that was launched yesterday in beta at http://www.zonkk.com. Zonkk is an elgg based social network creator that is free to join and has lots of applications and options. There are also paid upgrades available too.
Can you post their storage and pricing scheme?
Without that I’m not interested.
It looks as if you are running on the Elgg platform.
2 GB storage and 20 GB transfer is allocated for free accounts.
Zonkk is running a modified form of elgg.
Based on your recommendations, I evaluated six of them. Here are my findings. I finally chose Webs to replace my Ning site. They’re not perfect, but I like them the most. Webs’ best feature, I think, is their account-manager/site-manager.
I think Zerista looks like the most promising of the bunch. It seems more customizable for more broad usage. They have general uses listed on the site, but it can be used beyond that.
Grouply FREE offers 10GB just as Ning.
I haven’t found any decent social networking scripts. I thought dolphin was going to be the bomb but I wasn’t thrilled with it. I did like buddypress with a social networking module but it isn’t exactly what I wanted, but it has been the best so far. Another hosted solution is the serve and share networks that can be found by clicking on my name.
I moved to Grou.ps. They offer 10GB storage, 100GB bandwidth and very flexible full customization option. If you know some html & css, it means you are holding magic wand in your hands. Grou.ps has many free features.
On the other side, all your destiny is in Grou.ps’ hands. But I cannot afford hosting costs and manage technical issues on my own now. I’m not an advanced user. So those open-source alternatives are not for me.
So far so good with Grou.ps. You can see the comparison from here http://grou.ps/move_ning.php
I also found this today – http://www.emresokullu.com/blogs/item/thoughts-on-ning-exodus-and-groups-socialgo–grouply-amp-others
Thanks for all other information here. I will check them as well.
Well, about spruz, they said at first its going to be free. Now it force us to have at least 100 members , less features and pages so we stay free, since google removed the ads from it. So we have less bandwith or else if we want more pay to become premium. No good at all. I came back to this blog to search for another host.
Thanks for keeping us updated. Let us know how your search goes.
Hey Jon and everybody else, since you asked for free Ning alternatives, may I shamelessly suggest our platform for Social Action/ Social Collaboration? The name is Amazee, we are a small team based in Switzerland and offer a free migration service for Ning Networks whose members aren’t willing or able to pay for the new payment scheme Ning has come up with. You can find all the necessary information and a link to the migrator here: http://blog.amazee.com/welcome-ning-refugees-2/. Don’t hesitate to ask questions, if you do have any!
I would be interested in people’s opinions regarding Google Sites Groups as an alternative.
I’ve been working/playing with Google Sites and Groups for a few months now and they seem pretty capable in offering a solution.
It appears the biggest drawback is the storage size limitations (which seems odd for a Google product).
Thoughts?