# The Owned-Community Software Market

> A landscape look at the branded, owned-community software market - the vendors selling organizations a home for their members, alumni, customers and experts that lives off the big social feeds. The category spans budget-friendly alumni tools (Almabase), venture-backed all-in-one platforms (Hivebrite), nonprofit roll-ups (Gravyty), expert-network software (Zapnito), AI-first newcomers (Threado), enterprise incumbents (Khoros, Higher Logic) and the old forum guard (Invision Community, vBulletin under MH Sub I). After a decade of building, the market is now consolidating - acquisitions, mergers and an AI reset are redrawing who owns the community layer.

## Achievements

- Hivebrite runs branded networks for organizations including CERN, Roche and the Obama Foundation.
- Gravyty's ecosystem (Graduway, Community, Advance, Raise, Peerpal, Gratavid) serves 2,500+ universities, nonprofits and corporations.
- Hivebrite raised approximately $58M from Insight Partners and Quadrille Capital.
- Almabase established itself as a budget-friendly, engagement-automation-first alternative in the alumni market.
- Khoros and Higher Logic became the enterprise incumbents for customer and association communities.

## Latest updates

- **2025-05** — Khoros Communities acquired by IgniteTech; customers weigh roadmap stability and product direction.
- **2026-01** — AI-native community management (Threado and peers) moves from novelty to expected feature across the category.

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Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-08-07