white box social networks on the cheap
These are all communities-in-a-box that I have evaluated, some more than others:
The most flexible, customizable, and powerful solution. Requires coders and designers. Must be hosted. Opensource. Could work for big companies.
The new company of Marc Andreessen (Netscape). More for the mothers of the world than for professional use. CSS/HTML is customizable but the features feel a bit, well, dinkey. Free unless you want to take off the ads.
On the same level as Ringside, only seems a little Microsofty to me (sorry, that was mean). Free for non-commerical use, min 2500 to license the system (one time fees, based on number of users). Support is extra. Could also work with big companies, although if you are going to pay, I'd recommend evaluating Select Minds, Small World Lab, GoingOn, Awareness Networks, Pringo, and KREM)
Nice system for non-professional use. Very similar to Ning, but without the ads (although there are very prominent "Mixxt" branded headers and footers; you must contact them to negotiate their removal). Lots of BarCamps in Europe are using it.
Most ideal solution for non-professional use (mostly b/c they haven't released a pro version yet; current cap is 100mb). Our designer, Alisha, liked this UI the best, and they have social sharing features and tagging baked in for photos, articles, etc.
Most ideal solution for professional use. All the features you'll ever need, including advertising management (1K/mo. to turn off their ads). Full API. Fully front-end customizable. Use with something like FoxyCart (below) for ecommerceness.
Not the most ideal social features. Seems kinda half-baked. There are better options out there.
Awesome ecommerce. Non-cms; css/html customizable; one-page login/checkout.
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