"In my experience no other online platform is this versatile."

- Ken Royer,
U.S. Department of Commerce

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"This is the coolest piece of software I have ever used.  It's like AOL-in-a-box."

- Lori Leach,
Creative Director
Dermdex.com

 
Why netVillage?

netVillage provides the most comprehensive, secure, and robust community building solution on the planet. Our software, powering more online communities than all other providers combined, is clearly the right choice for creating your online interactive community.  Here are some of our distinctions:

One Stop Shopping

We are unmatched in the breadth of plug-and-play integrated services we can incorporate into your community.  From auctions to video broadcasting you can choose from a wealth of interactive plug-and-play community services.  You can rest easy knowing when your system grows to need advanced services, they'll be there.  

Completely Integrated Services

Probably the most important requirement of an online community. Our community services were designed and developed to work with each other from the ground up.   Other providers cobble together software applications from multiple vendors (under the banner 'best of breed'), resulting in a hodgepodge mix of services and a disruptive, inconsistent community experience.  Some of the advantages of services that seamlessly integrate with each other follow:

Single Login

Your community members should be able to switch effortlessly between services (for example, moving between the chat room and the discussion groups) without having to 'log-in' again. Multiple logins is disruptive and confusing to the user.  It is the sign of poor integration.

Generally all of our competitors in the community building space offer the same basic 4 ‘interactive’ applications: calendar, discussion groups, member list, and chat rooms.  Extended services such as auctions, shopping, polls, etc. are accomplished by linking to third party internet services.  If a community host would like to add an interactive poll, for example, he would either have to link to an online poll vendor such as free-polls.com or develop it himself. Once a site has linked out of its community, it disrupts the community experience as the customer is now forced to ‘log-on’ once again to a new service.  You even risk losing the customer while he is off in that system.

Retain Revenue Opportunities

Community providers that link to third party services to round out their solution throw your revenue opportunities away!  For example, If your community discussion groups are handled by link to a national service (delphi.com, ezboard.com, etc.), they are receiving banner ad revenue while your customers are in that area, not you.  When you link to outside services from within your community you have lost potential revenue opportunities from transaction fees and/or advertising banners the vendor site has usurped.
 
We address all of these issues by providing an unmatched selection of plug-and-play, tightly integrated applications that allow you, the community host, to control and retain every aspect and revenue opportunity of your online community.

Integrated e-commerce
Not only do our applications share authentication, they are all tied into our user management security and e-commerce ‘credits’ systems.  A user can maintain an electronic wallet (in the form of 'credits' applied to his account) and use this currency across all community services. For example, he can deduct an amount to place a classified ad in the classifieds, and deduct some more later to download a file from the File Libraries - all without having to pull out his credit card each time. Besides providing customers the convenience of not having to use a credit card for every transaction, it provides a powerful mechanism by which For-Profit systems can charge for additional or premium services.

Feature Rich

Our community software has been developed and fine-tuned over many years.  We've incorporated feed back from a very large customer base and as a result our software is highly configurable with a vast array of configuration features (5,000 at last count!).  This gives you the flexibility to create your ideal online service.  Click here to take a good look at the configuration options for each of our services and you'll see what we mean.

Powerful User Management & Security

All of the community services are integrated into our User Management System. Its purpose is to identify users, decide internally which activities and resources they can access, and possibly charge users for access to those areas. Our locks & keys approach to managing access rights gives you unparalleled power for member access and control. As mentioned by our customer Xerox: "No one has anything that even comes close".  Click here for details.

Credits-based E-Commerce Accounting

We offer a ‘Credits’ based e-commerce system across all community services. Credits are a community’s unit of currency. They are the mechanism by which For-Profit systems can charge for services. A user maintains an electronic wallet (in the form of 'credits' applied to his account) and use this currency across all community services.  A user’s account can be posted a positive number of credits which is drawn down by the user’s activities on your system.  Click here for details.

Rapid Time to Market

Other community builders can take months to get you online, we can get you up and running in days.  In an age where being late to the Internet game may spell doom for your company, it's crucial to be able to deploy rapidly and cost-efficiently.

Experience

While other community builders have sprouted only within the last few months, netVillage's expertise and community tools pre-dates even the web - we then built online communities for dial-up services. netVillage is the most experienced online community software developer in the world.  We know what works, and what doesn't, in the community space.