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Planning a Community Migration: Lessons, Pitfalls, and How to Prepare

Few projects cause more stress for community managers than moving from one platform to another. The technical work is one thing, but getting members and internal teams aligned can be even harder.

In this AMA, Nicole Saunders, Senior Director of CX Strategy at Higher Logic, shared what she’s learned from years of online community migrations, including what to prioritize, what to avoid, and how to make change less painful.

Note: this content has been lightly edited for clarity and concision. 

Q: What are the biggest mistakes to avoid during a community platform migration?

Nicole Saunders: The biggest lesson is the importance of change management. If your organization has a change management team, involve them early. If not, take on that mindset yourself. You need to think about both the internal and external impacts:

  • What happens in the current space?
  • Who are the stakeholders invested in it?
  • What’s the customer experience like today?

Then, plan communications carefully. Give everyone as much notice as possible that changes are coming.

Second, involve your users in the process. Bring them in as beta testers, get feedback early, and let them feel part of the decision. Members are much more likely to protect, support, and grow a space they helped build. If you simply announce, “We’re moving next week,” expect pushback. But if you’ve got champions saying, “We tested this, we love it, it’s going to be a better experience for all of us,” the transition is smoother.

Third, get your technical teams involved early. Too many migrations stall or fail because developers and IT weren’t looped in soon enough. Community managers are excited, leadership is on board, but IT says not until next year. Involving them upfront avoids roadblocks.

The good news is that platforms like ours have migration services and partner networks that can ease the load on internal IT. But even then, it’s critical to have them in the loop.

I’ve done a lot of migrations, and I know our team has helped hundreds, if not thousands, of customers through them. The common thread in successful ones is clear: plan for change management, involve your members, and bring technical teams in from the start.

Q: How should I prepare my content and data before migrating to a new community platform?

Nicole Saunders: When I was at Zendesk, we had to do a major migration, and even though it was to a new version of the same platform, it was still a full-scale project. A few things made it successful:

  1. Be selective about what you move.
    We carefully reviewed content ahead of time and cleaned things up. We looked at which posts and resources were most viewed or linked from other places, and we made sure those came with us. We also moved anything created in the past couple of months, since it was still fresh. But a lot of older content was archived instead of migrated.
  2. Keep an accessible archive.
    We didn’t just throw old content away. We kept it in an internal archive. That way, if someone asked about a legacy product or outdated version, we could still find the old answer and pass it along. For about six months after the migration, we’d selectively pull relevant posts from that archive into the new community.
  3. Think about the 80/20 rule.
    We found that about 20% of the content accounted for 80% of the value. That’s the content you want to prioritize moving.
  4. Use migration as a reset opportunity.
    A platform migration is a natural moment to rethink your community’s direction. Do you want to lean more into customer success? Build out more customer marketing programs? Pivot into a community of practice? Use the migration as a chance to evolve, but be thoughtful in how you manage those changes and bring members along with you.

In short, clean and prioritize content, archive what you don’t need to move, plan for gradual pull-through of legacy material, and use the migration as a moment to strategically refresh your community.

Q: Should I move my community off a Facebook group?

Nicole Saunders: The key is to get to the core of what your customers need, not just in terms of features, but in outcomes. For example, if members say they want a “like” button, ask yourself: what does that actually enable for them? Recognition? Quick feedback? Community validation? Understanding the why behind feature requests helps you design better solutions in a new space.

I understand why some organizations still use Facebook groups. Meeting your users where they already are can feel like low-hanging fruit. But I’ve always been cautious about building communities on social platforms you don’t own. Years ago, I ran a Facebook community and was tracking a particular stat that my client cared about. Then one day, Facebook simply stopped measuring it. Suddenly, my reporting was broken, I lost historical data, and I had to scramble to find new metrics. That’s just one small example, but it shows how dependent you are on their rules and how quickly the member experience can shift without notice.

There are other limitations too:

  • It’s very difficult to integrate user data into your CRM.
  • You can’t connect community insights to the rest of the customer journey.
  • You lack control over the experience.

By contrast, owned communities allow you to:

  • Tie members directly to CRM records.
  • Do smarter matchmaking and segmentation.
  • Integrate with customer marketing and advocacy programs.
  • Provide a richer, more customized experience.

That said, migration isn’t just about moving data. It’s about moving people. You need to understand what your members like about the current space and replicate or replace those elements in your new platform. And you need to decide what content is worth bringing over versus what’s best left behind.

My recommendation is to use social platforms as feeders—places where you can aggregate people, then guide them toward your owned community. That way, you get the best of both worlds: reach where your customers already are, and control where it matters most.

I’ll always advocate for an owned community. It gives you more control, better integration, and a clearer path to demonstrating business impact.

Navigating Change with Confidence

Community migrations are challenging, but they’re also opportunities. With clear communication, thoughtful content decisions, and member involvement, migrations can refresh your strategy and set your community up for the future.

Explore the rest of this AMA series:

And don’t miss the full AMA webinar with Nicole Saunders.