How 1Password Created Better Products and Relationships with their Community

The time had come to move on from their current provider; they wanted a solution that could grow as 1Password would. 

The 1Password team had experienced a bad fit solution and were ready to start their search with a comprehensive checklist.  

It was super important that they created a space their customers came to for support, but also came to engage with one another and the company. One of the top priorities of their search was to find a provider that could help them create this. 

And then, they found Vanilla.  

Compared with competitors, Vanilla topped the list of community software providers, but even as a standalone option, Vanilla was 1Password’s top choice. The features Vanilla offered out-of-the-box proved that an online community could be both affordable and effective. 

The 1Password team relies heavily on customer feedback to build their product and without a reliable, dedicated space for customers to offer their knowledge and advice, they found they were missing out.  

“During our product development process, for example during beta tests, the community was meant to act as a tool to engage with customers, and it just wasn’t performing.” 

Answers in the community are automatically indexed within the platform – a key benefit of Vanilla – making it that much easier for users to find the answers they’re looking for, no matter how much time has lapsed. 

Vanilla fit 1Password’s needs like a glove! 

At Vanilla, we know that migrating a community can be stressful but the 1Password team felt comfortable in the hands of Vanilla’s team. 

Migrating 1Password from their old platform over to their new, and improved Vanilla community was smooth and the transition in the time after was even better than expected.  

Despite having several years of content to transition, the Vanilla team got it done in record time. The process was simple and stress-free. 

The 1Password community was up and running in no time, and the benefits the company reaped were almost instantaneous.  

After the launch of the 1Password community on the Vanilla platform, the community has gone from strength to strength.  

In a short time, a one-time support forum has become so much more than that. Once acting only as a part of a support solution, the 1Password community has become a central business driver.  

1Password’s new community has enabled the company to create meaningful connections with customers, and indeed it has kept staff grounded, and to task with the essence of 1Password. 

“The forum has very much become a community, not just your run-of-the-mill forum where people are simply looking for support but rather a place of active constructive discussions and sharing of opinions.” 

The community has encouraged engagement between employees and customers, as well as creating better interaction between customers. It’s even been the source of new employees at 1Password! 

“A great example of an inter-customer relationship within the 1Password Community forum is that of “MrC” – an incredible community member who’s been a 1Password customer since the very beginning. Over the years, he has created all of our import scripts and has even guided other users through them; he’s even fixed the scripts when bugs were detected. MrC is just one example of the many committed and incredibly helpful community members that we have in our Vanilla Community.” 

1Password have also used their community to build better products with the help of their customers. In fact, over 25,000 beta users were directed to the community to help test and build 1Password for Mac! 

The community has become the primary venue for interacting with devoted Beta and Early Access users. The forum has been instrumental in helping 1Password define their priorities – in particular, the open and multi-directional discussions and feedback they’ve received from the community have been extremely helpful: they actually built out 1Password 8’s feature set. 

Overall, the community has even helped 1Password’s visibility. In just two years, the community directly contributed to a 108% increase in SEO traffic – an astounding number!