Ditching the Developer Dependency: How Anaplan Reclaimed Its Community with Higher Logic Vanilla

Building on a community platform shouldn’t feel like coding a website.

But that’s exactly what Eric Stieg, Senior Manager and Head of Community, and Ginger Anderson, Principal Community Content Manager at Anaplan, faced when their sole full-time developer—responsible for managing their community platform—left.

“So much of what we were doing on the platform was custom HTML and development,” Eric recalled. “We didn’t have anyone internally who could actually manage it. The flexibility to create what we wanted from a UI perspective just wasn’t there.”

Anaplan, the leading scenario planning and analysis platform, relies on its customer community to empower a highly technical audience, including platform admins and certified users. The community provides a space for members to find answers, share solutions, deepen their platform knowledge, and connect with peers. It also plays a critical role in ticket deflection, acting as a first-stop support hub for customers before they reach out to the support team.

In search of a platform that could keep pace with their vision—and free them from constant coding dependencies—Anaplan began exploring community platforms that prioritized usability, scalability, and customization without requiring a developer on standby.

After a thorough vendor evaluation and RFP process, Vanilla emerged as the clear choice for Anaplan. Its customization options allowed the team to tailor the platform to their needs without technical overhead, while its cost-effectiveness made it a smart choice for scaling the community.

For Eric and his team, this simplicity was essential. “We needed to streamline our operations rather than add complexity,” said Eric. “For example, some platforms either had no gamification or made it so complex that replicating it was unrealistic given our team size. We wanted a solution where gamification and ranking structures were easy to manage, and Vanilla delivered on that.”

Anaplan was also looking for a platform that aligned with its long-term goals. “Compared to our last vendor and others at the time, Vanilla was just a better fit for the community we wanted to build,” Eric shared. “Our previous vendor was still years away from delivering on promises, so we knew migrating was the way forward.”

The migration to Vanilla was more than a platform switch; it was a chance to revitalize Anaplan’s entire community experience, making it more intuitive and accessible. Using Vanilla’s drag-and-drop widgets, the team could now highlight important or trending conversations and resources—tasks that previously required programming. “On our old site, the forums were hard to find,” said Eric. “Now, recent discussions and answered questions are front and center, making it straightforward for people to post and find answers.”

Ginger echoed this sentiment: “We really appreciate how easy it is now. If we want to draw attention to an event or product update, we can place it right on the homepage with call-to-action widgets. I can have it done in five minutes.”

Vanilla’s ease of use extended across the site’s structure as well. Categories helped organize discussions at a high level, making it easier for members to find what they needed. “Setting up categories and subcategories in Vanilla was so much simpler,” Eric explained. “In our previous platform, it felt like navigating a deep folder tree with hundreds of files—it was just a burden. Vanilla streamlined that whole process.”

Looking ahead, the team plans to use Vanilla’s dynamic content capabilities to customize content visibility based on members’ rank or role within the community. They’re also excited to enhance onboarding by capturing key details upfront to improve segmentation and personalization from day one.

Anaplan has found added value in participating in Vanilla’s own customer community, where they actively shape the product’s roadmap and contribute valuable feedback.

“I’m part of the Vanilla Advocates Program, so I’m pretty vocal,” said Ginger. “Vanilla has done a fantastic job fostering a community of advocates. I know who the other advocates are, and we talk regularly. There’s a lot of mutual respect and idea sharing, and the Vanilla team facilitates it well.”

Ginger also praised Vanilla’s customer support, adding: “The support team is always helpful. They consistently bring up relevant updates and features they think we should know about.”

Since migrating to Vanilla, the Anaplan community has seen its growth and engagement multiply across the board.

– 2x increase in average monthly visits per active member

– 62% rise in page views

– 2.6x faster time to first response

– 2x increase in conversation depth (average posts per thread)

– Nearly 50% more new member signups

One of the most meaningful metrics for Anaplan has been the increased frequency with which customers return to the site, with active users visiting an average of 27 times per month. “This is the ROI metric I appreciate most,” Eric noted. “It means our members are coming back nearly every business day. This speaks volumes about the quality of content Ginger curates and the support our customers provide each other.”