My immediate thoughts would be that I agree because I don’t see the logic why a small community wouldn’t need groups to me this should be a basic. Its like a car dealership giving you a test drive without the wheels fitted to the car.
However, from a business perspective, I know that the point is that you should see what you miss out on to nudge you to upgrade and become a customer - you’re not going to get a free feature rich version.
I just think there are other things that are currently restricted which are understandable but yeah groups is a basic as nearly everything is managed by groups.
True i wasnt expecting a feature rich experince but at least let the groups even in a free trial you have group features and groups can be a staple in many forums
Topics of interest = Categories. The free plan allows you to create up to 10 public Categories for areas of discussion.
Groups are for segments of users, and they enable different permissions, access to private categories, and messaging within user groups. These are more advanced features you’d need to upgrade for.
Then again, groups aren’t an ‘essential’ part of the forum, in a sense that the forum can still function without groups.
But that aside, IMO groups should be included. On the other hand, category read/write settings also cannot be changed on the free plan. Do groups have much use, then? It can be argued from sides, I think.
On this very forum, we make extensive use of categories – we do use groups too, but only for very specific purposes. Most of the people here are not part of any custom groups.
Very large forums can run effectively with limited or no use of groups.
That said, they are valuable – especially for organizations or communities with greater complexity or who limit access to certain areas for different reasons – but that’s stuff we believe is worth investing more in if you need it (whether your time or your money).
this.