This has been an incredibly fun topic to read through—I ended up reading the entire topic. The conversation was incredibly informative, and so many things I want to respond to.
I have no reason to respond, but just want to add to the conversation 
I wrote something similar before:
In my experience having worked in a few product organizations (currently in one, where I’m building a community for users of my company’s product) and having been a user of many other products (B2C, B2B, etc.)…I will always choose a product that focused on their extensibility story first, and then needs to work their way over to the ease-of-use side. The inverse of course being a product that focused on ease-of-use first and then has to figure out how to become more extensible later.
(Writing this from the lens of an enterprise community) In fact, I signed up on Circle.co after reading this topic, and I was so severely disappointed for many reasons, but most notably one: it was all about me, and about my business. It wasn’t about my community, my users, or the experiences they need. So many bad products get built today, especially around the topic of community, because those products focus on me and my business needs first—I need them to focus on my users! They’re about engagement, metrics, beauty above all else…all of the things they think will attract me to be a paying customer.
This is such a fallacy because while those goals are my destination, they shouldn’t be the vehicle to get there. The way for me to get business value is by working backwards from my users—building a community that my users, need, want, and enjoy (many times in that order), and putting myself last in the equation. It will almost always feel like a forcing function to actively not work on your priorities when building a community (after all, I’m a business and need to make money!), yet the results for us have been overwhelming in delivering value for our business with Discourse as the most key component to doing so.
Can Discourse do better at usability, tailored experiences for the SMB, etc.? Does it have it’s quirks? Of course. I’m constantly hitting my head against a ceiling (not a wall) because we’re always pushing this platform to its limits. But because of the emphasis on extensibility, I have yet to meet a challenge that I haven’t been able to solve with Discourse—and believe me, we have built some insanely cool things that some thought were not possible!
This was a long way of saying that given the two choices, I will always go with the application that has a great extensibility story, because I can shape it into the experience I envision. The alternative, an application with a few well-designed uses cases (as long as you look through a couple pre-defined pinholes) with no ability to grow just will not do in building the best community for your users in the enterprise. Again, completely acknowledging @Grae’s concern as valid for the SMB though!
Also, Circle isn’t alone in their misguided focus, either. Khoros is another offender of building experiences that focus so much on “business outcomes”, ironically, they miss the mark completely. A community platform needs to focus on the community, and let me focus on the business outcomes.
I’m torn on this one—my heart and mind are both of two places. On one hand…
I want Discourse to focus on the core component of community that it is now: discussions and bringing the users together in a meaningful way, and giving me as a business all of the extensibility and flexibility to mold that into something great for my users.
On the other hand…
As part of a much broader experience for my community members who use my product, I need other things and I really want those things to have a seamless experience with Discourse. Just a few examples, though not an exhaustive list:
- Documentation (real documentation, not shoehorned into categories/topics)
- Content/file hosting
- Media (e.g. videos)
- Custom webpages
- Live stream platform
I don’t like the idea of my users having different experiences for each of those, and I believe CDCK has a great philosophy of building, shipping, supporting, and maintaining a great product. I think it’s time that they branch out to build more products (while not changing the ethos of core Discourse)!
As an enterprise customer, I do want everything in one place, but I personally won’t go with a product that does everything but poorly. I always tell my team, “When faced with a decision on what’s most right for our users, or easier for us…always choose what is most right for our users, and it will always benefit us in the long run.”…and it has every. single. time. So many times in the last 4 years that meant a fair bit of customization around/related to Discourse, and every time it turned into a major win for our business.
So while I want both things to be true yesterday…
I think this is because of what I wrote to some responses above: these platforms are attempting to focus on what community leaders are focusing on: business outcomes. Instead they should be focused on the community, and let the community/business leaders focus on getting to those outcomes by building a community that their users need.