SocialEngine has been around for a few and we’ve enjoyed trying it out and seeing it develop into a more and more powerful system as the years go by. We decided to share the experience with our readers and show you the true power this system possesses. If you are looking for a system that’s affordable and works well as a social networking product.. then this is definitely a very solid choice and one of the better options on the market today. It’s also very reasonably priced at about $250 for a license.
Here’s how the install process looks for those interested:
You get your license key from them upon purchase which, as we said, is pretty reasonably priced at $250.You then enter your database details on the next screen and submit
Now that you have your login information, you can proceed to the control panel and get started by playing around with it.
Their administrative interface is nice and clean and very easy to use. There are tons of options and it's very easy to use and configure.
Above you can see the default look of the system before you do any modifications. Let’s create an account and play a bit
shall we?
Below is my test user's profile with an avatar i found and uploaded. Very easy to do.
SocialEngine also has a number of plugins which can be installed and configured for use. Plugins are available for between
$30 to $50 depending on the plugin. In this case, we have all of the plugins that are not third party.
There is some pretty amazing functionality built into SocialEngine. Let’s install some of the plugins and see how they work/look.
Here is the compose screen from the blog editor. once installed, it’s fully functional and works very well. Looks like it uses TinyMCE by default.
It has a very nice chat module that can be added to it. All of the modules are very fast to load up including this chat which is nice. It appears they have put a lot of work into making sure everything is quick and functional. This isn't just some slapped together product.. SocialEngine is very sleek.
Here is a screenshot of the classifieds section (once the module has been installed). This particular module is a great way to monetize your site as well should you choose.
There is also a nice events plugin which lets you create upcoming events either for yourself or others.
This plugin is for music uploads. One comment on it would be that it lacks an effective admin entry and there doesn’t appear to be an easy way to modify the number of files or file sizes (that I could find).
There is also the ability to add polls.
And finally, the last plugin we tested was the videos plugin. It works beautifully with Youtube and uploads.
Overall, We’d say this is one heck of a great collection of modules and software that can be used to put together one heck of a killer social network.
It’s easy to theme and easy to customize as well so you can create your own unique look without much effort. For the cost they are charging for this, you could put together an amazingly well equipped social network with very minimal effort.
The admin panel is incredibly straight forward and simple as well.
The SocialEngine team has done an outstanding job on this great product. It’s no wonder it has such a large number of users.
About Mike Johnston
I had the worst experience with SE! The script is no good when you have few thousand members and only 150 members online. I spent over 500 (2 dedicated servers, one for sql) USD for hosting (per month) and it did not help. The coding is just very bad! Don't buy it if you think you will have over 3.000 members.
I agree, SocialEngine is no good. I purchased it and paid them to install it as well. I tested it with just three members, it was slow to load and took for ever to login to the user account. I used their recommend host Arvixe who were just as bad. I have asked for a refund, no reply so far. It looks like I will have to take legal action to recover my money.
I have read several bad reviews for SocialEngine from 2009 through Feb. 2011. I downloaded it in Nov. 2011 and it is Not well-documented internally. The company gives no response for the trial version. I will continue to read reviews and check their code.
Their videos are hard to follow and their docs seem incomplete.
— Kenneth
I have been looking for a stable community software package, that is scalable which is to say that it can handle the user load. I came to this review to find the truth, then I read Korhan's comment about how SE performs in the real world. I came to this REVIEW to find the truth. Obviously this review isnt worth much except to tell you how easy it installs and how much you can expect to spend for some plugins. Between the Russians at ABK, Dolphin, and other Russian/Khazikstan software lies I dont know where to turn to find something thats worth my time and effort. If anyone can help me with this, please email me: jimsmaildrop@hotmail.com
Thx
How many plugins and mods did you have installed? Also it really depends on quality of customization.
I've seen websites based on SE with 10K users running smoothly. Also I've seen websites with all possible plugins included running slow as hell with almost no users at all.
Previous user was correct that there is truly a problem with how socialengine works with database. MySQL overloads with any amount of significant users.
http://www.socialenginebase.net/viewtopic.php?f=1…
The trick to socialengine is MEMCACHE.
We run Social Engine 3 with 80 000 users, some days more than 300 people online at one time.
(www.studentvillage.co.za)
We use 1 DB server & 3 other servers (although we only need 1).
The 3 other servers are used for web servers (load balanced) and they also serve as MEMCACHE servers – 1 GB memcache each.
Our DB server load average is 1 (and it's a quad core, so it's basically doing nothing) and the web servers are at 0.1.
See our live loads at http://server.svo.co.za/load/ (firefox only)
SocialEngine's fluidity depends on the kind of plugins you're managing. I've had an easier time dealing with RadCodes plugins. Please, please be sure that the plugins you're purchasing are compatible with the version you're using.
The Smarty engine is very unforgiving if you upload a SE 2 plugin for your SE 3 script.
Jaco that link is not online.
Fair Review..
Except one should not overlook that the plugins listed do not come with the 250 dollar license..
It's a pay as you go type deal.. Paying individually for the plugins..
I've enjoyed it, and can't wait for Version 4.. But I've literally invested about a grand into the license/software/plugins..
It's slow at times.. and is probably not worth the investment with some other cheaper and free alternatives..
But it's great for those with little webdesign/developing knowledge.
In general SosialEngine is one of the best products we have worked with. Most of code is clear and structured.
However often I see people make mistakes trying to build a second facebook. Eventually a lot of people install all plugins they found to be "cool": blog, chat, groups, forum, video, music, gallery and so on. With addition of a bunch of mods to expend the functionality. The main problem here is that in this case you will require good hosting from the very beginning.
There is another hidden issue here – attention of your users will be spread around the features. People won't know what to start from and most likely some of plugins functionality won't be used at all (but will eat server resources).
Let me show you an example. You are starting a niche community for "art house movie" lover. In this case you can install SE, add plugins like groups (for discussions) and blogs (for movie reviews). Also few mods to improve usability. As an option you can add video plugin to keep movie trailers, but only in case your budget allows good hosting. In addition you can order to build a custom plugin "movies" that will allow admin to add movies and users to rate them.
More than enough for a start. All these functionality won't cost much (~1500-2000usd with design). And you can actually start to work on getting community members (and trying to keep them involved), instead of adding any extra functionality. Your hosting payments won't be high.
You need to pay attention to what makes your social network different and listen to your users. It's much better to enhance your specific functionality instead of general. For example it will make sense to order a custom recommendation system based on users votes.
Just don't try to be a second facebook or myspace. You can always beat any large network in a smaller niche.
With all these social networking software scripts around, its gets tough picking the right one. I decided to toss them all onto one big user review site where users can really say what they think about the software, all in one place, helping us all out! If anyone has an objective user review on socialengine, please post it'
Are you kidding me!? Have any of you even used this shoddy software. It is the most shoddy package I've ever seen any company ever put out. I am stunned that they put this out as a final version. SE3 was awful, and SE4 while it looks better is every bit as awful.
There are so many bugs in this it's not even funny. It looks great on the surface but just wait until you get into using it.
First, none of the editors work properly. And they're all different! There is no consistency. On the forums, to reply you just get a small empty box! No editing tools or anything. Unless you click on QUOTE. But who wants to always QUOTE when they reply to a forum. In the blogs, you get an entirely different editor, with its own set of problems… like it doesn't parse URLs properly. It ADDS stray characters to the end of URLs! Then when people click on them they get page not found!
This is without a doubt the most poorly put together platform I've ever seen. And they've done it in a very tricky way. It looks great on the surface. But once you get into it there are thousands of problems!
Oh and their support is awful. I mean it's good when you can get it – but you can never get it. You pay the support fee and have maybe 10 tickets to start with (due to the fact there are so many bugs in the software), and they get to an average of one ticket every other day. I've been sitting here for a month now and I've gotten about 10% of the problems resolved! 90% still sitting there waiting for answers that may come in four days or may come in four weeks. Who knows?
Anyway, good luck if you try this. But just be ware of the thousands of bugs and glitches you'll find once you really get into it. Like, emails sent to users notifying them of responses that are so filled with stray characters like & n b s p – as to make them unreadable. And they'll certainly make YOUR company look LIKE IDIOTS!
I agree with buster siren. I'm getting very frustrated with SE customer service. It seems very slow and un-helpful when you have problems. Anyway, can someone kindly recommend a better social network script? I have a few thousands of members on SE and would need to migrate them to the new script. I'm just a little concerned I may start to have problems with SE and maybe now is a good time tio jump ship!
i have tried it, se3.20 and i find it very nice, if you dont know programming, but there is place to find help and the place that assisted me was socialengineforum.com
i am certain that whatever problem you are having with social engine that someone else has the same problem, so after buying or trying social engine, their are some great programmers at the forum to help you…..
loverboydell last comment is a load of crap… hes promoting his forum.. and they are not helpful at all, that forum has a lot of people asking for help, with a bunch of idiots replying in the most childish way. They dont help.. trust me on this.
I agree with BusterSiren, the coding behind this is really really bad… I can't understand how these guys have got the balls to release this software in such bad condition. Their programmers are noobs.. I looked at tit at first and thought yep it looks good, but then I noticed many bugs and it was so slow to do simple things. I thought ok well I have built similar site to social networks in the past so I know it shouldn't be so slow.
I then checked out the database structure and the programming behind SE4…. WOW OMG !!! what the hell are these guys doing…. boy oh boy… I couldn't believe my eyes. And the templates using tpl lol please don't get me started… guys trust me on this one… these guys are kids hoping to make a quick buck and run, thats why they haven't invested in more staff and is why they didn't fix SE3. The reason they didn't fix SE3 was because they don't know how, lol a lot of their code is done using dreamweaver lol yep check it out.
from what i have seen with all the scripts out there is not good. Dolphin is quite good but then the security is really bad, I remember getting hacked so many times when using dolphin… so don't bother guys..
I would say hire a good php programmer who has experience with seo and ajax. "not dreamweaver designers" they don't really know php and use plugins to try to create complex sites which means later on it will break and they don't have the skills to fix it.
My view is the time you spend trying to learn these social network scripts and fix them, you could actually learn to programme php, javascript, mysql. Buy the books guys and take your time, you will see it's not hard at all, it's simple logic.
I have installed this software on my shared network and it is easily customizable. In the past, we have used the .NET based Akeni Social Network software and we found that using PHP, the performance of the web site is not as good compared to the .NET social network software. But with PHP, it is much easier to customize
This is Alex, one of SocialEngine's founders.
Guys, thanks for the honest reviews. We're sorry to hear that some of you have had negative experiences with SE. Unfortunately, it's quite difficult to satisfy absolutely every person's specific needs when it comes to a white-label platform like SE. We do in fact have a small development team here, so we try very hard to pick out features that are most in demand and focus on those. The result is that some details are missing (like the WYSIWYG editors mentioned by BusterSiren above). We sincerely work hard to keep the code accessible and easy to understand so that details like these can be filled in by developers when they need them. I can assure you that we have never used Dreamweaver, and are actually WYSIWYG-phobic. We use NetBeans. :)
Admittedly, our support staff was not prepared for the unexpectedly overwhelming response to our SE4 release last year. Our new customer volume jumped very abruptly and we scrambled to scale up our support team. At the time BusterSiren and Cape Milo posted above, our resources were spread quite thin and we were struggling to maintain a high quality support service. Thankfully, we've properly scaled up since then and now have an expert team of developers (not just customer service reps), 100% in-house here in Los Angeles, offering high-quality support to our clients. As far as we are aware, none of our direct competitors offer support by the same developers that directly contribute to the source code. We do this so that bugs can be addressed and fixed directly by our support staff.
There are a few important things to keep in mind in evaluating any white-label platform like SocialEngine:
1. White-label platforms (especially SocialEngine) are designed to be customized. Most of our clients do make direct changes to the source code or install third-party mods and add-ons. Our research indicates that these are usually the source of issues that arise. We work very hard to support our own source code and fix bugs as they are reported, but it's more difficult to help when custom alterations have been made.
2. Running any website with interactive features like a SocialEngine-powered site takes considerable resources. If you expect to have even a few dozen concurrent users, you'll need the appropriate server resources to support them. This is why hosting is big business!
In any case, I completely understand the concerns you guys have raised in the comments above. We've already been working on improvements that I think will help address these issues:
1. SE4 is now built on the Zend Framework, a popular open-source framework with lots of documentation and third-party resources available. While the baseline speed might be a bit slower than raw PHP/Smarty, our research indicates that it will scale up much more effectively. It's also highly modular, which will help SE clients make custom changes without interfering with upgrades and support coverage.
2. We've now listed some configuration suggestions for improving speed, such as APC, memcached, bcmath, etc: http://www.socialengine.net/support/documentation…
With these installed, your site will run very quickly and smoothly as you can see in our live demo. Unfortunately, most people that complain about speed issues haven't implemented these suggestions.
3. We've drastically grown our staff to provide better service. Our support response time is much lower than it was last year, and we now have extremely skilled, bright people on staff. We have people here dedicated to addressing bugs, and we now roll out monthly releases to get them fixed sooner. We plan on increasing this frequency to weekly builds in the near future.
The main point I'd like to make is this: We're not perfect, but we are listening. Our mission is to help people build truly unique social communities, and we think our software is a great tool for doing just that.
I'll be glad to answer any other questions/complaints you guys have!
Hi Alex,
Glad you posted. I actually really like your SE4, but my problem again is your support staff. They are quick to pass the buck with short responses that dont get you anywhere. After a few months I had a bug with the themes just disappearing. I spent the $50 bucks to extend support only to get a response from a deusche name richard writing he doesnt deal with customizations. I explained, I am getting 3 different errors on my error log and was then wondering if he could help explain where the issue might be… to which I got another response saying “We dont deal with customizations”.
So here’s my dilemma, if you have a support team dedicated to the customers, how come you have to pay $50 bucks for them to tell you error logs are a customization they cant handle. If you really want to help with support, post what the error codes mean and where to look to solve the problem. Then you will have better rapport with the buyers. There also needs to be a clause in your extended support because it is not support, it is just giving the company $50.
Alex as of October 21 2011 I can confirm that your support is next to useless!
Waiting 2 days per answer to fix bugs or problems in your software is just not on! You release new things that inhibit what is already there! I will very probably be seeking a refund because of your terrible support!
First of all, sorry for my english.
I buyed the license and full plugins suite. And I regret. Money by windows. This app is really slow, and for 0 users online, you need about 10-15 seconds to load every page. I tried all issues till one month with third parties help. IMpossible to solve without a big big server. Then if you want to fast growing up, and have a lot of users, forget this app right now. I'm on Joomla now, and it's just an other world. Harder to learn, sure, but WORKING ! Please read all post… You'll see.
;-)lamb
so i have Soc.Netwrk and it is not the best as far as support goes. if you have any questions you better not want them answered the same day. they dont have a phone number to call its all via email which to me is very disturbing. I only have a limited time to get my project done and have to wait for response from thier email team. which takes days.. This way of support sucks..
To all SE haters and those having issues with the product. First off, SE 4 and SE 3 are very different and must be compared as such. If you are having issues with SE 4 as per performance then it’s probably because you don't know how to optimize with Zend and/or scale up your infrastructure. If you are having problems due to third-party apps then it’s not SE’s fault, which seems to be the biggest complaint at the forums. I agree with Eugene in that most errors come from trying to over feature with plugins and mods.
To the comments that Jay and BusterSiren made, both of you are very wrong in regards to the code. PHP MVC with Zend is not for Noobs and the SE Team is done a great job in developing there app for a wide audience of users (noobs to pros). I am Zend Certified professional and PHP teacher. I have over 20 years as application developer. I stand behind SE as one of the better Social Networking applications. Keep in mind that SE does not have a community of a several hundred thousand developers like Joomla, Dolphin, DotNetNuke, so on; it’s just a couple guys. So for an application that cost less than $500 is awesome. Be glad that you can get so much for so little.
If you think SE sucks then go pay several $Ks for Community server or some other Social Engine.
Alex and the SE Team, keep up the awesome work. I know how tough it is to build apps like this state side.
Too bad their support is so slow!!!!! I purchased SE a few days ago, and there is a problem with the install script (yes, my server meets all requirements) as it will not work properly. My host has verified it is their script and not the server, but for some reason SE support has not responded to my ticket. I thought buying SE would be a good thing but without support it is worthless. I am considering requesting a full refund!
I was about to buy SE.. but now I'm very, very confused!
I really don't know who to trust.(???!!!)
Is SE working or not??? It's frustrating to make this choice :(
And the biggest problem is that I had to buy it for a customer, then customize it and also develop a new plugin that is not listed in the mods&plugins page..
…and I should buy the package in advance at my own risk, as this seems to be the only way to see the code and understand how really difficult is to develop the plugin and customize everything :(((
on the top of it, it seems to be impossible to know the real speed of SE with the demo version..
By the way.. Any other social network software to suggest?
Bye
If customization is an important point, Diaspora and Appleseed are most customizable, and better each side made with them can talk to each other.
The negatives of SE are :
- its costliest, unencrypted source and more features available at half the price with phpfox, dzoic, joomla’s joomsocialand boonex
- very limited development and plugins as compared to Elgg, Drupal Commons and WordPress Buddypress – these three are also free as in free beer
- the most important thing is SE does not let users have Friends list or Circles (see plus.google.com) or does not let user Social Apps and gadgets (see Facebook gadgets) Scripts like phpfox does this. And without these any socialnetworking script is just meaningless.
If you must spend money have a look at jomsocial, phpfox, dzoic, boonex OR better still without spending any money initailly try any of these three : Drupal Commons or Buddypress or Elgg.or Appleseed
If you are an advanced user and not afraid with ruby test out Diaspora.
Hi,
I tried SE on 4 hosting providers. On Dedicated serevers. It is damm slow. You cant create reliable social network with it.
One other thing which no body mentioned. When I install SE, somewhere chinese people came and started posting on my site. I installed 4 times and they are doing same thing. I asked support for this than they needed $50 to give me this simple answer.
I feel that they put bot on my SE.
Please please Dont but this software.
I’was just about to buy SE for a social proyect in Latin America but it looks like they are having so many problems, It seems like i have to do my research all over againg, come SE can you answer this guys…
Same here Daniel, I had made up my mind even forwraded the complete details to my customer , he is ready to pay…now …where should i go………
i need a social network for moview lovers and strugglers(to get into movies)
can some pleasssssse hlep …. connect@jibran.co.in
what if i get a professional web developer to install and customize my website using social engine will that work with no problems?.
I expect a high volume of members on my site around 1 million+. I am very concerned about what I am reading on here with respect to speed and member load.
Anyone have experience with the latest version of SE4?
Thanks,
Chad
Anyone thinking about buying Social Engine, consider this: The coders are so incredibly poor that every time they come out with a new version (which you manually have to upgrade), it’s FULL of bugs. I’m talking LOADED with bugs.
Second, you only get 30 days of support and the support you do receive in that time period is horrible. A guy named Matt that knows absolutely nothing about anything is a total douche. He pretty much just sits back and replies “Well, I don’t know what the problem is. Thanks for contacting support.”
What’s worse, think about 2 months down the road when you upgrade and the new version has serious bugs (which EVERY new version has had). Do you think they will help you? Nope! On your own.
So stop and think for a minute… because Social Engine developers can’t code properly, your site is impacted by their negligence. At that point, your only option is to pay them $50 (after you have already poured hundreds into this buggy CMS) so they can give you mediocre at best service because their developers that caused the problem to begin with.
Their developers can’t code properly, your site gets screwed up, their coding causes the screwed up site, to get support, they make you pay $50 for 30 days. Talk about an upcharge. It’s pure extortion.
So the more bugs they load Social Engine up with, the more they know you will need service, so they can make more money causing damages to you.
I would like to put together a class action lawsuit against Social Engine. I know there are a lot of people out there that are in the same boat as me after spending so much time and money on this ‘white label’ piece of crap.
Wow, definitely not going to buy this product anymore. Was just about to throw down nearly 1k for it too. Good thing I read this thread. Thanks for the info guys.
well, there is one social network i created using my own team of developers and it has everything in it. Its better than social engine and php fox. It has circles/lists and everything that fb or g+ has. we have 4 million users and its going pretty well. its on 99factors.com
what i want to tell everyone through this is..dont buy these cheap nonsense scripts , code your own things or hire developers and be original. social engine is crap. so is php fox.
WOW! I mean WOW!
There are a lot of people chiming in on this review. I believe that everybody is entitled to their experience. It would be foolish for me to contest anybody, but mine has been nearly the exact opposite.
I opted for the trial through Arvixe for two reasons. First, I get 30 days to test SE without paying (which would would have been a great approach for those of you that are on the fence or think your money wasn’t well spent); secondly, with a minor investment of $7.00 with Arvixe, I could gauge which hosting plan worked best and upgrade if needed.
I have found mixed results from the staff at SE, but I think they’ve started to finally reach a strong core team. I understand having built several companies that this is one of the most difficult challenges and I think they’ve overcome it.
Also, my experience with Arvixe has also been mixed, but usually most of their support staff through phone or chat has been effective for me (email was so-so).
I don’t have a base of 1 million or even 50,000, so perhaps that’s why the product works well for me.
I agree it is a bit slow at times, but I think that will change. To be fair, even major manufacturers have similar issues with new releases.
Hope it helps.