Closed community and intranet products are polished and convenient, and they own your data, your pricing and your roadmap. HumHub hosted by CUZY gives you the convenience without the dependency.
| Question to ask any vendor | Typical closed platform | HumHub hosted by CUZY |
|---|---|---|
| Who owns the software? | The vendor; features and prices change at their discretion | Open source (AGPL). You can run it anywhere, forever |
| How is it priced? | Per seat or per active member, tiers gated by member count | Flat price per community, unlimited members |
| Where is the data? | Often US cloud regions, transfer mechanisms required | Dedicated servers and backups in the region you choose: Germany (EU), the USA or Singapore (APAC) |
| Can I leave with everything? | Partial exports, formats specific to the vendor | Full database and files export, once a day, standard HumHub |
| Can I extend it? | Marketplace apps chosen by the vendor, closed APIs | Any HumHub module, your own modules on Business, REST APIs |
| Can I brand it fully? | Usually on the highest tier | Logo, theme and domain on every plan; white label on Business |
| Who answers when something breaks? | A queue | The people who build the modules, in English or French |
| Can I self-host later? | No | Yes: same software, same data, and CUZY can maintain it |
HumHub is not a video-course studio or a marketing automation suite. It is a serious social intranet and community platform with a strong module ecosystem. If your core need is selling courses to consumers, a creator platform may fit better; if it is connecting an organization, HumHub does.
HumHub has been developed since 2014 by HumHub GmbH & Co. KG in Germany and is used by companies, associations, universities and public administrations worldwide. CUZY has published modules for it since 2017.
Self-host with CUZY modules and optional maintenance, or let CUZY host everything with updates, backups and monitoring included. You can move between the two at any time with the same data.
Side-by-side pages with Circle, Bettermode, Bitrix24, Workvivo, Discourse, Mighty Networks, Microsoft Teams and Viva Engage, Slack, Open Social, BuddyBoss, eXo Platform, with the criteria above applied to each vendor's published offer. All comparisons.
Two weeks with every module, then decide. Your data is exportable from day one of a subscription.