The challenge: community existed, but it was scattered
Sun Nuclear already knew its customers wanted community before it launched a formal platform. In the UK, users were connecting by email. In Latin America, a quarterly call and a WhatsApp group had formed organically. Similar patterns were emerging in Germany. The issue wasn’t demand. It was fragmentation.
As Adrian Fleet, Customer Success Manager at Sun Nuclear, explains: “Prior to us using Hivebrite, we were very aware of the power of community. Our goal really was to join up this knowledge and belief in the power of community into one centralized platform.”
The team needed more than a message board. They wanted one secure destination tied to real customer records, with controls around privacy, moderation, and access, and a single hub for support, content, and product insight.
The solution: one hub for forums, resources, and feedback
Sun Nuclear chose Hivebrite for three main reasons: the forum tooling, a licensing model built for scale, and Salesforce integration.
On licensing: with 1,500 accounts and several thousand potential users, the team needed a structure that wouldn’t penalize growth. Hivebrite’s model meant they could keep expanding without the math working against them.
On Salesforce: as a company already deeply embedded in the platform, the integration allowed Sun Nuclear to get customers into the community quickly and cleanly. Connecting through SSO meant customers could get in without extra steps, and the internal team could manage access without maintaining a separate system.
That gave Sun Nuclear a central place for customers to ask questions, find resources, and engage with content previously spread across channels, with the flexibility to roll out in stages, starting with smaller groups before expanding in waves.
The impact: from seeded posts to self-regulating peer support
The clearest sign the strategy was working came when the team no longer had to seed conversations.
In the early days, Adrian and his colleagues were seeding the forum themselves, posting questions to get discussion started. Then members started asking their own questions, and other members, power users from across the world, started answering them.
The team’s role shifted from pushing engagement to facilitating it. The platform had become self-regulating.
In year one, the community reached roughly 550 users and monthly active usage climbed to around 40%.
Why they recommend Hivebrite
Adrian Fleet puts the whole journey in one sentence: “Hivebrite has enabled us to move from a fragmented solution with a belief in community, to really centralizing and joining everything up.”
