Most organisations evaluating community platforms spend the bulk of their due diligence on feature lists and product demos. These are not unimportant. But the questions that determine whether a platform is a long-term fit or a five-year mistake are usually about things that don't appear on feature comparison tables: data ownership, pricing escalation mechanisms, the actual nature of their mobile app, and whether the vendor will be around in five years.
This RFP template is designed for organisations considering major community platform investments, typically at the $20,000+/year level. It covers eight categories that matter for institutional use cases at scale.
Use these questions in written RFP responses and in vendor calls. The quality of the answers, and the willingness to answer at all, is as informative as the content.
Ownership and data sovereignty
- 01Who owns the member data stored on your platform — our organisation or you?
- 02Where is member data physically stored, and in which jurisdictions?
- 03Can we export all member data, including engagement history and relational data, at any time without restriction?
- 04What happens to our data if we cancel our subscription or your company is acquired?
- 05Do you use member data for any purpose beyond delivering our contracted service, including product improvement, analytics, or advertising?
- 06What are your data retention and deletion policies, and can we override them?
Pricing and contract terms
- 01What is the full annual cost, including implementation, onboarding, and all add-on modules?
- 02Are there member tier limits that trigger overage fees or forced upgrades?
- 03Does the contract include annual price escalation clauses? If so, at what rate?
- 04What is the minimum contract length and what are the exit terms?
- 05What costs are not included in the headline subscription fee?
- 06Can you provide a total cost of ownership model over 5 and 10 years at our current member size?
Mobile experience
- 01Do you offer a mobile app? Is it a white-label wrapper on your infrastructure or a native app submitted under our organisation's App Store account?
- 02If white-label, does our organisation's name or your platform's name appear in the App Store listing?
- 03Can we submit a fully branded native app under our own Apple Developer and Google Play accounts?
- 04What is the process for app updates — are they automatic or do we control release timing?
- 05What mobile features are not available in the app version vs the web version?
Scalability and performance
- 01What is the maximum number of members your platform has been deployed at, with documented performance?
- 02How does platform performance change between 5,000 members and 50,000 members?
- 03What are the SLA commitments for uptime, and what are the penalties for SLA breaches?
- 04How do you handle traffic spikes during major events, email campaigns, or viral content moments?
- 05Can you provide references from organisations with comparable community sizes to ours?
Integration and API capability
- 01Do you offer a full REST API or GraphQL API with complete documentation?
- 02What rate limits apply to API calls, and can they be increased for enterprise customers?
- 03What are your native integrations with CRM systems, email platforms, and identity providers?
- 04Can we build custom integrations using your API, or are we limited to pre-built connectors?
- 05What webhooks are available for real-time event-driven integration?
Governance and administration
- 01What role hierarchy and permission models are available for community administration?
- 02Can we create sub-communities, chapters, or regional groups with their own administrators?
- 03What moderation tools are available at scale, including content flagging, member management, and bulk actions?
- 04How are administrative access controls managed — can we restrict data access by role?
- 05What audit logging is available for administrative actions?
Analytics and reporting
- 01What member engagement metrics are tracked natively?
- 02Can we export raw analytics data for use in external BI tools?
- 03Do you offer custom report building, or are we limited to pre-defined dashboards?
- 04How granular is engagement tracking — can we see individual member activity timelines?
- 05What predictive or trend analytics are available to identify at-risk or highly engaged members?
Vendor stability and support
- 01What is your company's funding status and what is your path to profitability or long-term financial sustainability?
- 02How long has the current platform architecture been in production?
- 03What is your support model — dedicated account manager, ticket system, or community forums?
- 04What is your response time SLA for critical issues affecting platform availability?
- 05What is your process and timeline for product roadmap changes that could affect our configuration?
How to use this RFP template
Send the questions in writing first. Vendor responses to written RFP questions reveal more than demo conversations. Vague or deflecting answers to questions about data ownership or pricing escalation are meaningful signals.
Treat non-answers as answers. If a vendor declines to answer a question about data portability or annual escalation clauses, that is a substantive response. It tells you what their contractual reality is.
Weight the data sovereignty questions heavily. For organisations whose member relationships are central to their mission, data questions aren't technical details. They're governance questions. An alumni network, a faith community, or a professional association needs to understand exactly who owns their member data and what happens to it under every scenario including vendor acquisition or shutdown.
Ask for customer references at your scale. Any vendor can demo features. Customer references from organisations with similar member counts and community models are the most reliable signal of real-world platform performance and vendor relationship quality.
Build a 10-year cost model. The annual licence fee is not the total cost of ownership. Implementation, annual escalation, add-on modules, staff time, and eventual migration costs must all be factored into a genuine platform investment comparison.
When the RFP process reveals a different question entirely
For some organisations, a thorough RFP process surfaces a different conclusion: that no available SaaS platform can actually meet their requirements at their scale. When data sovereignty is non-negotiable, when native branded mobile apps are essential, when governance tooling needs to be built around a specific organisational model, and when the 10-year economics make ownership more favourable than rental, the question shifts from "which SaaS vendor?" to "should we own our own platform?"
That's not the right answer for every organisation. But for large, mission-driven communities with a long time horizon, it's the question that the RFP process sometimes surfaces.