What it does
Open Social provides a Drupal-based community with member roles, shared resources and discussions. Its core software is free to run on your own infrastructure, while hosted subscriptions add services and products. Site managers use an administrative account to configure the community.
Open Social can reflect a network's member roles, permissions and organizational structure. Resource libraries, search and content workflows sit beside discussions, comments and notifications.
Document collaboration is a separately scoped add-on, including folders, shared editing and group permissions for office-style files. Multilingual content and a branded native app are also add-ons.
For basic setup, use Site Manager Dashboard > Configuration > Basic Site Settings. Set the community name and the sender address for automated messages. You can also display that contact address when members have trouble registering, signing in or resetting a password.
The Drupal core is freely available under GPLv2. Developers can use the project template to install its dependencies with Composer, then complete Drupal setup. The managed subscription adds hosting, implementation and maintenance. Hosting charges follow platform size and activity, with data-location choices and support terms agreed for the deployment.
Strengths
- Member roles and organizational structures can fit a multi-organization network
- Resource workflows and discussions can share the same community
Watch out for
- Document collaboration, multilingual delivery and native apps are add-ons
Best for
- Multi-organization networks building structured knowledge-sharing communities
Sources
- Open Social (Oct 26, 2026)
- GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE (Oct 26, 2026)
- Open Social Community Management System (Oct 27, 2026)
- About Open Social: Open Core and Hosted Subscriptions (Oct 27, 2026)
- Open Social Cloud Platform (Oct 27, 2026)
- Open Social Basic Site Settings (Oct 27, 2026)
- Open Social Composer Project Template (Oct 27, 2026)
- Open Social GPL Version 2 Licence (Oct 27, 2026)