Rafts are the cornerstone of every Raftr implementation. They give community administrators the ability to create a fully customized experience for their members. Each Raftr contract specifies the number and types of Premium Rafts included with your solution(s), and all communities come with unlimited Basic Rafts. While Premium Rafts give administrators access to advanced features and content, Basic Rafts give members the ability to create groups of their own. Each serves a purpose in Raftr, but there are some key differences between Premium and Basic Rafts detailed below.

Premium Rafts

Premium Rafts give administrators complete administrative management tools, including the ability to manage Raft and Channel members in the Admin Portal. The key benefits of Premium Rafts include:

• Unlimited number of members, Raft Admins, and Channels
• Ability to auto-join members and/or restrict them from leaving
• Ability to manage who can create content in the Raft
• Ability to Duplicate and Schedule Posts in the Raft
• Ability to send important Announcements to Raft members
• Can be enabled with advanced features and content if supported in contract:
  • • • Event Check-In (for attendance tracking purposes)
      • List Posts (Checklists, Directories, Guides, Maps, Virtual Tours)
      • SMS Announcements (for sending announcements via SMS text)

Basic Rafts

A major benefit of basic Rafts is that any member of your community can create a group of their own if one doesn’t already exist for them, which is a great way to see what interests your members. Basic Rafts allow your community and members to grow and engage organically while still giving you some level of control via our platform safety features. While there are some limitations to Basic Rafts by design, like a standard limit of 25 members, they do support Events, Polls, pinned content, and messaging in one Raft Chat Channel.

Upgrading Rafts

Community and Department Admins can upgrade Basic Rafts to Premium on the Raft Management dashboard on the Admin Portal. Depending upon how many Premium Rafts are included in your contract, you can either upgrade automatically or pay to upgrade at that time. Community Admins can also designate whether anyone can upgrade Rafts in-app or only administrative users can upgrade Rafts on the Admin Portal.  

Premium vs. Basic Rafts

Below is a side-by-side view of all of the differences between Premium and Basic Rafts.