PostHog community

We want to build a self-sustaining and scalable community of engaged users because it will enable us to own our audience in a way that third party social media platforms do not. Like brand or content, building a thriving community is a (very) long term bet, so we will need to both invest a lot of time up front and then wait to see what works and what doesn't.

Our approach to building community at PostHog differs from most devtools in two ways:

• We are building our community around our _website and content_, rather than the product itself. This is because a) PostHog is a product that you add after you have already built something, and b) 90% of community activity turns into support queries, which is not what we want community to be.

• We are focusing on building the community _platform_ itself - creating the tools that enable the community to interact with each other, rather than hiring a community manager whose job it is to go out and talk to everyone on other platforms/social media - this is not scalable.

We run several channels, and they each have a different job. For how we think about Discord, the forum, GitHub, and Reddit – and how to show up in them as a team member – read community channels.

Every one of those spaces is covered by our code of conduct. It applies to the PostHog team too.

Responsibility for community

The is responsible for driving our community channels and supporting community members. The built the platform and tools for our online community and reviews any changes.

Support should not be considered part of community at PostHog. Support is driven by the Customer Success team, primarily using in-app support and dedicated Slack channels. Good customer support helps build positive word of mouth, but replying to support queries is not an engaging or scalable way to build a thriving community.

Content hubs

We are in the process of building these out. We have created two hubs targeting our ICP:

• Product Engineers
• Technical Founders

We have a bunch of features we are building here – more details to come!

Community forums

Our community forums live at posthog.com/questions.

Anyone can ask a question in the forums, which has become a public inbox of troubleshooting, hiring, and support posts that are better suited to contacting us.

We're working on repositioning the forum so there are more engaging discussions that anyone feels ready to jump into. Users will see these changes soon:

• Nudges for posting conversational content instead of support
• A layout that makes more sense as a "home" view
• Better organization for discussions

Asking a question

A user can write a question, but they'll need to create a PostHog.com account before posting. (Note: This authentication system is currently separate from PostHog Cloud accounts, though we have plans to unify them.) Users can write Markdown and upload images to a question.

Once it's posted, a question permalink page is generated, and the user is automatically subscribed to reply notifications by email.

Anyone can subscribe to thread replies by clicking the bell icon in a thread (after signing in).

Answering questions

Anyone can answer, and answering community questions covers how. It's written for community members and the PostHog team alike, and includes how we expect AI to be used and where to send questions that belong somewhere else.

If you're a PostHog user, answer with your own experience. If you think something is best answered by PostHog directly, leave it and we'll take care of it.

Some community members get a moderator role on top of that, with a small set of tools for marking solutions, tagging topics, and tidying threads. See community moderator tools for what the role can do and how we hand it out.

Points & achievements

Community members can earn achievements for activities like asking questions, helping others, voting on the roadmap, and completing their profile. Each achievement awards points that can be redeemed for stickers, merch credits, and other rewards from the Points tab on their profile.

• Points & rewards – How users earn and redeem points
• Community profiles – How to create and manage achievements