Common Room vs Guild

Common Room is a buyer intelligence platform founded in Seattle in 2020 by CEO Linda Lian and three co-founders. It started as a community analytics tool for developer and open-source companies, tracking members across Slack, Discord and GitHub, and has since become a go-to-market signal platform that tells sales and marketing teams which people and accounts are showing buying intent.

It collects signals from website visits, product usage, CRM records, community activity, GitHub, social channels and third-party intent data such as Bombora, then resolves them to real people and companies with Person360 identity resolution and a 400M+ contact directory. RoomieAI agents research accounts, write personalized messages and score prospects, while Prospector finds new contacts and DataAgent cleans CRM data. Plans are annual: Essential is listed at $2,500 per month with 5 seats, and larger tiers are quoted.

It suits B2B companies, especially product-led and developer-focused ones, that have plenty of anonymous or community activity but no way to route it to reps. It is expensive for early-stage startups and has no self-serve tier. Clay is more flexible for enrichment workflows, Apollo is cheaper for a contact database plus sequencing, and Khoros targets brand community management rather than sales.

On July 2, 2026 Zoom announced it would acquire Common Room and fold its signals and RoomieAI agents into Zoom Revenue Accelerator. Buyers should ask how roadmap and packaging will change after the integration before signing a multi-year deal.

Guild was a community and messaging platform for professional groups, built in the UK as a privacy-first alternative to running business communities on WhatsApp, Slack or Facebook groups. Associations, membership organizations, B2B brands, alumni networks and professional services firms used it to host private groups where members discussed topics, shared content and met at events.

The app offered group conversations and direct messaging, member profiles and a directory, events, content sharing and moderation tools for hosts, on both web and mobile, and organizations could run several branded groups for different cohorts or regions. It was ad-free, did not monetize member data and was designed around GDPR. Guild closed on 1 October 2024; the service is no longer available to new or existing users, and there is no plan to buy or sign up for.

This page remains as a record and to help former hosts choose a replacement. Circle is the closest fit for branded professional communities with events and courses, Mighty Networks combines community with paid memberships and branded apps, and Slack suits groups whose members already work in it. Bettermode serves companies running customer communities, and Discord is a free option for less formal groups.