Hi,
Thanks for asking. As you have already noticed, being a membership and user profile system plugin, ProfileGrid does have overlapping features with other similar plugins. Many of these features are standard across the category.
The concept of User Groups forms ProfileGrid’s core. You will find most of the settings are tied to user Groups. Thus it is as fundamental to ProfileGrid as are User Profiles. Each Group can offer different profile fields, email notifications, privacy levels etc. Groups can also have their own individual registration forms and joining fees.
This structure allowed us to introduce other features which take advantage of the set up – like Group Managers who control and moderate Groups including members. Group Managers have their own front-end areas and can have special privacy levels for viewing member profiles. It opens unique possibilities for teams, classrooms, categories, divisions etc. A Group Manager can be a captain, a teacher, a supervisor and so on. You can label it whatever you want and it will reflect on the frontend.
You will find the core version quite capable with blogging, friends system, private messaging, groups and profiles built in. A wide choice of extensions allow adding features you like. Some powerful extensions are free too.
A special extension also allows you to add another plugin’s data to user profiles using shortcode or custom post system. This convergence allows displaying stuff like events, classifieds, listings, ads etc. created by the user inside ProfileGrid’s user profiles.
Of course, there are a lot more things which contribute to ProfileGrid being what it is. I am adding a few links which offer more details with images.
You can learn more about User Groups here.
1. https://profilegrid.co/profilegrid-starter-guide/
2. https://profilegrid.co/how-allow-wordpress-users-to-create-new-groups/
You can learn more about Group Managers here.
(https://profilegrid.co/multi-group-users-and-group-manager/)
All available extensions are listed here.
https://profilegrid.co/extensions/
We are actively developing ProfileGrid with regular additions of new features, and have exciting plans for 2019. I will be more than happy to provide answers to any other questions you have.
