Case Study: Xamarin achieves skyrocketing developer engagement and MVP talent discovery with Higher Logic Vanilla

How Xamarin’s Developer Community Skyrocketed their Value

Xamarin, a leading mobile app development platform, needed a better way to engage and recognize its developer community than the mailing lists they’d been using. The company selected Higher Logic Vanilla’s community platform (Vanilla Forums and Vanilla Commenting) for its open‑source codebase, single‑sign‑on integration and built‑in gamification (badges/leaderboards) to create a dedicated developer experience.

Higher Logic Vanilla implemented a hosted Vanilla Forums solution with SSO, blog commenting integration, and an achievement system, which quickly consolidated product feedback and surfaced community influencers. The new community drove immediate engagement—helped identify MVP talent (about 25 of those MVPs were later hired by Microsoft), boosted participation in Xamarin University content, and made developer feedback easier to capture and act on.

Xamarin

Jayme Singleton

Business Program Manager