Guilded and Website Toolbox are both ways to bring a community together, but they start from very different places. Guilded was a chat first community platform built for gaming groups: servers full of text and voice channels, forums, event calendars, tournaments, roles, and bots, available on desktop and mobile. It was launched in 2017, acquired by Roblox in 2021, and discontinued on December 19, 2025, so it is no longer available to new or existing communities. Website Toolbox is a hosted, turnkey, embeddable discussion forum that you run on your own website under your own brand, for any audience you choose. This article compares what Guilded offered against Website Toolbox, so you can decide which one fits the community you want to build today.
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | Guilded | Website Toolbox |
|---|---|---|
| Status | Discontinued on December 19, 2025: the website, desktop apps, and mobile apps shut down and communities were asked to move to Roblox Communities | Active, hosted service you can sign up for today |
| Focus | Chat first: built around gaming communities, with servers, text and voice channels, event calendars, and tournaments | Forum first: focused on being an excellent discussion community for any audience, business or hobby |
| Embedding | Could not be embedded: the community only existed on the Guilded website and inside their apps | Fully embeddable into your existing website, or run as a standalone community on your own domain |
| Branding and white label | Guilded's brand was visible everywhere, and later years required members to link a Roblox account | Real white label by default: Website Toolbox is invisible, 100% your brand, including a fully branded mobile app |
| Single sign on | Members needed a Guilded account to take part; there was no way for them to sign in with the login they already use on your site | Seamless single sign on set up for you by our team; members log in on your site and never have to leave it |
| Themes and design | Server icons, banners, and accent colors inside a fixed Guilded app design | Multiple genuinely different themes plus an easy theme builder, so the forum matches your site without touching code |
| Payments | Paid server subscriptions let community creators charge their members (retired with the shutdown) | Subscriptions and payments for accessing the community, categories, or features, on your own terms |
| Search and discovery | Conversations lived inside an app behind a login, so nothing was indexed on the open web | Standard web pages that search engines can index, so your community can be found through search |
| Support | Help center, community forums, and documentation; no phone or chat support, and no team to set things up for you | Email, phone, and chat support; our team sets up and customizes your forum for you, including single sign on |
| Webhooks and API | Public bot API and webhooks for building integrations while the service existed | Webhooks and API access in the standard plan, so community events can trigger your own automation |
| Migration | A one time content export tool offered before the shutdown, after which the platform was gone | Migration included in every plan: an automated import you can run yourself in a few clicks, or we can do it for you |
| Pricing | Completely free to use, which was a genuine strength, but the product no longer exists | Simple, transparent pricing you can sign up for today; migration included in every plan |
| Company | Started as an independent startup, acquired by Roblox in 2021, and shut down by its owner in 2025 | Profitable company with 24 years of experience focused on discussion communities |
What Happened to Guilded
Because Guilded no longer exists, it is worth being clear about the history. Guilded launched in 2017 as a communication platform for gaming clans and esports teams, with scheduling tools and integrated calendars designed for groups that play together. Roblox acquired the company in 2021, and over time Guilded accounts were required to be linked to a Roblox login. In late 2025, Roblox announced it would focus exclusively on Roblox Communities, and on December 19, 2025 Guilded was discontinued: the website went offline, the desktop and mobile apps stopped working, and community content became inaccessible. Server owners were offered a content export tool before the cutoff, and everyone else was pointed toward Roblox Communities. That sequence is the single most important difference between the two products in this article: a community you build on a platform like that lives at the discretion of its owner, while a forum you own and host on your own website does not.
Customization and Embedding
Guilded servers had their own look and feel within the app: an icon, a banner, accent colors, and channel organization. What you could not do was take any of it to your own website. Guilded was its own destination; members visited the Guilded site or opened the Guilded app, and the community existed only there. There was no supported way to drop a Guilded forum into pages you already run on WordPress, Squarespace, Wix, Shopify, or anywhere else. Website Toolbox is fully embeddable into your existing website: you copy one embed code and paste it into a page, and the forum appears inside your own layout, navigation, and branding. It can also run as a standalone community on your own domain if you prefer. We have step by step guides for embedding the forum into your website, covering all the popular site builders.
Ease of Setup
Guilded was fast and free to start: create an account, create a server, add channels, invite people. Everything after that was on you. You configured the roles, permissions, channel structure, calendars, and integrations yourself from documentation, and when something broke you searched community forums. Website Toolbox is hosted and turnkey with no server, install, or maintenance, and our team guides you through every step of setting up and customizing your forum, and can even do it for you, so you get a working discussion community on your existing site without learning a new toolset. We focus on making setup fast and easy rather than on adding every feature other products want, which keeps the day to day experience simple.
Single Sign On
On Guilded, members signed in with a Guilded account, and in later years that account had to be linked to a Roblox login. There was no way for someone who was already signed in on your own website to carry that identity into the community; they always had to create and use a separate account on a platform they did not control. With Website Toolbox, single sign on is seamless and our team sets it up for you: members who are already signed in on your website or member system land in the community automatically and never have to leave your site. To see how it works, read our single sign on methods article.
Pricing
This is the area where Guilded genuinely won while it existed: the whole product was free. Voice and video, forums, calendars, roles, and bots all cost nothing, and features that competitors placed behind paid subscriptions were included at no charge. That is an honest advantage, and it is worth saying plainly. The catch arrived in 2025 when it became clear that free in this case meant a service funded and controlled by a much larger company, which could and did decide to end it. Website Toolbox uses simple, transparent pricing that you can sign up for yourself, with no feature gates on the basics: webhooks and API access are part of the standard plan, and migration from whatever you are using now is included in every plan. See our pricing article for details.
Features and Ease
Guilded's feature set for gaming groups was genuinely deep. Servers supported text and voice channels, forums, media and docs channels, event calendars with RSVPs, tournament brackets and scheduling, granular roles and permissions, a public bot API, and webhooks, all packaged for groups that organize around playing games together. Website Toolbox stays focused on being an excellent discussion forum first. Categories, threads, polls, notifications, subscriptions, permissions, and moderation are easy to use on day one, and everything a community needs is added in a user friendly way rather than as one more feature of a chat app. The practical difference shows up in how conversations behave: chat channels scroll, and threads sink, while forum topics are organized, searchable, and stay useful for years. If what you want is real time chat for a gaming clan, Guilded did that well. If what you want is a durable, organized discussion community for your website, a forum first product is the right shape.
White Label and Branding
Guilded always carried the Guilded brand. Members visited Guilded's website, downloaded Guilded's apps, and held Guilded accounts, and later still needed a Roblox identity attached. Your community was a tenant on someone else's platform, and your members' experience of your brand was limited to the icon and banner you chose inside their app. Website Toolbox becomes completely invisible to your users: the branding is 100% yours, the forum sits on your site or your own domain, and your members experience the community as a natural part of the website they already trust. That includes a fully branded mobile app with your name on the icon.
Mobile App
Guilded had polished mobile apps for iOS and Android, plus desktop clients for Windows, macOS, and Linux, which was a real strength for chatting on the go. They were Guilded's apps under Guilded's brand, and they have now been removed along with the rest of the service. Website Toolbox offers a branded mobile app under your own brand, which matters when a large share of your audience primarily interacts on a phone: they get notifications and a full community experience with your name on the icon, and the app belongs to you rather than to a platform that can withdraw it.
Customer Support
Guilded supported its users through a help center, documentation, and its own community forums, with no phone line and no chat support, and nobody sat down with you to configure a server for your use case; you worked it out yourself or asked other server owners. Website Toolbox offers email, phone, and chat support for every customer, and our team can set up, customize, and integrate your forum for you. That done for you approach includes single sign on, so our team handles the technical work rather than leaving it to you.
Where Guilded Wins
It is only fair to name Guilded's real strengths. It was completely free, with no paid tier required to unlock the good features, and for gaming communities in particular it was thoughtfully designed: event calendars and scheduling were built in rather than bolted on with bots, tournaments and roles were first class, and voice and video streaming quality was strong out of the box. The developer story was good too, with a public bot API and webhooks that let groups build their own tooling. On a budget, for a gaming clan that wanted a place to chat in real time, Guilded was an excellent choice in its day. The limitation was never the feature list; it was that all of it lived on a platform you did not own, and the people who did own it eventually chose a different direction.
Trust
The Guilded story is the clearest possible illustration of platform risk. An independent startup was acquired in 2021, its accounts were progressively tied to the acquirer's ecosystem, and in 2025 the acquirer decided the product no longer fit its strategy and turned it off. The communities on it had weeks of notice and an export tool, and then the conversations, calendars, and structure they had built for years were simply gone. Website Toolbox is a profitable company with 24 years of experience, focused exclusively on discussion communities, so you can count on stability, straightforward pricing, and long term support for a community built on a platform whose entire purpose is exactly that. You can also host it on your own website and domain, which means the community is a first party part of an asset you control.
Conclusion
Choose Website Toolbox if you want a discussion community that lives on your website, under your brand, with your own login, your own design, mobile access under your own name, and a support team that does the setup and customization for you, whether your audience is customers, members, or hobbyists. Guilded was a capable and free chat platform for gaming groups, and it deserves credit for how much it offered at no cost, but it was discontinued on December 19, 2025, so it is not an option you can pick today. If you are coming from a Guilded community, or you simply want a forum that will still be yours in ten years, Website Toolbox gives you an embeddable, branded, focused home for your discussions with migration included in every plan.