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Flarum
All
16
Experiences
Pros
13
Cons
2
Specs
Top
Pro
Very fast loading time
The extensibility allows you to install and enable only the extensions that you desire. This is beneficial to the performance. In addition it's a SPA so js and css are loaded once and retained.
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Top
Con
Need composer
Unable to test Flarum because composer is not a standard in vps.
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Top
Pro
Open source
Released under the very permissive MIT license, the source is freely available on GitHub and the Flarum Foundation was set up to guarantee the open source nature of Flarum as well as guarantee independence.
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Top
Con
Extremely complicated to install
It's extremely hard to install Flarum, especially using anything that is hosted by Amazon. Good luck with a simple install for Amazon.
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Top
Pro
Easily expandable
Most of the features are extensions, you have free control to en- or disable and remove extensions according to your needs. That keeps Flarum thin, lean but also extremely suitable for all types of communities.
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Top
Pro
Modern UI
Designed to be mobile-first, while still allowing a rich interface on desktop. Flarum is created from the ground up to be intuitive and simple to work with.
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Top
Pro
Great community
The community building flarum is fantastic and very helpful!
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Top
Pro
Mobile Friendly UI
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Top
Pro
Lots of features
The developers do a great job adding new bells and whistles.
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Top
Pro
Based on (but not built with) Laravel
Flarum is based on many components from Laravel (like Eloquent) and Symfony, thus providing a sense of familiarity to developers with experience in those frameworks.
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Top
Pro
Easy installation
As long as you have access to composer, installation is a breeze. This also makes extension management install/removal very easy as the two processes are one and the same.
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Top
Pro
Intuitive
Very easy to use and feels very modern, unlike most of the competition out there.
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Top
Pro
Easy installation on shared hosting services
Available on softaculous (an auto-installer for web hosting control panels like cPanel).
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Top
Pro
Steadily growing
In the last few months Flarum is experiencing growth like never seen before, it's definitely time to jump on board.
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Top
Pro
Runs on shared hosting
Easily runs on low end shared hosting hardware as long as you have SSH access for plugins. Also available on Softaculous for auto install which makes it a 1 click job.
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Specs
Written in:
PHP and JavaScript
Databases:
MySQL or MariaDB
Web Servers:
Apache or Nginx
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Experiences
Free
216
29
LiveFyre
All
4
Experiences
Pros
3
Cons
1
Top
Con
Closed-source
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Top
Pro
Social tagging pulls discussions from social networks
Social Tagging is another way Livefyre leverages social networks to pull in discussions to a blog. Instead of sharing the URL to a DM on twitter or a message on facebook, it's possible to tag a friend to get involved to the article right within the comment.
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Top
Pro
Syncs with conversations happening on social networks
SocialSync syncs conversations happening on twitter and facebook to those left on a blog post. The synced comments behave like normal comments, and will also post replies, etc back to Facebook and Twitter. This solves a big problem of bringing existing discussions to the post and is not available on competing products.
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Top
Pro
Highly customizable interface
Livefyre doesn't do anything to prevent from customizing the css styles of the comments. It's possible to have the embedded comments match the look and feel of any site. The LiveFyre interface allows: Sorting comments in ascending or descending order Tagging an individual user in a comment Following the conversation to receive updates Sharing individual comments Nesting replies
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4
0
Disqus
All
12
Experiences
Pros
7
Cons
5
Top
Pro
Can be easily integrated in any website via iframes
Can be easily included into any website using the iframe form.
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Top
Con
Does not allow you to customize its style
Disqus uses !important flags in its CSS to prevent you from being able to customize its style at all.
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Top
Pro
Seamless design
Seamless design that doesn't require users to leave the page to access features such as profiles.
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Top
Con
Closed-source
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Top
Pro
Wide adoption
There's a large pre-existing user community. Many people already know how to use this comment system.
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Top
Con
It may be old
The interface looks very dated.
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Top
Pro
Works with static sites
Disqus can be used with a static site so it's possible to keep the benefits of a static blog and still have dynamic comments.
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Top
Con
Sponsored comments
Disqus puts ads in their embeds.
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Top
Pro
Not connected with the Evil Facebook ecosystem.
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Top
Con
Tracking users
Mining and selling their data.
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Top
Pro
Clean, minimalist interface & design
The Disqus design is minimalist and is broken down into three tabs - discussion, community and My Disqus. The discussion interface provides the usual elements, but with unique features like visual indicators of live actions, such as new replies and even when another user is typing. It's possible to sort discussion by new, old and best. The community tab is designed to help connect commenters together to form a network that keeps them coming back. It is also a great source of traffic from external sites. My Disqus helps users quickly keep track of activities in their network as well as manage notifications.
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Top
Pro
Community features
Community features such as Top Commenters, Top Discussions and the ability to form networks around your own commenters
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Experiences
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47
5
AsmBB
All
11
Experiences
Pros
9
Cons
1
Specs
Top
Con
Bad setup
Terrible experience and bad setup.
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Top
Pro
Very high security level
AsmBB does not create any SQL queries in run time and from user provided data. This way, SQL injection is impossible by design. AsmBB uses very few external libraries, this way preventing exploitation of 3rd party bugs and vulnerabilities.
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Top
Pro
Supports database encryption
Since v2.7 AsmBB supports database encryption.
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Top
Pro
Highly customizable design
The whole design of the forum is defined in external template files that can be easily edited without need to change the code.
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Top
Pro
No library dependencies - everything needed is in the package
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Top
Pro
Easy installation even on shared hosting
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Top
Pro
Mobile friendly
AsmBB provides specially optimized skin for mobile browsers, resulting for best UX on any device.
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Top
Pro
Multiple user selectable skins
The whole look & feel of AsmBB can be changed by using template and CSS files. Several sets of template files can be installed simultaneously. Every user of the forum can select the skin he likes.
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Top
Pro
Real-time chat
Since v1.5 AsmBB includes real-time chat in order to allow instant communication between users for themes not suitable for the "message board" format.
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Top
Pro
Really high performance and low requirements to the hosting
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Specs
Written in:
x86 Linux ASM
Databases:
Builtin SQLite
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Experiences
Free
18
4
NodeBB
All
17
Experiences
Pros
15
Cons
1
Specs
Top
Pro
Free and open source
NodeBB is free for all use cases, although the code is licensed under GPLv3, so the source code must be provided if you are re-distributing (and/or reselling) NodeBB.
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Top
Con
Very complicated installation process on shared hosts
If you do not have root ssh access or node js installed, it is impossible or very hard to install on shared hosts.
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Top
Pro
Has live chat
Private Messages (PMs) are live chats, just like messaging apps, allowing real-time conversations with one or a selectjkkkjkj
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Top
Pro
Plugin support
A selection of plugins for NodeBB are available.
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Top
Pro
Highly customizable themes
NodeBB's themes are more customizable and dispensable; use custom CSS and HTML code, integrate WordPress Themes or use one of NodeBB's themes with easy stylist functions to change colour schemes and category layout.
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Top
Pro
Includes all commonly expected modern forum features
NodeBB bundles real-time updates (new posts/topics, chat messages), the ability to see "who's browsing this topic", recent/popular/unread topics, tags, post sorting, social sharing, notification system, inbound email support/reply-by-email, mobile responsiveness, favourites, bookmarks, spam control, and reputation/karma.
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Top
Pro
Multilingual
Built in local support with over 50 translated languages.
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Top
Pro
Has a variety of gamification plugins
NodeBB’s gamification plugins extend user engagement by motivating users to participate and complete tasks by giving them incentives like achievements, badges, points and virtual currency. NodeBB's gamification and reputation system is more than just badges, the reputation engine is used to promote good content, grant member abilities and achieve rank among leaderboards. NodeBB has several gamifications plugins that gives forum users an RPG like experience: Advanced Dungeon and Rabbits, Minecraft, PVP RPG (Battle, attack & steal points from other users).
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Top
Pro
Social integration through plugins
NodeBBs plugins are built to support features like: Rich media embedding (Youtube/Vimeo), advertising integration (Google AdSense, DoubleClick, etc), third-party single-sign-on, emoji, mobile phone notifications, sound packs, CDN support, rich-text formatting/colours, static pages, galleries, and much much more.
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Top
Pro
Real-time post streaming
Posts are streamed in real time, if a new post is created it appears without having to refresh.
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Top
Pro
Great performance
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Top
Pro
Active and engaging support community
Vibrant community is available to help guide you with installations, advise against common pitfalls, and answer any questions.
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Top
Pro
Installation & maintenance easy
Documentation is complete and detail, otherwise community always find a solution
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Top
Pro
NoScript support
NodeBB is one of the few modern forum software that has good NoScript support. The forum layout is the same and users can register, login, logout and post without scripts.
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Top
Pro
Provides hosting solutions with multiple server locations
In addition to the hosting, NodeBB also provides support ticket access, and automatic deployment of security updates when necessary. NodeBB's servers are located in New York, although instances can be manually provisioned in all of the other regions our hosting provider supports: San Francisco (west coast customers) London, Amsterdam, Frankfurt (European customers) Singapore (China, south Asia, etc)
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Top
Pro
24/7 technical support
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Specs
Written in:
Node.js
Databases:
Redis or MongoDB, others can be added with plugins
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Experiences
Free
57
26
Vanilla
All
15
Experiences
Pros
9
Cons
5
Specs
Top
Con
Poor search, unless using Sphinx
The default search that comes with Vanilla produces poor results because it uses MySQL. One needs to investigate integrating with Sphinx for much better results.
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Top
Pro
Free and open source
Vanilla is a free PHP+MySQL application that's licensed under GPLv2 with source code available on GitHub.
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Top
Con
Vanilla Cloud offering is expensive for bigger communities
The commercial options of other software providers are generally better value-for-money. Vanilla is a cheaper option if you commit to self-hosting.
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Top
Pro
Importer from many other forums
Vanilla Porter can import posts (comments), threads (discussions), users, categories, roles and passwords (hashed) from most other forum software: bbPress, Drupal, MyBB, NoteBB, phpBB, PunBB, SimpleMachines 1&2, Toast, UserVoice, vBulletin, Xenforo, YAF.NET and others. Some importers support avatars, attachments, signatures, and PMs. A few support tags and user notes. Imports aren't flawless, but they do most of the work.
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Top
Con
No post edit history
Old versions of a post are only visible to admins, which may lead to a credibility problem. The amount of time during which users can edit their posts is configurable from a few minutes to indefinitely.
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Top
Pro
Easy setup
Vanilla is a MySQL + PHP app and can be set up very easily.
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Top
Con
Templating could be better
It is difficult to customise Vanilla in a way where it can be source controlled. This may be a benefit for communities who just want to get up and running, but is a drawback for developers.
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Top
Pro
Simple forum software
lightweight Internet forum package Embeddable forums Import from other forums
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Top
Con
No sitemap for discussion
Even sitemap plugin cannot add discussion in xml file.
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Top
Pro
Discussions can be organized in categories and tagged
Discussions can be tagged with an arbitrary number of tags, separately from categories. Categories are hierarchical and don't scale; tags do.
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Top
Pro
Fast
PHP may not be the most modern language, but Vanilla is fast.
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Top
Pro
Hosted and self-hosted options
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Top
Pro
Single Sign On
Ability to sign in with another system to your forum
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Top
Pro
Deep integration with WordPress
Use SSO with your WordPress site, adds recent discussions widgets and best of all have comments also create discussions in your forum.
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Specs
Written in:
PHP
Databases:
MySQL
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Experiences
Free
21
16
XenForo
All
9
Experiences
Pros
5
Cons
3
Specs
Top
Pro
Stable
Good stability and functionality.
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Top
Con
Expensive
140$ for simple use, price can reach 610$ for complete system and service.
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Top
Pro
Fast
Works really fast.
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Top
Con
Closed source
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Top
Pro
Lots of styles and extensions avaible
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Top
Con
Unique SQL system
Only MySQL system.
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Top
Pro
Extensible
XenForo is built to be the most extensible and flexible community software ever.
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Top
Pro
Stable, well written, developed by the guys who once made VBulletin 3.x the best commercial forum software at the time
Price is only $140, one of the "cons" claims it runs up to $610 if you by all t he bells & whistles, but scarcely anyone pays more than $140
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Specs
Written in:
PHP
Databases:
MySQL
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Experiences
$160 - $610
27
22
Loomio
All
4
Experiences
Pros
3
Cons
1
Top
Pro
Supports a wide range of decision-making methods
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Top
Con
Monthly fee for extra features
You generally must pay a monthly fee to support a group with additional features, integration options, and memberships cap increases (however, unfunded community organizations can apply to use it for free, and non-profits with a budget receive a discount.)
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Top
Pro
Free and open source
Licensed under GNU AGPLv3
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Top
Pro
Developed by a thriving social enterprise
Loomio development is led by a group structured as a worker-owned cooperative company, which is part of Enspiral, a mutual aid network of other social enterprises. As a result, both the Loomio code and the cooperative's hosted instance at Loomio.org are being actively maintained and developed, with new features being planned and deployed regularly.
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4
0
Genview3d
All
5
Experiences
Pros
4
Cons
1
Top
Pro
Supports multiple types of data sources
GenView 3D can connect to multiple types of data sources such as ERP systems, SAP, XML files, Excel spreadsheets, Web forms, live streams, webcams, PPM, ticketing softwares, IoT, and many more.
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Top
Con
This is proprietary Service-as-a-Software Substitute
This is not software that the user can be in control of, it's Service-as-a-Software-Substitute, that locks users into a single instance of the software running on the company's servers. No source code is available at all, let alone under a free code license that would allow users to set up and migrate their data to their own instance if they became unhappy with the company's service.
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Top
Pro
Runs on SAP HANA's latest version
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Top
Pro
Can easily contextualize information
GenView 3D can add an extra layer of information this way allows the user to contextualize the information.
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Top
Pro
Show processes and assets on a map
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3
0
Reddit
All
3
Experiences
Pros
2
Cons
1
Top
Pro
"For hire" posts get a lot of attention
Where many of the current remote job boards are specifically for employees looking to apply to positions, reddit is a good place to post "for hire" ads and allow the employers to contact you.
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Top
Con
Not specifically a job board
Reddit is not specifically a job board, so may lack some of the features you're looking for (such as a strong search feature).
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Top
Pro
Variety of freelance and salaried positions
There is a good variety of job types so you're able to find what fits your schedule and lifestyle best.
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64
10
Taiga
All
13
Experiences
Pros
9
Cons
3
Specs
Top
Pro
Supports both Kanban and Scrum modes
User stories can be organized in both Kanban and Scrum task management systems.
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Top
Con
No Kanban metrics
Taiga is said to support Kanban but it does not generate any of the usual Kanban metrics (cycle time, lead time) or graph (Cumulated Flow Diagram).
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Top
Pro
Free and open source
Taiga is licensed under GPL with source code available on GitHub.
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Top
Con
Can be overwhelming at first
Taiga presents users with a lot of information and functionality right from the beginning with little guidance. Figuring how stuff works might take a bit.
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Top
Pro
Simple to use
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Top
Con
Too much functionality for small projects
While it's possible to disable any unwanted features (modules), the amount of functionality that's present might be more than a small, short-term project needs.
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Top
Pro
Comprehensive Agile software development toolset
Taiga tries offering a complete Agile software development toolset. It includes complete solutions for issue tracking, videoconferencing, documentation (in the form of a wiki) and either a backlog or a Kanban board for managing user stories.
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Top
Pro
Built-in issue tracking
Taiga has built-in issue tracking tools. The issues can be organized by user-defined type, severity, priority, creation date, assignee, creator, tags as well as filtered by subject. Taiga can also integrate with GitHub, GitLab and BitBucket.
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Top
Pro
Built-in wiki
Each project has a wiki. It has Markdown support as well as a WYSIWYG editor.
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Top
Pro
Built-in video conferencing tools
Integrates with either AppearIn or Talky to provide a video conferencing solution.
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Top
Pro
Migration from RedMine
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Top
Pro
Export/Import feature
You can extract all your data from one Taiga instance and move it to another one. You can read more here.
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Specs
Platforms:
Web, macOS, iOS, Android, Linux
Technology:
Python, CoffeeScript
API:
Yes
Collaborative:
Yes
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Experiences
$0-5/MO
42
8
PHPBack
All
4
Experiences
Pros
3
Cons
1
Top
Pro
Multi-language support
It has been already translated to Spanish and they are adding support for more languages.
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Top
Con
Small community
PHPBack is fairly young (first stable version was releases in July 2015). Currently the community is small, which may make it more difficult to find help/support. However, the developer is active on the github page and generally responds quickly.
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Top
Pro
Easy setup
PHPBack is very easy to setup, all you need is a server with PHP5 and MySQL installed.
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Top
Pro
Open Source
PHPBack is open source, uses GPLv3 license.
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4
1
Quora
All
3
Experiences
Pros
2
Cons
1
Top
Con
No customization options
There is no way of making your Quora blog different from any other Quora blog. It is only an extension of your Quora profile.
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Top
Pro
Tags help promote your content
When you tag your blog post, it will show up in feeds of people following that topic.
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Top
Pro
Community interested in learning
Quora has a built-in audience interested in learning new things.
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77
21
StackExchange
All
8
Experiences
Pros
4
Cons
4
Top
Con
Objective; Not Subjective
The Stack Exchange sites are specifically designed to work for objective questions; questions with subjective answers are explicitly discouraged. See their blog for more information.
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Top
Pro
Popularity / maturity
The Stack Exchange sites have a large user base. Due to this being broken down to sub-sites per topic however some of their sites have more users than others, so depending on the subject matter of the question this pro may not apply.
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Top
Con
Limited in scope
There is a large number of different "stackexchanges", but they are all completely closed off from one another.
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Top
Pro
Subject Matter: Various (site specific)
Whilst sites under the Stack Exchange banner are focussed on specific topics, there are a wide variety of such sites. As such Stack Exchange could be described as being open to questions on any subject matter, but has the advantage that within its sub-sites, questions are targeted to the specific users/audiences of those sites.
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Top
Con
Intolerant and immature culture of the community
The people on the platform aren't very outgoing or accepting of others.
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Top
Pro
Expert-level questions & answers
Many topics have active members who are among the top professionals in their fields. MathOverflow, for example, has Fields Medal winners.
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Top
Con
Popularity contest feeling
The reward system feels like you're in a popularity contest. While this encourages good answers, it feels like everything is built around the reward system. So much that, you need to have certain points to unlock features on the site.
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Top
Pro
User ratings by topic
Users are scored based on their contributions, with the context of those contributions also being scored (i.e. answering a question tagged as being about XML increases that user's XML score). This results in allowing the questioner to gauge a rough idea of the answerer's relative knowledge within a domain when considering their answers vs contradictory answers from other users.
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Experiences
10
4
phpBB
All
8
Experiences
Pros
4
Cons
3
Specs
Top
Pro
Open source
Source code is available on GitHub under GNU General Licence.
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Top
Con
Outdated look and feel
Even the latest version of the software looks like the typical '90s forums which is now pretty outdated.
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Top
Pro
Premium extensions
There are many great developers creating premium extensions to make it go to the next level. With those premium extensions phpBB goes far beyond any other.
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Top
Con
Slow (phpBB 3.0)
phpBB 3.0 was not optimized for slow connections.
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Top
Pro
Extensible
Is built to be extensible and flexible.
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Top
Con
Poor community communication
There is a release lifecycle, but it is not adhered to. Migrations and updates cannot be planned.
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Top
Pro
Huge extension repository
Its the forum software with the most ready to go extension repository.
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Specs
Written in:
PHP
Databases:
MySQL, MariaDB, MSSQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, SQLite
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Experiences
Free
30
11
Mailpile
All
10
Experiences
Pros
10
Top
Pro
Beautiful UI
Uncluttered, highly intuitive, easy to use user interface.
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Top
Pro
Built-in rock-solid and easy-to-use encryption
Mailpile offers support for OpenPGP and S/MIME encryption and signatures in an easy to use manner.
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Top
Pro
Theme support
The underlying architecture of Mailpile allows for themes that not only change the visual aesthetic of the client, but layout as well allowing for different UX designs.
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Top
Pro
Secure
Encryption is turned on by default.
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Top
Pro
Portable
The whole webmail client can be carried around on your external device (such as a USB stick) and used without having admin access to install.
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Top
Pro
Free and open source
Licensed under AGPL.
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Top
Pro
Good documentation
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Top
Pro
Fast, scalable search engine
The search engine is at the very center of Mailpile. It was specifically designed to be able to handle large amount of e-mails without grinding the machine to a halt. Additionally, the search includes a tagging feature that can automatically organize new mail by set rules or bayesian classifiers.
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Top
Pro
Plugin architecture
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Top
Pro
Internationalization support
Mailpile is available in over 40 languages.
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Experiences
Get it
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64
34
ElkArte
All
8
Experiences
Pros
6
Cons
1
Specs
Top
Pro
Improved Anti Spam measures
Elkarte has BadBehaviour and other measures included into the core to protect your forum from spammers.
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Top
Con
Limited themes and extensions
And community is fairly small as it is derived from SMF Forums.
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Top
Pro
Notification centre
ElkArte has a notification center where you can see mentions, likes, quoted messages and other alerts, all included into the core of the software.
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Top
Pro
Responsive design
ElkArte comes out of the box with two responsive styles.
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Top
Pro
Easy to install
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Top
Pro
Open Source
It is completely free to use and is licensed with an open source BSD-3 clause license.
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Top
Pro
Integrated video embedding
Integrated video embedding for YouTube, Vimeo, and DailyMotion.
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Specs
Database:
MySQL 5 and newer OR PostgreSQL 8.3 and newer
Written in :
PHP version 5.3 or newer
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Experiences
Free
17
10
Fruum
All
7
Experiences
Pros
6
Specs
Top
Pro
Single Sign On (SSO)
Fruum can tie its user authentication with the authentication system of the hosting website, thus utilize the existing user base without requiring multiple sign-ups.
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Top
Pro
Slack integration
Plays well with Slack out of the box. Get notifications when users post new stuff or use the /fruum command to query the forum.
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Top
Pro
Realtime
All updates in the forum happen real-time. No reloads required.
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Top
Pro
Extensible
New functionality can be added using a plugin interface written in JavaScript.
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Top
Pro
Free and open source
Source code is available on GitHub under Apache License.
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Top
Pro
Embeddable
Can be embedded in any website using a small JavaScript snippet and get activated on-demand as a drawer or be setup as a traditional forum.
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Specs
Written in:
Node.js
Databases:
Elasticsearch, others can be added with plugins
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Experiences
Free
7
6
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