What are the best web forum software packages?

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Here’s the Deal

11 Options Considered

Best web forum software packages	Price	Written in	Databases
89 Discourse	$100+/MO	Ruby	PostgreSQL with Redis
87 Flarum	Free	PHP	MySQL, MariaDB
72 NodeBB	Free	Node.js	Redis or MongoDB, others can be added with plugins
-- ElkArte	Free	-	-
-- AsmBB	Free	x86 Linux ASM	Builtin SQLite

Discourse

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Top Pro

Modern & polished UI/UX with lots of great smaller features

The best feature is its design: discourse is designed to aid in the creation of high quality online conversations. Flat discussions with well implemented quoting systems, expandable/collapsible replies, infinite scroll, clean UI and many more features come together to form a highly polished forum experience that makes legacy forums show their age. See More

Top Con

Complicated setup

Compared to standard PHP+MySQL apps, Discourse is more complicated - the app lives in a Docker container. However, a Docker image is available, which reduces the setup time to about 30 minutes. See More

IndependentDaphne's Experience

HORRIBLE customer service. And they just announced that they are closing channels of communication for customer support. The setup is very complicated for anyone who is not a developer and they do NOTHING to make this easier. Rude responses to valid questions from support. See More

Specs

Written in:Ruby

Databases:PostgreSQL with Redis

Top Pro

Has a built-in immune system from trolls, spammers and bad actors

Discourse has a simple user trust system that makes moderating the forum a lot easier. Users gain more permissions as they gain more trust, which limits the amount of damage spammers and trolls can do. Discourse co-founder Jeff Atwood also founded StackExchange, which is the gold standard for gamification/moderation systems so you can also expect Discourse to get better and better at moderation. See More

Top Con

Bad noscript support

When using a Discourse forum without scripts the experience is greatly reduced. It's really hard to use and is read-only, meaning that one can't comment or create threads without scripts. See More

Chad Jessen's Experience

Flarum is awesome. Although Flarum is still in beta, it is way ahead of it's time. Fast, easy to use and a fresh new fun way for a community to interact. See More

Top Pro

100% free and fully open source

Discourse is powered by Ruby on Rails, Ember.js, PostgreSQL and Redis. The code is licensed under GPL and available on GitHub. See More

Top Con

Leaves out users with shared hosting

Discourse requires sudo, which is only available on a VPS. See More

Darren Dub's Experience

Discourse helps make forum posts conversational. It is highly configurable, but at the same time comes with sane defaults. It's built on ROR, so if you are familiar with this framework, it's pretty easy to dig in and understand how everything works when the documentation may be lacking in some areas. I would recommend at least trying it to see how it's different than all the other forum software available. See More

Top Pro

Effective search

Top Con

It is more "Free to Try" than really free

Top Pro

Good to go out of the box yet infinitely tweakable

Discourse has sane, safe out of the box defaults, but a million dials and knobs to tweak. See More

Top Con

Extremely expensive hosting

Discourse hosting is very expensive. Almost nobody would pay for it. See More

Top Pro

Helpful community

Discourse has a comprehensive forum culture support hub at meta.discourse.org. See More

Top Con

It is not FREE at all

It gives a demo version to try out for 14 days only and after that you have to buy any of their three versions. See More

Top Pro

Hosted and self-hosted solutions

You can host it yourself in a $5 cloud server or on any Linux server you already have. And if you don't want to deal with this, you can use the hosting platform from the development team. See More

Top Pro

Live preview while editing the post

The post editor has a synchronized side-by-side preview of the Markdown rendering of the post. See More

Top Pro

Easy one-click upgrade

Discourse can upgrade itself with one click in the admin panel. Not the same can be said about MyBB, or most other forums. See More

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. See More

Top Pro

Advanced JavaScript app

Runs in modern browsers and works identically on desktop and tablet and smartphone without the need for a native app. See More

Top Pro

Official Akismet Anti-Spam Plugin

Official Akismet plugin vets posts by new users to make sure they don’t look spammy before they hit your site. Akismet key purchase required. See More

Top Pro

Extensible via plugins

Top Pro

Export your posts

Top Pro

Good on-boarding experience for new users

New users are greeted withe the disco bot which has an interactive experience to teach the basics of using Discourse. See More

Top Pro

User selectable themes

Users can choose between the themes made avaliable on their instances, and even use different themes on different devices (mobile vs desktop, for example). See More

Flarum

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Top Pro

Very fast loading time

Top Con

Slow development

Development moves at a glacial pace. See More

010101's Experience

I've installed and used many forum platforms over the last 20 years or so. Flarum loads very fast, has all the features you need out of the box, and it looks like an app. Flarum is the best modern forum software. The main complaints I hear are around slow development and that it is hard to install on shared hosting. I believe it's not necessarily hard to install, but there does need to be a better step by step shared hosting installation guide. This is something on my to do list since I have experience installing Flarum on a couple different shared hosting servers. As far as slow development... I just think the core devs are very cautious and particular. And, have full time jobs and real lives. See More

Specs

Databases:MySQL, MariaDB

Top Pro

Lots of features

The developers do a great job adding new bells and whistles. See More

Top Con

Very complicated installation process on shared hosts

This is not a MySQL+PHP application. It is impossible or very hard to install on shared hosts compared to vanilla or phpbb. See More

CompassionateAphrodite's Experience

This is the best i've tried. I have also considered discourse, nodebb, vanilla, and PhpBB See More

Top Pro

Based on (but not built with) Laravel

Flarum was originally based on Laravel and uses the Eloquent ORM. But it is not a traditional Laravel software. See More

CredibleFangfeng's Experience

Best free forum software. See More

Top Pro

Easily expandable

IntellectualForseti's Experience

Flarum LOVER!!!!! See More

Top Pro

Modern UI

MeticulousRanginui's Experience

Works the best (for me) See More

Top Pro

Great Community

The community building flarum is fantastic and very helpful! See More

FantasticBrigid's Experience

Extensions don't break the forum See More

SuccinctCicholGricenchos's Experience

Easy to use and easy to install See More

Thé Oné's Experience

Featureful and good looking See More

NodeBB

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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. See More

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. See More

CaffeinatedAchilles's Experience

I simply gave up. See More

Specs

Written in:Node.js

Databases:Redis or MongoDB, others can be added with plugins

Top Pro

Has live chat

Private Messages (PMs) are live chats, just like messaging apps, allowing real-time conversations with one or a selection of users. See More

FantasticBrigid's Experience

Extensions don't break the forum See More

Top Pro

Plugin support

A selection of plugins for NodeBB are available. See More

GregariousZemyna's Experience

Easy to set up on Ubuntu 16.04. Works quite easily, although you may need to install some plugins for HTTPS to work. See More

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). See More

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. See More

Top Pro

Installation & maintenance easy

Documentation is complete and detail, otherwise community always find a solution See More

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. See More

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. See More

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. See More

Top Pro

Multilingual

Built in local support with over 50 translated languages. See More

Top Pro

Great performance

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) See More

Top Pro

24/7 technical support

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. See More

Top Pro

Real-time post streaming

Posts are streamed in real time, if a new post is created it appears without having to refresh. See More

ElkArte

Top Pro

Open Source

It is completely free to use and is licensed with an open source BSD-3 clause license. See More

Specs

Database:MySQL 5 and newer OR PostgreSQL 8.3 and newer

Written in :PHP version 5.3 or newer

Top Pro

Responsive design

ElkArte comes out of the box with two responsive styles. See More

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. See More

Top Pro

Integrated video embedding

Integrated video embedding for YouTube, Vimeo, and DailyMotion. See More

Top Pro

Improved Anti Spam measures

Elkarte has BadBehaviour and other measures included into the core to protect your forum from spammers. See More

Top Pro

Easy to install

AsmBB

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. See More

Specs

Written in:x86 Linux ASM

Databases:Builtin SQLite

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. See More

Top Pro

No library dependencies - everything needed is in the package

Top Pro

Easy installation even on shared hosting

Top Pro

Mobile friendly

AsmBB provides specially optimized skin for mobile browsers, resulting for best UX on any device. See More

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. See More

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. See More

Top Pro

Really high performance and low requirements to the hosting

Vanilla

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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. See More

Top Pro

Free and open source

Vanilla is a free PHP+MySQL application that's licensed under GPLv2 with source code available on GitHub. See More

Specs

Databases:MySQL

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. See More

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. See More

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. See More

Top Pro

Easy setup

Vanilla is a MySQL + PHP app and can be set up very easily. See More

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. See More

Top Pro

Simple forum software

lightweight Internet forum package Embeddable forums Import from other forums See More

Top Con

No sitemap for discussion

Even sitemap plugin cannot add discussion in xml file. See More

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. See More

Top Pro

Fast

PHP may not be the most modern language, but Vanilla is fast. See More

Top Pro

Hosted and self-hosted options

Top Pro

Single Sign On

Ability to sign in with another system to your forum See More

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. See More

Fruum

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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. See More

Specs

Written in:Node.js

Databases:Elasticsearch, others can be added with plugins

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. See More

Top Pro

Realtime

All updates in the forum happen real-time. No reloads required. See More

Top Pro

Extensible

New functionality can be added using a plugin interface written in JavaScript. See More

Top Pro

Free and open source

Source code is available on GitHub under Apache License. See More

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. See More

Cloudways

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Top Con

Expensive

Except for the base $5 plan, it's more expensive than other options. See More

Top Pro

Free trial

Cloudways offers a 14 day free trial so you can try it out first. The free trial does have some limitations, which you can read about here. See More

Oliver Russell's Experience

Cloudways is ideal for those who don't want to spend time on managing server themselves or don't have technical expertise to do so. It is one of the <a href="https://www.cloudways.com/en/php-cloud-hosting.php">best php hosting</a> provider out there because of their performance benchmarks. You can launch popular PHP apps on servers in just one click. 100+ features and live chat support. See More

Rizzoma

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