The best forum software

You may unsubscribe from these communications at any time. For more information, check out our privacy policy. Forums provide the opportunity to build an online community that allows your audience to connect in a place where they know their interests are shared.

This sense of connectedness is more important than ever in a time where more work, communication, and socialization is being done online. Online communities are particularly beneficial for businesses because they allow customers to interact with each other in a smaller circle than they could via social media, which increases engagement and brand affinity.

For instance, let's say one of your customers has a very unique problem with your product or service, and posts about it on your forum. That post is much easier to find than it would be on social media, where millions of users are talking about a million different things. Even better, maybe another forum user has faced that same problem and can answer their question before your service reps even see it. There is an incredible amount of value in reaching and building your community using a forum.

Here, we're going to explore the best forum software to get you started. Using a multi-purpose platform like a CMS to power your online community allows you access to many different software options in the form of plugins and applications. For instance, you might use the bbPress plugin to create multisite forums, and maintain them from one dashboard within your WordPress site.

This is a great option if you want to set up a regular website and forum together. There are many options to choose from using WordPress, all of which will provide you with the basic forum features you need, plus plenty of useful extras.

Image Source. The price point comes from the open-source content management system, which will allow you to build powerful online applications alongside your forum software. Discourse is open-source forum software that you can in tandem with your existing website and CMS platform. Not only can community members use it on their mobile devices, but they'll also get dynamic notifications, badges, emoji, and more.

Best of all, there's a built-in moderation system to help you protect your community from spam and abuse. Vanilla has an abundance of features -- one of the most notable being the intuitive dashboard that lets you manage every aspect of your community forum. Additionally, Vanilla gives you the ability to adjust permissions of forums or members if you're looking to control access. Best of all, Vanilla offers an on-boarding process with useful checklists, training materials, and help from one of their support reps.

Codoforum is forum software that has a fresh UI with modern design. It's simple, clean, and easy to use. But what truly makes Flarum stand out is its two-pane interface. This unique feature provides users with a flexible environment where they can participate in numerous discussions without opening a handful of different tabs. Other engagement-focused capabilities include a floating message composer, discussion-organized notifications, live chat , and user mentions.

Also known simply as SMF, Simple Machines Forum is an open-source forum software built with large online communities in mind. Its interface stays clear of flashy decorations, opting instead for a clear and sober approach that gives the platform a professional look. In order to allow for optimal performance and scalability, this free forum software offers a broad variety of customizable features and plugins, along with structured code documentation.

Long gone are the days when these modifications took endless hours and lines of code. Discourse offers a modern take on the notion of forums. This, combined with a long list of available features and integrations and complete mobile optimization, have granted this solution a spot among the best forum software. This results in a self-moderated community where users are rewarded for their engagement and meaningful collaborations.

XenForo is a self-hosted forum software created for businesses. There are more than 2, plugins available in the platform, ranging from enhanced search capabilities to premium area paywalls.

This includes social sharing, activity milestones, appreciation tools, and a reward scheme. In addition to the basic yearly license, XenForo offers several premium services users can add to their forums such as a media gallery, enhanced SEO tools, and advanced resource management.

Extra additions can be purchased from third-party vendors. Invision Community is deemed to be one of the best forum software solutions for businesses and enterprises.

It combines a fully customizable interface with rich content creation tools and a comprehensive admin panel that makes it easy to set up and manage. The platform enables users to customize every aspect of their forums, down to the activity feed on a user basis.

This flexibility extends to end-users as well, as they can create and manage their own online communities within the forum. Known as clubs, these areas get designated managers and can control private forums, galleries, and calendars. By Judit Ruiz Ricart. Blog Content Expert. It can also be used with WordPress to turn your website into a forum.

Each blog post becomes a forum post. It also works with the Akismet WordPress plugin to moderate spam. Social media integrations such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and others are also represented.

PhpBB is one of the oldest, free forum program options out there. It has all the basic features you need in forum software, including user moderation, private messaging, notifications, the ability to set user permissions, etc. PhpBB has a responsive design. While its basic features may not seem all that special since these should be standard with any forum software, the specific capabilities are quite robust. For example, the private messaging system is about as good as sending an email with whatever provider you use.

You can add attachments, create an address book, create drafts, add attachments, view messages in conversation mode, and more. Simple Machines Forum SMF is an open-source program and has all the features you would expect in the forum software. It also has an advanced package manager so you can make modifications in a couple of clicks that quickly applies the changes in even large communities. So, you can forget the days when it took hours to apply multiple changes across a large database of forum members.

SMF also supports multiple languages all at the same time. That way, no one needs to feel left out, which is great. XenForo is a self-hosted premium forum software best suited for businesses. It uses gamification to increase user engagement and integrates with Facebook so users can register through social media. It makes sharing to Facebook easier as well. XenForo has a recent activity feed so members can quickly get up-to-date. There are also notifications to make it even more straightforward to engage with the community.

It has a sleek, elegant, and professional UI, and built-in SEO optimization to increase forum functionality. There are over 2, add-ons that range from various gamification features to administration, and enhanced search add-ons such as the popular and powerful ElasticSearch software.

They provide a larger range of user permission roles and capabilities. This lets users have more incentive to engage with the community. It also helps that Vanilla Forums has a knowledge base system included, so businesses can cut down on support tickets by having a self-serve option.