Best Free Open Source Forum Software
A forum is really helpful for a website when it comes to solving its readers’ problems-and for a brand, it’s practically a requirement so as to be able to address the FAQs and problems faced by its customers. Forums can also help you get your site indexed and ranked well in the search engines by making your site popular.
The following is a list of the five best free open source forum software programs that you can use to try and create a forum for free.
You can use any of these forum software providers to create a decent enough bulletin board/forum for your own website. There’s a good selection of open source forum software out there, so I’m going to share the best of them to save you some time with your research. 🙂
However, if you are serious about blogging and you’re operating, or plan on running an actual online business, then it might be a good idea not to opt for free forum software.
The vBulletin Business Forum Solution
***Jan 1st 2017 vBulletin Update***
***As of January 1st, 2017, vBulletin has closed down. However, Muut is still going strong! So please skip this paragraph and go directly to the next section, titled “2014 Update-New #1 FREE Forum Software Provider, Muut”.***
The reason for this is due to the need to maintain a professional appearance for your business’s website. If this describes YOU, then you may want to take a look at vBulletin instead of the free providers to set up your online community.
They have three different pricing packages available, depending on how much traffic your site gets, and by all accounts, vBulletin forums function superbly.
***2014 Update-New #1 FREE Forum Software Provider, Muut***
Earlier this year a company called “Muut” was created because the founders were actually looking for their own forum software solution and they were not impressed at all with all the ugly forums out there in cyberspace.
They also wanted to be able to design their discussion platform the way they wanted to, and not be at the mercy of any unprofessional-looking designs.
The result? An aesthetically-pleasing, extremely fast, user-friendly, uncluttered commenting and forum software solution-built for mobile use too-that you can style to suit your preferences. And it can be used for just forums or commenting-or both.
Muut has an excellent free version that allows unlimited traffic, users and posts. It’s spam-protected and more than 28 languages are supported.
What’s more is that your forum will be search engine optimized AND you can still style it yourself-even though it’s free. Now that’s something to really get excited about!
Of course, there are three premium paid plans as well for when the time comes that you require deeper branding and integration for your forum.
The good news here is that these plans are very competitively priced and the guys at Muut will give you a free 14 day trial to test out all the features of your selected plan before committing to it, which is a nice, helpful option.
Don’t forget to use the promo code MUUT20 to get 20% off any Muut premium plan at checkout.
The Other Top Free Open Source Forum Software Solutions
So now that my list has been updated to include the new forum software company, Muut, now here are the five original free open source forum providers (in my newly formed top 6 list):
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1. BBPress
BBPress is an open source forum software created by the creators of WordPress. You can easily setup a forum for your worpress.org powered site with BBPress. It’s fast and easy to use and integrate-an open source forum made the WordPress way.
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2. PhpBB
PhpBB is a widely used free open source PHP bulletin board. They claim that millions of people are using it on a daily basis. You can create a small friendly community or a wide multi-category board using phpBB.
3. MiniBB
If you are looking for a fast, stable and lite forum, then MiniBB is just made for you. It is very easy to integrate and highly editable. This open source forum is perfect if you are creating a support forum with public communications and discussions.
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4. Simple Machines Forum
Simple Machines Forum (SMF) is an elegant, professional grade open source forum software. You can create your own forum within minutes using SMF. You can control the whole design using the template engine that’s built into the forum software. SMF is written in the PHP and MySQL language.
5. Vanilla Forums
Vanilla Forums was built to build unique and engaging communities. Vanilla forums provide two types of plans; hosted forums and open source forums. Vanilla forums is ultra-flexible and used on over 600,000 sites on the web.
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There’s plenty of free open source forum software available, but I found five-no, sorry-SIX of the best for you!
If you know of any other open source forum, then please let us all know in the comments section below. I hope you liked my SIX best free open source forum software solutions list above.
What do you think of the new addition, Muut? Please tell me by commenting below. 🙂
Thanks for sharing this post. I have created forum using phpBB. It is a nice forum script. 🙂
Your most welcome Raplus.
Its great to know that you took action after reading this post.
Also share your experience with phpBB here. It would be appreciated much. 😉
Vanilla forums is what i recommend. It has awesome looks. will be adding a community forum after there is an increase in my blog traffic.
Thanks for telling your opinion Anchit.
Best of luck for adding the forum. 😉
hey you haven't included mybb that is too, a good free forum script
Yeah, I've made a list of top 5, If I had made of 6 then probably 6th would be myBB itself. 🙂
Thanks for commenting 🙂
Hello to every body, it’s my first go to see of this blog; this website includes amazing and truly good data designed for visitors.
Thanks for the nice comment! I’m glad you like it. 🙂
Vanilla is good but need more plugin who still not developed ..
http://codingresolved.com/
I have used Vanilla for a long time but now I have changed to Forumotion: http://www.forumotion.com/
Looks very good-I’ll have to check that out, thanks!
Great post!!
That’s a very nice and detailed list of forum software.
also include codoforum http://codoforum.com
It is a modern, blazing fast, responsive and built with an unconventional approach to improve user engagement and yes it is FREE!!
I’m glad you like it, Francis. Thanks for your feedback and input.:-)
I am looking for something which has social media support , where users can register using twitter or facebook. Does the WordPress based BBpress has that feature?
Hi Abhishek: I was on the support section of their site and it’s not clear if they have this feature. I’d say VBulletin has it, though. They’re mentioned in the article too. I hope that helps. 🙂
Wow!! Great post for PHP lovers. Actually this is the same post which I was looking for. I hope you will keep to share.
Glad you like it, Dave! Thanks for the feedback. 🙂