5 Best Community Forum Softwares

In the age of social media, where everyone and everything is connected, Forum software platforms have become quite a rarity, but these platforms are still a great place for like-minded individuals to get together and connect with each other.

Businesses are using these forums for their advantages, and there has been a resurgence to forum software’s, thanks to these businesses. Having an online community is extremely valuable to a business.

As it can increase the interaction between consumers and clients, and can also work a source of feedback to the business, which can create a healthy relationship between the producer and consumer, and can also help in making the product better.

While picking the right forum software, there are a few things that you should keep in your mind. One of the most important things while choosing a forum software is understanding of what suits the best for your needs.

We have made a list of the Best Community Forum Softwares that will help you in increasing the connection between the customers and the suppliers.

Best Community Forum Softwares

  • Wix Forum

Wix ForumThis free forum software is one of the best community software out on the market, and with the help of it, you can create a stunning forum in just minutes, with loads of customizable options, that are both appealing and easy to use.

You create HTML5 websites and mobile sites through the use of online drag and drop tools. You can also add in social plug-ins, e-commerce, online marketing, contact forms, e-mail marketing, using a variety of Wix-developed and third-party applications.

The great thing about Wix is that you can either build a web site straight from the scratch, which is extremely easy, and does not require any sort of coding, or you can choose from the many templates that are offered by the website. Another great advantage of using the Wix Forum is that it is extremely easy to customize.

You can customize almost every aspect of your forum and easily add in extra app support. Another thing that the Wix forum offers is a personal profile page like other social media platforms, where you can see everything a user has posted. The built-in SEO tools make things a lot easier and you’ll easily be able to optimize your posts for search engines, hence giving your profile more traffic and publicity.

  • vBulletin

vBulletinFirst launching in 2000, vBulletin is a proprietary Internet forum software package sold by MH Sub I. The forum is written in PHP and uses a MySQL database server. Though the forum software is a premium one, the features it offers are well worth their price.

One of the most popular features of the software is that it has an option to host the forum software yourself, or through their affordable and reliable cloud hosting. The forum program is extremely easy to set up and takes not more than 15 minutes, and has built-in features like SEO support and AI-powered user engagement feature, to help grow your community organically and gradually.

Another great feature of vBulletin is that it offers hassle-free mobile experience, and the forum is very well organized for mobiles. You can easily access your forum, as the administration options are user friendly and are not that complicated to understand.

You can get vBulletin for self-hosting, for a one-time price of $249. If you wish to use their cloud-based servers, then you’ll have to additionally pay 15$ a month.

  • phpBB

phpBBPHP Bulletin Board, also known as phpBB is an Internet forum package in the PHP scripting language. The phpBB is an open-source forum and comes under the GNU General Public License. The forum is extremely flexible and allows you to create boards, where users can post messages.

A great advantage of using the phpBB forum is that it can handle a lot of traffic easily, without crashing or glitching, the forum can handle thousands of users, granted you are using a top hosting service.

phpBB also gives you the option to enable several free extensions for your forum, which are available on the website. The forum has several customizable options available, not only for the owners but also for the users. They can easily customize their profiles, and change the look and feel of their profiles. The forum also benefits from being open-sourced, which means that if there is an active community supporting it, loads of features can be added to further improve the experience.

  • MyBB

MyBBFormerly known as MyBBoard and originally MyBulletinBoard, MyBB is free and open-source forum software developed by the MyBB Group. The forum software is written in PHP and supports MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQLite as database systems.

As the name suggests, MyBB makes a lot of effort in letting you customize your profile/forum as your own. MyBB is a fully customizable powerhouse and offers several ready-made templates and a theme editor for you to easily customize your profile.

MyBB has all the features, that are required to make a good forum software, and add to that the several additional plugins that are available for free, like anti-spam tools, gamification features, email blast support, and CDN capabilities, you get one of the best Community forum software that you should check out.

  • Vanilla Forums

Vanilla ForumsThis Canadian software company founded in 2009 is both a cloud-based (SaaS) community forum software and open-source community-supported software.

Vanilla offers both open-source and premium versions of its forum software. If you are going with the open-sourced version, then you’ll have to self-host the platform, and you get basic features and community-built plugins. The premium version is aimed at business and provides a much more powerful cloud-based solution.

Vanilla forums provide a larger range of user permission roles and capabilities. Which means that the users are rewarded for engaging and staying active, this increases the engagement of the community and helps the business grow.

The premium version of the software costs around $689-$10,000. If you are someone who manages a large business and are looking for a premium forum, that will handle all of the work for you, then Vanilla Forums should be on the top of your list.

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