Overview

Discourse

Stacks278

Followers246

Votes115

GitHub Stars45.5K

Forks8.7K

XenForo

Stacks528

Followers19

Votes0

Discourse vs XenForo: What are the differences?

Cost: One key difference between Discourse and XenForo is their cost. Discourse is an open-source platform that offers both a free version with limited features as well as paid plans with additional features and support. On the other hand, XenForo is a commercial software that requires a one-time license fee to be paid upfront.
Community Engagement: While both platforms offer community engagement features, Discourse is designed with a focus on user-centric community discussions. It provides a modern and intuitive interface with real-time updates, enabling users to engage in conversations easily. XenForo, on the other hand, offers traditional forum features with a more structured layout, including thread categorization and sub-forums.
Customization and Themes: Discourse provides extensive customization options and allows users to create custom themes using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. It also has an active community that shares themes and plugins. In contrast, XenForo offers a rich set of customization options through its admin control panel, allowing users to tailor various aspects of their forum's appearance and functionality without the need for coding.
Ease of Use: Discourse is known for its ease of use and intuitive interface. It has a clean design and emphasizes simplicity in navigation and interaction. XenForo also provides a user-friendly experience, but it may require some initial learning for users familiar with more traditional forum platforms.
Integration and Add-ons: Discourse provides a robust API and supports integrations with popular services, allowing users to extend its functionality. It also has a plugin system that enables the installation of various add-ons to enhance the forum's features. XenForo, on the other hand, offers a wide range of built-in features and integration options, providing a comprehensive forum solution without additional add-ons required.
Support and Updates: Discourse offers various options for support, including a community forum for peer-to-peer assistance and paid support plans for faster response times. It also has regular updates and improvements driven by its active open-source community. XenForo provides official support through its customer support system and releases updates to address bugs and introduce new features.

In Summary, Discourse and XenForo differ in terms of cost, community engagement approach, customization options, user-friendliness, integration capabilities, and support models.

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Detailed Comparison

Discourse	XenForo
Discourse is a simple, flat forum, where replies flow down the page in a line. Replies are attached to the bottom and top of each post, so you can optionally expand the context of the conversation – without breaking your flow.	It is a commercial Internet forum software package written in the PHP programming language.
Remembers your place;Log in with … anything;Paste to share images;Search that actually works;Scalable moderation;Bring your friends;Your stuff belongs to you;Comprehensive API	Social Engagement; Recent Activity Stream; Easy Styling; Great Add-ons
Statistics
GitHub Stars 45.5K	GitHub Stars -
GitHub Forks 8.7K	GitHub Forks -
Stacks 278	Stacks 528
Followers 246	Followers 19
Votes 115	Votes 0
Pros & Cons
Pros 28 Open source 19 Fast 13 Email digests 9 Better than a stereotypical forum 8 Perfect for communities of any size Cons 3 Heavy on server 2 Difficult to extend 2 Notifications aren't great on mobile due to being a PWA	No community feedback yet
Integrations
WordPress Zapier Zendesk	Java PHP CoffeeScript JavaScript CSS 3 Zend Framework

What are some alternatives to Discourse, XenForo?

Flarum

Flarum is the next-generation forum software that makes online discussion fun. It's simple, fast, and free.

Haash

Easily add sections. Create questions and answer them on the fly. Drag and drop and move things around. Edit everything in a flash.

Answer

It is an open-source knowledge-based community software. You can use it to quickly build your Q&A community for product technical support, customer support, user communication, and more.

Threads Forum

It is designed to help teams inform, discuss, and make decisions at scale. For leaders at every level of a company, it is a platform for work that best delivers on decision making by tapping into the collective wisdom of an entire team, providing everyone with a voice to assure better business outcomes.

PeerBoard

It is a modern community platform designed to live as an organic part of your existing website or product. Now you can easily create an engaged discussion space wherever your users already are - no more siloed external platforms or legacy forums!