Alternatives to Flarum logo

Alternatives to Flarum

Discourse, BuddyPress, XenForo, WordPress, and Google AdSense are the most popular alternatives and competitors to Flarum.
55
110
+ 1
47

What is Flarum and what are its top alternatives?

Flarum is a modern forum software that offers a clean and responsive user interface. It is designed to be fast, lightweight, and easy to use, with features such as real-time discussions, notifications, and extensions for further customization. However, Flarum may lack some advanced features and customization options compared to other forum platforms.

  1. Discourse: Discourse is a popular forum software known for its modern design and user-friendly interface. It offers features like gamification, robust moderation tools, and customizable themes. Pros include active development and a large community, while cons may include higher resource requirements.
  2. NodeBB: NodeBB is a Node.js-based forum software with a focus on speed and scalability. It offers features like real-time chats, social media integration, and built-in SEO tools. Pros include an active developer community, while cons may include limited plugin support.
  3. Vanilla Forums: Vanilla Forums is a flexible and customizable forum software that offers features like plugins, themes, and built-in analytics. Pros include robust moderation tools and integrations, while cons may include a steeper learning curve for beginners.
  4. phpBB: phpBB is an open-source forum software that has been around for many years. It offers features like a powerful extension system, custom profile fields, and multi-language support. Pros include a large community and frequent updates, while cons may include a potentially outdated user interface.
  5. MyBB: MyBB is a free and open-source forum software that is known for its simplicity and ease of use. It offers features like a customizable theme system, private messaging, and a plugin platform. Pros include a user-friendly interface, while cons may include fewer out-of-the-box features compared to other platforms.
  6. XenForo: XenForo is a premium forum software that is known for its sleek design and powerful features. It offers features like responsive design, social media integration, and a robust add-on system. Pros include active development and a modern user interface, while cons may include a higher price point.
  7. Simple Machines Forum: Simple Machines Forum is a free and open-source forum software with a focus on simplicity and usability. It offers features like custom themes, moderation tools, and a plugin system. Pros include ease of use for beginners, while cons may include fewer advanced features compared to other platforms.
  8. FluxBB: FluxBB is a lightweight and fast forum software that is designed for simplicity and efficiency. It offers features like custom user permissions, email notifications, and a plugin system. Pros include a small footprint and fast performance, while cons may include limited customization options.
  9. BBPress: BBPress is a WordPress plugin that allows users to create forums directly within their WordPress websites. It offers features like seamless integration with WordPress, spam protection, and customizable templates. Pros include easy installation and integration, while cons may include limited standalone functionality compared to other forum platforms.
  10. miniBB: miniBB is a lightweight forum software that is known for its simple and clean interface. It offers features like a responsive design, custom themes, and minimal resource usage. Pros include fast performance and easy customization, while cons may include fewer out-of-the-box features compared to other platforms.

Top Alternatives to Flarum

  • Discourse
    Discourse

    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. ...

  • BuddyPress
    BuddyPress

    It is a software that helps you build any kind of community website using WordPress, with member profiles, activity streams, user groups, messaging, and more. ...

  • XenForo
    XenForo

    It is a commercial Internet forum software package written in the PHP programming language. ...

  • WordPress
    WordPress

    The core software is built by hundreds of community volunteers, and when you’re ready for more there are thousands of plugins and themes available to transform your site into almost anything you can imagine. Over 60 million people have chosen WordPress to power the place on the web they call “home” — we’d love you to join the family. ...

  • Google AdSense
    Google AdSense

    It is a program run by Google through which website publishers in the Google Network of content sites serve text, images, video, or interactive media advertisements that are targeted to the site content and audience. ...

  • Mailchimp
    Mailchimp

    MailChimp helps you design email newsletters, share them on social networks, integrate with services you already use, and track your results. It's like your own personal publishing platform. ...

  • HubSpot
    HubSpot

    Attract, convert, close and delight customers with HubSpot’s complete set of marketing tools. HubSpot all-in-one marketing software helps more than 12,000 companies in 56 countries attract leads and convert them into customers. ...

  • Drupal
    Drupal

    Drupal is an open source content management platform powering millions of websites and applications. It’s built, used, and supported by an active and diverse community of people around the world. ...

Flarum alternatives & related posts

Discourse logo

Discourse

274
115
The 100% open source, next-generation discussion platform built for the next decade of the Internet.
274
115
PROS OF DISCOURSE
  • 28
    Open source
  • 19
    Fast
  • 13
    Email digests
  • 9
    Better than a stereotypical forum
  • 8
    Perfect for communities of any size
  • 7
    It's perfect to build real communities
  • 7
    Made by same folks from stackoverflow
  • 7
    Built with Ember.js
  • 6
    Great customer support
  • 3
    Made by consolidated team with a working business
  • 3
    Translated into a lot of Languages
  • 3
    Configurations
  • 2
    Easy flag resolution
CONS OF DISCOURSE
  • 3
    Heavy on server
  • 2
    Difficult to extend
  • 2
    Notifications aren't great on mobile due to being a PWA

related Discourse posts

Josh Dzielak
Co-Founder & CTO at Orbit · | 19 upvotes · 433.6K views

Shortly after I joined Algolia as a developer advocate, I knew I wanted to establish a place for the community to congregate and share their projects, questions and advice. There are a ton of platforms out there that can be used to host communities, and they tend to fall into two categories - real-time sync (like chat) and async (like forums). Because the community was already large, I felt that a chat platform like Discord or Gitter might be overwhelming and opted for a forum-like solution instead (which would also create content that's searchable from Google).

I looked at paid, closed-source options like AnswerHub and ForumBee and old-school solutions like phpBB and vBulletin, but none seemed to offer the power, flexibility and developer-friendliness of Discourse. Discourse is open source, written in Rails with Ember.js on the front-end. That made me confident I could modify it to meet our exact needs. Discourse's own forum is very active which made me confident I could get help if I needed it.

It took about a month to get Discourse up-and-running and make authentication tied to algolia.com via the SSO plugin. Adding additional plugins for moderation or look-and-feel customization was fairly straightforward, and I even created a plugin to make the forum content searchable with Algolia. To stay on top of answering questions and moderation, we used the Discourse API to publish new messages into our Slack. All-in-all I would say we were happy with Discourse - the only caveat would be that it's very helpful to have technical knowledge as well as Rails knowledge in order to get the most out of it.

See more
BuddyPress logo

BuddyPress

24
0
Fun & flexible software for online communities, teams, and groups
24
0
PROS OF BUDDYPRESS
    Be the first to leave a pro
    CONS OF BUDDYPRESS
      Be the first to leave a con

      related BuddyPress posts

      XenForo logo

      XenForo

      530
      0
      A compelling community experience
      530
      0
      PROS OF XENFORO
        Be the first to leave a pro
        CONS OF XENFORO
          Be the first to leave a con

          related XenForo posts

          WordPress logo

          WordPress

          97.9K
          2.1K
          A semantic personal publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability.
          97.9K
          2.1K
          PROS OF WORDPRESS
          • 416
            Customizable
          • 367
            Easy to manage
          • 354
            Plugins & themes
          • 259
            Non-tech colleagues can update website content
          • 247
            Really powerful
          • 145
            Rapid website development
          • 78
            Best documentation
          • 51
            Codex
          • 44
            Product feature set
          • 35
            Custom/internal social network
          • 18
            Open source
          • 8
            Great for all types of websites
          • 7
            Huge install and user base
          • 5
            I like it like I like a kick in the groin
          • 5
            It's simple and easy to use by any novice
          • 5
            Perfect example of user collaboration
          • 5
            Open Source Community
          • 5
            Most websites make use of it
          • 5
            Best
          • 4
            API-based CMS
          • 4
            Community
          • 3
            Easy To use
          • 2
            <a href="https://secure.wphackedhel">Easy Beginner</a>
          CONS OF WORDPRESS
          • 13
            Hard to keep up-to-date if you customize things
          • 13
            Plugins are of mixed quality
          • 10
            Not best backend UI
          • 2
            Complex Organization
          • 1
            Do not cover all the basics in the core
          • 1
            Great Security

          related WordPress posts

          Dale Ross
          Independent Contractor at Self Employed · | 22 upvotes · 1.7M views

          I've heard that I have the ability to write well, at times. When it flows, it flows. I decided to start blogging in 2013 on Blogger. I started a company and joined BizPark with the Microsoft Azure allotment. I created a WordPress blog and did a migration at some point. A lot happened in the time after that migration but I stopped coding and changed cities during tumultuous times that taught me many lessons concerning mental health and productivity. I eventually graduated from BizSpark and outgrew the credit allotment. That killed the WordPress blog.

          I blogged about writing again on the existing Blogger blog but it didn't feel right. I looked at a few options where I wouldn't have to worry about hosting cost indefinitely and Jekyll stood out with GitHub Pages. The Importer was fairly straightforward for the existing blog posts.

          Todo * Set up redirects for all posts on blogger. The URI format is different so a complete redirect wouldn't work. Although, there may be something in Jekyll that could manage the redirects. I did notice the old URLs were stored in the front matter. I'm working on a command-line Ruby gem for the current plan. * I did find some of the lost WordPress posts on archive.org that I downloaded with the waybackmachinedownloader. I think I might write an importer for that. * I still have a few Disqus comment threads to map

          See more
          Shared insights
          on
          ElementorElementorWordPressWordPress

          hello guys, I need your help. I created a website, I've been using Elementor forever, but yesterday I bought a template after I made the purchase I knew I made a mistake, cause the template was in HTML, can anyone please show me how to put this HTML template in my WordPress so it will be the face of my website, thank you in advance.

          See more
          Google AdSense logo

          Google AdSense

          24K
          0
          A program that allows bloggers and website owners to make money by displaying Google ads
          24K
          0
          PROS OF GOOGLE ADSENSE
            Be the first to leave a pro
            CONS OF GOOGLE ADSENSE
            • 1
              Plenty installs but low on actual users

            related Google AdSense posts

            Shared insights
            on
            Google AdSenseGoogle AdSensePurpleAdsPurpleAds

            which of the ads platform pays better? What about PurpleAds?

            Google AdSense has refused to post ads on my site.

            See more
            Shared insights
            on
            TaboolaTaboolaGoogle AdSenseGoogle AdSense

            Really can not decide which one to add. Google AdSense email say that they are ready to show ads... Taboola is on review.

            See more
            Mailchimp logo

            Mailchimp

            22.8K
            1.2K
            Easy email newsletters
            22.8K
            1.2K
            PROS OF MAILCHIMP
            • 259
              Smooth setup & ui
            • 248
              Mailing list
            • 148
              Robust e-mail creation
            • 120
              Integrates with a lot of external services
            • 109
              Custom templates
            • 59
              Free tier
            • 49
              Great api
            • 42
              Great UI
            • 33
              A/B Testing Subject Lines
            • 30
              Broad feature set
            • 11
              Subscriber Analytics
            • 9
              Great interface. The standard for email marketing
            • 8
              Great documentation
            • 8
              Mandrill integration
            • 7
              Segmentation
            • 6
              Best deliverability; helps you be the good guy
            • 5
              Facebook Integration
            • 5
              Autoresponders
            • 3
              Customization
            • 3
              RSS-to-email
            • 3
              Co-branding
            • 3
              Embedded signup forms
            • 2
              Automation
            • 1
              Great logo
            • 1
              Groups
            • 0
              Landing pages
            CONS OF MAILCHIMP
            • 2
              Super expensive
            • 1
              Poor API
            • 1
              Charged based on subscribers as opposed to emails sent

            related Mailchimp posts

            Kirill Shirinkin
            Cloud and DevOps Consultant at mkdev · | 12 upvotes · 699.6K views

            As a small startup we are very conscious about picking up the tools we use to run the project. After suffering with a mess of using at the same time Trello , Slack , Telegram and what not, we arrived at a small set of tools that cover all our current needs. For product management, file sharing, team communication etc we chose Basecamp and couldn't be more happy about it. For Customer Support and Sales Intercom works amazingly well. We are using MailChimp for email marketing since over 4 years and it still covers all our needs. Then on payment side combination of Stripe and Octobat helps us to process all the payments and generate compliant invoices. On techie side we use Rollbar and GitLab (for both code and CI). For corporate email we picked G Suite. That all costs us in total around 300$ a month, which is quite okay.

            See more
            Spenser Coke
            Product Engineer at Loanlink.de · | 9 upvotes · 301.5K views

            When starting a new company and building a new product w/ limited engineering we chose to optimize for expertise and rapid development, landing on Rails API, w/ AngularJS on the front.

            The reality is that we're building a CRUD app, so we considered going w/ vanilla Rails MVC to optimize velocity early on (it may not be sexy, but it gets the job done). Instead, we opted to split the codebase to allow for a richer front-end experience, focus on skill specificity when hiring, and give us the flexibility to be consumed by multiple clients in the future.

            We also considered .NET core or Node.js for the API layer, and React on the front-end, but our experiences dealing with mature Node APIs and the rapid-fire changes that comes with state management in React-land put us off, given our level of experience with those tools.

            We're using GitHub and Trello to track issues and projects, and a plethora of other tools to help the operational team, like Zapier, MailChimp, Google Drive with some basic Vue.js & HTML5 apps for smaller internal-facing web projects.

            See more
            HubSpot logo

            HubSpot

            11.2K
            88
            All the software you need to do inbound marketing.
            11.2K
            88
            PROS OF HUBSPOT
            • 47
              Lead management
            • 20
              Automatic customer segmenting based on properties
            • 18
              Email / Blog scheduling
            • 1
              Scam
            • 1
              Advertisement
            • 1
              Any Franchises using Hubspot Sales CRM?
            CONS OF HUBSPOT
              Be the first to leave a con

              related HubSpot posts

              Shared insights
              on
              HubSpotHubSpotPipedrivePipedrive

              Looking for the best CRM choice for an early-stage tech company selling through product-led growth to medium and big companies. Don't know if Salesforce or HubSpot are too rigid for PGL and expensive. I also had an experience of companies outgrowing Pipedrive pretty fast

              See more
              Shared insights
              on
              FreshsalesFreshsalesHubSpotHubSpot

              Comparing HubSpot and Freshsales, not sure which to choose. Company and contact information is shareable among tech and sales teams allowing both parties to upkeep customers' contact details. Capturing leads from social media and system assigning to sales or having the option to manual assign. Sales follow up with sales activities. Once deal, technical involve to follow up regular customer visits, support ticketing, training, remind customers to renew licenses, work on projects and etc. Require a single platform to share a calendar to understand internal team activities and customer activities.

              See more
              Drupal logo

              Drupal

              11K
              360
              Free, Open, Modular CMS written in PHP
              11K
              360
              PROS OF DRUPAL
              • 75
                Stable, highly functional cms
              • 60
                Great community
              • 44
                Easy cms to make websites
              • 43
                Highly customizable
              • 22
                Digital customer experience delivery platform
              • 17
                Really powerful
              • 16
                Customizable
              • 11
                Flexible
              • 10
                Good tool for prototyping
              • 9
                Enterprise proven over many years when others failed
              • 8
                Headless adds even more power/flexibility
              • 8
                Open source
              • 7
                Each version becomes more intuitive for clients to use
              • 7
                Well documented
              • 6
                Lego blocks methodology
              • 4
                Caching and performance
              • 3
                Built on Symfony
              • 3
                Powerful
              • 3
                Can build anything
              • 2
                Views
              • 2
                API-based CMS
              CONS OF DRUPAL
              • 1
                DJango
              • 1
                Steep learning curve

              related Drupal posts

              Hi, I am working as a web developer (PHP, Laravel, AngularJS, and MySQL) with more than 8 years of experience and looking for a tech stack that pays better. I have a little bit of knowledge of Core Java. For better opportunities, Should I learn Java, Spring Boot or Python. Or should I learn Drupal, WordPress or Magento? Any guidance would be really appreciated! Thanks.

              See more
              Jan Vlnas
              Senior Software Engineer at Mews · | 5 upvotes · 59K views

              Depends on what options and technologies you have available, and how do you deploy your website.

              There are CMSs which update existing static pages through FTP: You provide access credentials, mark editable parts of your HTML in a markup, and then edit the content through the hosted CMS. I know two systems which work like that: Cushy CMS and Surreal CMS.

              If the source of your site is versioned through Git (and hosted on GitHub), you have other options, like Netlify CMS, Spinal CMS, Siteleaf, Forestry, or CloudCannon. Some of these also need you to use static site generator (like 11ty, Jekyll, or Hugo).

              If you have some server-side scripting support available (typically PHP) you can also consider some flat-file based, server-side systems, like Kirby CMS or Lektor, which are usually simpler to retrofit into an existing template than “traditional” CMSs (WordPress, Drupal).

              Finally, you could also use a desktop-based static site generator which provides a user-friendly GUI, and then locally generates and uploads the website. For example Publii, YouDoCMS, Agit CMS.

              See more