Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Forem VS Discourse

Compare Forem VS Discourse and see what are their differences

Forem logo Forem

The reason you joined the Internet. Forem provides open-source tools to help you host a thriving, focused, and adaptable community.

Discourse logo Discourse

Discourse is an open source discussion platform built for the next decade of the Internet.
  • Forem Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-08-25
  • Discourse Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-06-13

Forem videos

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Discourse videos

Why We Chose The Discourse Platform For Our Forums

More videos:

  • Review - Why Discourse is the Best Forum Software Out There (No, Really) | Location Rebel
  • Review - A Grammar Review for Discourse Analysis

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Forem and Discourse)
Forums
3 3%
97% 97
Community Platform
3 3%
97% 97
Forums And Forum Software
Community Management
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Forem and Discourse

Forem Reviews

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Discourse Reviews

20 Telegram Alternatives to Chat With in 2024
Discourse is a basic forum function that could be an alternative to Telegram if you want to stick to text discussions. It's pretty analog, missing both video and livestreaming tools. Instead, Discourse is a basic community that lets you organize discussions--it feels a bit like having your own reddit or Quora.
18 Best Discord Alternatives 2020 | Expert Reviews
Discourse comes in a couple of flavours. You can self-host it yourself in which case the software is free, and you simply need to sign up for server space, or you can pay Discourse for a hosted-for-you option, though self-hosting is a lot cheaper the premium option takes care of the technical side.
IndieHackers: Best forum software
I used Flarum when trying to get a community set up for my product (ended up abandoning it to revisit when we have a larger customer base). It worked fairly well and I enjoyed it but it's definitely beta and unless you're fairly tech savvy it's not quite worth the setup / maintenance. Lots of config changes, crashes, huge issues with plugins, and some features missing. I'd...

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Discourse should be more popular than Forem. It has been mentiond 23 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Forem mentions (10)

  • Hacktoberfest 2022: 7 Open Source Projects to Contribute to
    Welcome to the Forem codebase, the platform that powers Dev.to. We are so excited to have you. With your help, we can Build out Forem’s usability, scalability, and stability to better serve our Communities. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • It is great to see what Wasm Builders is becoming
    We are on a mission to improve DEV as an engine for community and discovery, while also ensuring we provide the building blocks for a more expansive ecosystem, and it is great to see momentum in this regard. We don't operate Wasm Builders, but we are partners in the operation via Forem. - Source: dev.to / about 2 years ago
  • On Sharpening Your Tools
    First, I don’t know if you’ve heard of DEV but this kind of question is one that the community loves to interact with. I work for the Forem, the maintainers of the software that powers DEV; so I’m a bit biased on sending people there. - Source: dev.to / about 2 years ago
  • The DevNews Podcast Season 8 Premiere is Here 🔊
    @joshpuetz is the Principal Software Engineer at Forem — the open source community software that powers DEV, CodeNewbie and a growing number of other online communities. - Source: dev.to / about 2 years ago
  • Carrier Wave and How to Test Uploading a New Image to a ActiveRecord::Base Model
    We’re a Rails shop at Forem. In the Forem code base we use the CarrierWave gem to help with our file uploads. - Source: dev.to / about 2 years ago
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Discourse mentions (23)

  • Qilin: A Starter Project Template For Every Open Source Project
    GitHub Discussions can also be a great place for support as long as these are regularly monitored. Another option along the same lines is Discourse and the Open Source Matrix which is used by quite a few Open Source and community-based projects. - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • Ask HN: How to run an old-school mailing list?
    A lot of communities use [Discourse ](https://discourse.org). [LPSF](https://forum lpsf.org) migrated to it when Yahoo Groups was discontinued. Some of the advantages are that it's open source, self-hostable, and can be configured to work as both a traditional mailing list and modern forum. - Source: Hacker News / 2 months ago
  • My Fediverse use – I'm hosting everything myself – PeerTube, Mastodon and Lemmy
    More like https://discourse.org/. You can run it yourself, but I can also just have them ding a credit card every month and not think about it again (I do this for a community). - Source: Hacker News / 6 months ago
  • Reddit faces content quality concerns after its Great Mod Purge
    Discourse perhaps? I've seen it in use in a few places; it has a modern look and feel to it at least. https://discourse.org/. - Source: Hacker News / 9 months ago
  • So Long, Twitter and Reddit
    I fully agree with you see my comment here[0] -- I think you may have misread my comment, it says "Discourse" (as in the forum software[1]), not Discord. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37245220. - Source: Hacker News / 9 months ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Forem and Discourse, you can also consider the following products

Apache Answer - A Q&A platform software for teams at any scales. Whether it’s a community forum, help center, or knowledge management platform, you can always count on Answer.

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

Vanilla Forums - Build an engaging community forum using Vanilla's modern cloud forum software.

Circle.so - Bring together your discussions, memberships, and content. Integrate a thriving community wherever your audience is, all under your own brand.

phpBB - Raspberry Pi. The Raspberry Pi is a cheap, credit-card sized computer. The official website uses phpBB for their discussion forums. phpBB is not affiliated with nor responsible for any of the sites listed on the showcase.

NodeBB - NodeBB Forum Software - A better community platform for the modern web. NodeBB is a next generation forum software that's free and easy to use.