Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Flarum VS Nabble

Compare Flarum VS Nabble and see what are their differences

Flarum logo Flarum

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

Nabble logo Nabble

Nabble is a forum software that are embeddable and fully customizable with scripting language.
  • Flarum Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-07-27
  • Nabble Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-04-26

Flarum features and specs

  • Modern Design
    Flarum features a sleek, user-friendly interface designed for modern web aesthetics and accessibility. This makes it appealing and easy to use for community members.
  • Extensibility
    Flarum is highly extensible with a robust plugin system, allowing users to customize and expand its functionalities via extensions created by the community or custom-developed.
  • Fast Performance
    Built with performance in mind, Flarum is lightweight and optimized for speed, ensuring a smooth user experience.
  • Mobile Friendly
    Flarum is fully responsive, allowing for seamless use across various devices, including tablets and smartphones.
  • Open Source
    Flarum is an open-source project, which means you can contribute to its development, audit its code, and use it without licensing fees.

Possible disadvantages of Flarum

  • Early Development Stage
    Flarum is still relatively new and in continuous development, which might mean encountering occasional bugs or missing features that are available in more mature platforms.
  • Limited Documentation
    Documentation is still growing, and there may be gaps that can make it challenging for new users or developers to fully utilize all features or develop new extensions.
  • Smaller Community
    Compared to more established forum software, Flarum has a smaller user and developer community, which can result in fewer available resources, themes, and extensions.
  • Hosting Requirements
    Flarum requires a modern hosting environment with PHP and Composer support, which might not be available with all web hosts and can complicate the setup process for non-technical users.
  • Learning Curve
    Due to its modern architecture and use of Composer for extensions, there is a steeper learning curve for users unfamiliar with these technologies.

Nabble features and specs

  • User-Friendly Interface
    Nabble provides an intuitive and easy-to-use interface that allows users to create and modify forums without requiring technical expertise.
  • Integration Capabilities
    It offers integration options with other platforms like blogs or websites, making it versatile for embedding discussion forums within existing content.
  • Cost-Effective
    Nabble offers free hosting options, which is beneficial for small communities or groups looking to create online forums without incurring costs.
  • Customizable
    Users can customize the appearance and structure of their forums to better suit their community’s needs and branding requirements.

Possible disadvantages of Nabble

  • Limited Scalability
    Nabble may not be suitable for very large forums or communities due to potential limitations in scalability and performance.
  • Basic Feature Set
    Compared to some sophisticated forum software, Nabble may lack advanced features that some users or organizations might need.
  • Potential Availability Issues
    Since it is a free service, there could be concerns about long-term reliability and availability compared to paid solutions.
  • Advertising
    Free versions of Nabble may include ads, which could be undesirable for some users who prefer an ad-free experience.

Flarum videos

How to Install Flarum Extensions to Super-Charge Forum?

More videos:

  • Tutorial - Custom pages that open modals and discussion composer (Flarum beta7 extension tutorial)

Nabble videos

Nabble

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Flarum and Nabble)
Forums And Forum Software
Membership Management
0 0%
100% 100
Forums
90 90%
10% 10
Community Platform
85 85%
15% 15

User comments

Share your experience with using Flarum and Nabble. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Reviews

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

Flarum Reviews

  1. GraceyMartin
    · employ at Digital Marketing ·
    BPM Counter

    BPM Counter analyzes the tempo of incoming audio in beats per minute (bpm). The detection circuit looks for any transients, also known as impulses, in the input signal. Transients are very fast, nonperiodic sound events in the attack portion of the signal. The more obvious this impulse is, the easier it is for BPM Counter to detect the tempo.


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...

Nabble Reviews

We have no reviews of Nabble yet.
Be the first one to post

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Flarum seems to be a lot more popular than Nabble. While we know about 37 links to Flarum, we've tracked only 3 mentions of Nabble. 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.

Flarum mentions (37)

  • Looking for the best forum software to start a new forum community in 2025
    Flarum is great [1]. Looks good, works on mobile, continuously updated. Try it out. Edit: Oh wow, downvoted for posting a good recommendation? 1: https://flarum.org/. - Source: Hacker News / 5 months ago
  • Ask HN: User communities that aren't Discord?
    Flarum is a really nice open source forum https://flarum.org/. - Source: Hacker News / 10 months ago
  • Stop Using Discord
    Load quicker than Discourse and feel snappy. [0]: https://flarum.org/. - Source: Hacker News / 11 months ago
  • Posthog is closing their Slack community in favor of forum
    From a user perspective I really like Flarum https://flarum.org/ Some example forums that use flarum: Flarum itself: https://discuss.flarum.org/ GrapheneOS: https://discuss.grapheneos.org/ Kagi and Orion: https://kagifeedback.org/ https://orionfeedback.org/ Mailcow: https://community.mailcow.email/ Many more can be found here: https://builtwithflarum.com/. - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • Introducing the new Godot Forum
    Nice! I kinda wish they went with https://flarum.org/ instead of discourse, though. I think Flarum is the better forum software and it is also open source. Source: over 1 year ago
View more

Nabble mentions (3)

  • Are there any good discussion forums left?
    Https://nabble.com/ Lots of open source project use it as web ui for mailing list. - Source: Hacker News / over 3 years ago
  • What happened to the Qgis Mailing List on Nabble?
    Hello. I have typically browsed the Qgis mailing lists using nabble.com but on the developer list there hasn't been a post n 9 days. Source: almost 4 years ago
  • Nabble.com?
    I was thinking about creating a forum just for the fun of it, and was wondering if nabble.com is a trustworthy site to make it with. It is free and I can find VERY few references to it across the internet... Is it safe, or does it come with viruses/data collection, etc? Has anyone used it themselves? Source: about 4 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Flarum and Nabble, you can also consider the following products

Discourse - Discourse is an open source discussion platform built for the next decade of the Internet.

Google Groups - Google Groups allows you to create and participate in online forums and email-based groups with a rich experience for community conversations.

XenForo - Intuitive. Social. Engaging. Fast. XenForo brings a fresh outlook to forum software.

Mighty Networks - Mighty Networks enables entrepreneurs, organizations, and companies to create and grow a community-powered 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.

Bigtent - BigTent is a web-based organization and communication portal for groups.