Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Flarum VS phpFox

Compare Flarum VS phpFox 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.

phpFox logo phpFox

phpFox is a powerful social network platform for niche communities
  • Flarum Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-07-27
  • phpFox Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-24

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.

phpFox features and specs

  • Customizability
    phpFox offers extensive customization options, allowing developers to tailor the platform to specific needs with various themes and modules.
  • Scalability
    The platform is built to handle large user bases, which makes it a good choice for both small and large communities.
  • Built-in Features
    phpFox comes with a wide range of pre-built features like user management, groups, forums, and more, which can save development time.
  • Mobile Responsiveness
    The platform is designed with mobile users in mind, offering responsive design and mobile apps to enhance user experience on different devices.
  • Active Community and Support
    phpFox has an active community and offers support, which can help users resolve issues and improve their social network efficiently.

Possible disadvantages of phpFox

  • Complexity
    Beginners may find phpFox difficult to set up and manage without prior experience, as it can be complex and require technical knowledge.
  • Cost
    While offering robust features, phpFox is not a free platform, and the cost can be a significant consideration for small projects or startups.
  • Plugin Dependency
    To unlock the full potential of the platform, users may need to rely on additional plugins, which can increase costs and complicate maintenance.
  • Performance
    Depending on the hosting environment and configuration, the platform might face performance issues, especially as the user base grows.
  • Learning Curve
    Despite having good documentation, there may be a steep learning curve for users unfamiliar with similar platforms or programming.

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)

phpFox videos

phpFox 4.6.0 Preview

More videos:

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Flarum and phpFox)
Forums And Forum Software
Social Network
0 0%
100% 100
Forums
100 100%
0% 0
Social Networks
43 43%
57% 57

User comments

Share your experience with using Flarum and phpFox. 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 phpFox

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...

phpFox Reviews

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

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Flarum seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 37 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.

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

phpFox mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of phpFox yet. Tracking of phpFox recommendations started around Mar 2021.

What are some alternatives?

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

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

SocialEngine - Build Your Community with Powerful Social Networking Software | Social Engine

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

mooSocial - mooSocial is the best social network script to create a niche community or social site.

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.

JomSocial - Open Source Social Networking Software. Award winning open source community software by JomSocial. This social networking software is widely used by many Joomla users.