Software Alternatives & Reviews

Flarum VS Simple Machines Forum

Compare Flarum VS Simple Machines Forum 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.

Simple Machines Forum logo Simple Machines Forum

Simple Machines offers free open source software such as SMF, the powerful and easy to use community forum written in PHP. Start interesting discussions on your website!
  • Flarum Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-07-27
  • Simple Machines Forum Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-14

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)

Simple Machines Forum videos

Forum Tutorials - Simple Machines Forums, Tutorial and Overview

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Flarum and Simple Machines Forum)
Forums And Forum Software
Forums
71 71%
29% 29
Community Platform
69 69%
31% 31
Productivity
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

Share your experience with using Flarum and Simple Machines Forum. 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 Simple Machines Forum

Flarum Reviews

  1. 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...

Simple Machines Forum Reviews

We have no reviews of Simple Machines Forum yet.
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Flarum should be more popular than Simple Machines Forum. It has been mentiond 34 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 (34)

  • 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 / 3 months 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: 5 months ago
  • Show HN: Booklet – modern discussion forum for professional groups
    Not sure yet how this compares to Flarum - https://freeflarum.com/ you can self-host too https://flarum.org/. - Source: Hacker News / 7 months ago
  • Don't Use Discord as a Forum
    Https://flarum.org/ is a nice modern alternative, also free. - Source: Hacker News / 8 months ago
  • Ask HN: What forum software do you recommend?
    Https://flarum.org/ is really nice and modern. I donated to https://freeflarum.com/ and used my custom domain for their hosted free offering. - Source: Hacker News / 9 months ago
View more

Simple Machines Forum mentions (4)

  • Just remember forums exist
    Https://simplemachines.org/ This looks nice. Doesn't look like it has tags/flair though. Lots of questions in regards to how it compares to the other options. Source: 11 months ago
  • Is there a painless way to set up a forum website on a raspberry pi?
    I've always been a fan of SMF. Install is pretty straight forward. Source: over 1 year ago
  • The Platformer #25: High-Impact Hacking
    This project, called YaBB — Yet another Bulletin Board (I’ve always been good at naming things) — is pretty much dead. A few months ago the website was still up, but it appears to be down now. Yes, the project was forked into YaBB SE (a direct PHP port), and ultimately evolved into Simple Machines Forum, which still seems to be under development today (and powers Bitcoin Talk — if you’re still into the crypto thing). - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Integrating Forums in an android app?
    Is it possible to integrate forums like Simple Machines Forum in an app or any other forum? Or is there any package/plugin that makes it easier to develop it and integrate it with firebase/firestore. Source: about 2 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Flarum and Simple Machines Forum, you can also consider the following products

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

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.

MyBB - MyBB is a discussion board software that runs on PHP and MySQL

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

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.

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