Software Alternatives & Reviews

Form Tools VS Discourse

Compare Form Tools VS Discourse and see what are their differences

Form Tools logo Form Tools

Form Tools is a powerful, flexible, free and open source PHP/MySQL script you install on your...

Discourse logo Discourse

Discourse is an open source discussion platform built for the next decade of the Internet.
  • Form Tools Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-05-06
  • Discourse Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-06-13

Form Tools videos

Grinder Preparation for the Cannon Barrel Form tools

More videos:

  • Review - Form Tools Podcast.mov

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 Form Tools and Discourse)
Surveys
100 100%
0% 0
Forums
0 0%
100% 100
Form Builder
100 100%
0% 0
Forums And Forum Software

User comments

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Reviews

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

Form Tools 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 Form Tools. 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.

Form Tools mentions (5)

  • Collecting data from staff using forms, sending reminders etc
    I previously used formtools.org for a similar project but that was a one off and it didn't have auto reminders as part of the work flow. When I search for workflow tools I get what appears to be something completely different. When I search for for builder its often elements to allow your full app to easily present forms (I don't have my own app). Source: 7 months ago
  • Looking to use Base but what about it's end-user side?
    I think that you are asking for https://formtools.org/ on the end user stuff. Source: over 2 years ago
  • self hosted forms?
    Give FormTools a try. I've been using it with forms embedded in a website, but I believe it also lets you generate forms directly within the software. Source: almost 3 years ago
  • self hosted form builder
    There's also formtools but it has been unmaintained for some time now. Source: about 3 years ago
  • Web interface for MySQL DB
    Don't know if this would be right thing for you, but I Googled "open source mysql forms" and this looks cool: https://formtools.org. Source: about 3 years ago

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 / about 1 month 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 / about 1 month 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 / 5 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 / 8 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 / 8 months ago
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What are some alternatives?

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

Typeform - Create beautiful, next-generation online forms with Typeform, the form & survey builder that makes asking questions easy & human on any device. Try it FREE!

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

Google Forms - Simple web forms from Google.

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.

SurveyLab - Professional online survey tool - best survey software for the best price - Satisfaction Surveys, NPS, Market Research, Online Survey Creation and real-time reports.

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