Software Alternatives & Reviews

phpBB VS Discourse

Compare phpBB VS Discourse and see what are their differences

phpBB logo 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.

Discourse logo Discourse

Discourse is an open source discussion platform built for the next decade of the Internet.
  • phpBB Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-03-23
  • Discourse Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-06-13

phpBB

Categories
  • Forums And Forum Software
  • Forums
  • Community Platform
  • Community Management
  • Social Networks
Website phpbb.com
Pricing URL-
Details $

Discourse

Categories
  • Forums
  • Forums And Forum Software
  • Community Platform
  • Community Management
  • Social Networks
Website discourse.org
Pricing URL Official Discourse Pricing
Details $paid Free Trial $100.0 / Monthly

phpBB videos

PHPbb for Beginners - Creating a Community Forum

More videos:

  • Review - A SQL injection example using phpBB | Ars Technica

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 phpBB and Discourse)
Forums And Forum Software
Forums
35 35%
65% 65
Community Platform
38 38%
62% 62
Social Networks
23 23%
77% 77

User comments

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Reviews

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

phpBB Reviews

We have no reviews of phpBB yet.
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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 seems to be a lot more popular than phpBB. While we know about 23 links to Discourse, we've tracked only 2 mentions of phpBB. 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.

phpBB mentions (2)

  • Best way to host a small forum?
    Excellent! Glad we could get you sorted! Hosting can be scary and it's okay to be afraid to touch things or not understand certain settings or terms. Especially if you're new. The key is to read the documentation. For your forum needs, this can be found at https://mybb.com and https://phpbb.com. Source: 4 months ago
  • Looking for resources to learn authentication and security in-depth
    You may find a current, object-oriented version of phpBB to be just the ticket. It will teach you how to structure the database, authenticate users, manage sessions and selectively display content according to user level, group membership, and other policies. Source: almost 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 / 25 days 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 / 27 days 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 / 4 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 phpBB and Discourse, you can also consider the following products

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

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

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

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

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.

Forumbee - Forumbee offers community forums for discussions, feedback and Q&A.