Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

WoltLab Suite VS Flarum

Compare WoltLab Suite VS Flarum and see what are their differences

WoltLab Suite logo WoltLab Suite

PHP-based CMS built for forums and community building.

Flarum logo Flarum

Flarum is the next-generation forum software that makes online discussion fun. It's simple, fast, and free.
  • WoltLab Suite Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-04
  • Flarum Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-07-27

WoltLab Suite features and specs

  • User-Friendly Interface
    WoltLab Suite offers an intuitive and easy-to-navigate interface, making it accessible for both administrators and users without advanced technical knowledge.
  • Customization Options
    The platform provides a wide range of customization options, allowing users to tailor their forums and websites to suit specific needs and aesthetics.
  • Integrated Applications
    WoltLab Suite includes a variety of integrated applications such as forums, blogs, galleries, and calendars, ensuring a cohesive and comprehensive user experience.
  • Responsive Design
    The suite is designed to be fully responsive, offering optimal performance and usability across different devices and screen sizes.
  • Robust Security Features
    WoltLab Suite is equipped with advanced security measures to protect against common web vulnerabilities, ensuring the safety of user data.
  • Community and Support
    The platform boasts an active community and offers professional support services, providing users with ample resources for problem-solving and development.

Possible disadvantages of WoltLab Suite

  • Cost
    WoltLab Suite is a paid product, which may not be suitable for individuals or small organizations operating on a tight budget.
  • Learning Curve
    Despite its user-friendly interface, some users may experience a learning curve when exploring the full range of features and customization options available.
  • Limited Third-Party Integrations
    Compared to other platforms, WoltLab Suite may offer fewer third-party integrations, which could be a drawback for users reliant on specific external services.
  • Lesser-Known Platform
    WoltLab Suite is not as widely known or used as other content management systems, which might limit the availability of community-created resources and plugins.
  • Performance Overhead
    Depending on the hosting environment and the scale of the application, WoltLab Suite may have noticeable performance overheads compared to simpler or more lightweight solutions.

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.

Analysis of Flarum

Overall verdict

  • Yes, Flarum is considered a good forum software by many users.

Why this product is good

  • Flarum is praised for its simplicity, modern interface, and lightweight design. It offers a smooth and fast user experience, and its extensible architecture allows for easy customization through plugins. The open-source nature ensures that the community can contribute to its development, continually improving the platform.

Recommended for

  • Communities looking for a modern and sleek forum solution
  • Developers who want a customizable and extensible platform
  • Organizations seeking a community-driven, open-source solution
  • Users who prefer lightweight and fast-loading web applications

WoltLab Suite videos

No WoltLab Suite videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

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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)

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to WoltLab Suite and Flarum)
Forums And Forum Software
Forums
7 7%
93% 93
Community Platform
7 7%
93% 93
Surveys
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

Share your experience with using WoltLab Suite and Flarum. 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 WoltLab Suite and Flarum

WoltLab Suite Reviews

  1. Woltlab

    I really like WoltLab, they have a great Forum and the community is generally really nice The customer support is also awesome

    👍 Pros:    Great customer support|Good value for money
    👎 Cons:    Higher base price

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...

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.

WoltLab Suite mentions (0)

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

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 / 11 months ago
  • Stop Using Discord
    Load quicker than Discourse and feel snappy. [0]: https://flarum.org/. - Source: Hacker News / 12 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
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What are some alternatives?

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

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

Google Forms - Simple web forms from Google.

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

LimeSurvey - LimeSurvey: the Online-Umfrage Tool - Open-Source Suryeys

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.