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Comparison of the Best Forum Software

Choose a Bulletin Board for your website. Forum addons for Mambo and Joomla CMS


Are you looking for a forum tool for your web site? You have come to the right place! Here you will find the best online message board software capable to create a powerful online discussion system where your visitors will share their interests and hobbies.

What is a Forum? An Internet forum is a web application which provides for discussion, often in conjunction with online communities. Internet forums are also commonly referred to as web forums, message boards, discussion boards, discussion groups, or simply, forums. Find more details about how to start a Forum web site here

Below you will find an extensive list of the best bulletin board scripts. Some of the tools, we have selected, are open source and free to use; others provide better support, more features and are paid. PHPbb and SMF applications can be easily integrated with the best CMS tools and thus become an excellent solution for your community site (more about Joomla forum extensions). So, depending on your requirements, here you will be able to choose the perfect forum tool for your website. SiteGround offers 24/7 expert technical support for any of the forum tools listed below.

Open source Bulletin board software: phpBB and SMF

phpBB is a powerful, multi-functional, and easily modifiable bulletin board package. phpBB has a user-friendly interface, simple administration, and helpful tutorial. With phpBB you can:

have unlimited forums and posts
use multiple language interface
search within forum posts
post private messages to your forum members

phpBB and Mambo CMS: phpBB is the most popular open source bulletin board software. phpBB community has provided tools which allow you to integrate Mambo CMS with phpBB and use them both on your site.


Simple Machines Forum (SMF) is free, elegant, feature-rich community forum software. It has a comprehensible and intuitive user interface. SMF has large online community with developers and other users able and willing to help. It has many high-value and high-quality features. SMF offers easy-to-modify theme support and has highly optimized database structure and queries are suitable for small and large forums.

Joomla and SMF - SMF software is the best tool to integrate within your Joomla! CMS design.

Paid Bulletin board software: vBulletin and Invision board

vBulletin is a feature-rich, scalable and easily modifiable forums package for your web site. vBulletin is suitable for medium and large forum communities. Being paid software, vBulletin ensures much better security of its code and database. vBulletin is written in PHP and uses MySQL backend.

SiteGround Hosting has chosen vBulletin for its Community Forum software.


Invision Board is a powerful and scaleable bulletin board system. It allows you to easily create, customize and manage your online forum. IPB is written in PHP and needs one MySQL database. It is easily installed, has intuitive administration and tons of features.

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