Discourse Alternatives

Discourse Alternatives

Discourse is an open source internet forum and mailing list software. The application is written with Ember.js and Ruby on Rails, and can be self-hosted in the cloud or on local hardware for free. Discourse also provides managed hosting starting at $10.. read more.

According to people there are many software similar to it, and the best alternative to Discourse is NodeBB which is both free , commercial and open source. Other highly recommended applications include Flarum (Free) , Simple Machines Forum (Free) and LayerBB (Free).
In total people have suggested 8 alternatives to Discourse that share similarities by use case and feature set.

NodeBB

NodeBB is an open source forum software powered by Node.js and supports either Redis, MongoDB, or a PostgreSQL database. With NodeBB you can self-host communities with instant interactions and real-time notifications powered with the help of web sockets. Thousands of organizations have also stared their communites with NodeBB SaaS product, free from self-service and maintinance.

Free , Commercial & Open Source
👍 Most people think NodeBB is a good alternative to Discourse.

Flarum

A free and open-source modern forum software written in PHP. With Flarum you can eaisly setup your own discussion froum and host it online.

Free & Open Source
👍 Most people think Flarum is a good alternative to Discourse.

Simple Machines Forum

Simple Machines Forum or SMF in short is a free and open-source forum software. SMF can be used to build your own online community that you self-host on a host of your choice. Simple Machines Forum comes packed with features for customization, extension and management of your community. The template engine puts you in control of the design of your community. The plugin architecture makes it easy to extend and provide further feautres though third-party built packages. 

Free & Open Source

LayerBB

LayerBB is a small yet feature rich, free and open-source community software written in PHP. LayerBB enables you to quickly and easily start your own community while providing great flexibility and customisability.

Free & Open Source

bbPress

bbPress is forum software from the creators of WordPress. With bbPress you can quickly setup a forum for asyncronous discussion and subscriptions for your WordPress-powered site.

Free & Open Source

Disqus

Disqus is a Comment-as-a-Service provider that makes it easy to add comments to any web property. It's one of the most popular comment plugins on the market today. With Disqus, publisher can bring their content to life, fuel colorful discussions, efficiently moderate comments, and build engaged communities. The plugin takes only a matter of minutes to setup and is as easy as installing a WordPress plugin or adding a code snippet to your website.

Freemium & Proprietary

phpBB

One of the world most popular, free, open-source and self-hosted forum software, written in PHP. With phpBB you can create communities that can be hosted with most hosting providers. The software package is built and designed from the ground up to to be extensible and provides customization option through themes and feature extensions through plugins. The extensive database of user-created extensions and styles database, easy of use, and the simple installation process has made phpBB a common choice among self-hosted forums and communities.

Free & Open Source

How Are These Discourse Alternatives Generated?

Information found on this page is crowd-sourced by the community and contains the most agreed upon Discourse alternatives. You can use this information to find similar software to Discourse for specific platforms with various pricing options and licenses. Anyone that have previously used Discourse can suggest alternatives, vote on the accuracy of other users claims, and help more people in the process of doing so.

This page was last updated on Sun 23 Jan 2022 (3 weeks, 1 day ago).