FluxBB vs. Vanilla vs. vBulletin vs. Phorum

General FluxBB Vanilla vBulletin Phorum
Version
1.4.5
2.6.4
4.1.5
5.2.9a
Release Date
22/03/2011
2018-10-28 (5 years ago)
2011-07-26 (12 years ago)
2008-10-12 (15 years ago)
Last Update here
2011-05-05 (12 years ago)
2018-11-01 (5 years ago)
2011-08-25 (12 years ago)
2008-10-16 (15 years ago)
Author
FluxBB development team
Vanilla Forums Inc
vBulletin Solutions
Phorum Dev Team
URL
Free and Open Source
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
License
GPL v2
GPL
commercial / visible source
The Phorum License (BSD)
License cost
0
0
$285 Suite or $195 Forum
0
Main View
Both, can be configured
Thread-Type
Flat
Flat
Threaded or Flat
Threaded or Flat
Setup FluxBB Vanilla vBulletin Phorum
Installation method
wizard
wizard
wizard
wizard
Upgrade method
wizard
manual
wizard with manual interactions
wizard
Hosting available
No
Yes
No
No
Technology FluxBB Vanilla vBulletin Phorum
Programming Language
PHP
PHP
PHP
PHP
UTF-8 Support
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Data Storage
3
MySQL Database, PostgreSQL Database, SQLite File Database
1
MySQL Database
1
MySQL Database
2
MySQL Database, PostgreSQL Database
Other Storage
Source Code Repo
Issue Tracker
Posts FluxBB Vanilla vBulletin Phorum
BBCode
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Optional
HTML
Patch
Yes
Yes
Optional
Emoticons
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Optional
Formatting Toolbar
Patch
Plugin
Yes
Optional
WYSIWYG Editor
Patch
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Quoting
Nested
Single
Nested
Nested
Syntax Highlighting
Patch
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Attachments
No
Multiple files
Multiple files
Multiple files
Tags
Unknown
Yes
Unknown
Unknown
Mark as solved
A particular post can highlighted as accepted answer
Forums FluxBB Vanilla vBulletin Phorum
Categories
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Subforums
No
unlimited
unlimited
multiple levels
Last Post
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Redirect Forums
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Trashcan Forum
No
Yes
Yes
No
Anti-Spam and Security FluxBB Vanilla vBulletin Phorum
CAPTCHA
Patch
Yes
Yes
Optional
Groups
One group only
Multiple groups
Multiple groups
Multiple groups
Flood Control
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
ACLs
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Blacklist
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Warnings
Patch
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Suspension
No
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Bans
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
IP-Block
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Audit Logging
Patch
Yes
Yes
Optional
User Reports
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Other
Community Curation & SPAM removal
Akismet
Aksimet Plugin
Notification FluxBB Vanilla vBulletin Phorum
RSS/ATOM
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
E-Mail
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Instant Messaging
0
Bookmarks
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Community FluxBB Vanilla vBulletin Phorum
Avatars
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
User Ranks
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Rating/Karma System
Patch
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Signatures
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Users Online List
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Private Messaging
Patch
Yes
Yes
Yes
Custom profile fields
Patch
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Moderation FluxBB Vanilla vBulletin Phorum
Moderators
global and forums
global, forums and threads
global and forums
global and forums
Move Threads
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Split Threads
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Close Threads
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Shadow Topics
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Sticky Threads
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Important Threads
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Search FluxBB Vanilla vBulletin Phorum
Full-text search
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Author search
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Advanced search
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Unread Topics
Session tracked
Database tracked
Database tracked
Database tracked
Customization FluxBB Vanilla vBulletin Phorum
Languages
0
141
Afar, Abkhazian, Afrikaans, Amharic, Arabic, Assamese, Aymara, Azerbaijani, Bashkir, Byelorussian, Bulgarian, Bihari, Bislama, Bengali; Bangla, Tibetan, Breton, Catalan, Corsican, Czech, Welsh, Danish, German, Bhutani, Greek, English, Esperanto, Spanish, Estonian, Basque, Persian, Finnish, Fiji, Faroese, French, Frisian, Irish, Scots Gaelic, Galician, Guarani, Gujarati, Hausa, Hebrew, Hindi, Croatian, Hungarian, Armenian, Interlingua, Indonesian, Interlingue, Inupiak, Icelandic, Italian, Inuktitut, Japanese, Javanese, Georgian, Kazakh, Greenlandic, Cambodian, Kannada, Korean, Kashmiri, Kurdish, Kirghiz, Latin, Lingala, Laothian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Lettish, Malagasy, Maori, Macedonian, Malayalam, Mongolian, Moldavian, Marathi, Malay, Maltese, Burmese, Nauru, Nepali, Dutch, Norwegian, Occitan, Oromo, Oriya, Punjabi, Polish, Pashto, Pushto, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Quechua, Rhaeto-Romance, Kirundi, Romanian, Russian, Kinyarwanda, Sanskrit, Sindhi, Sangho, Serbo-Croatian, Sinhalese, Slovak, Slovenian, Samoan, Shona, Somali, Albanian, Serbian, Siswati, Sesotho, Sundanese, Swedish, Swahili, Tamil, Telugu, Tajik, Thai, Tigrinya, Turkmen, Tagalog, Setswana, Tonga, Turkish, Tsonga, Tatar, Twi, Uighur, Ukrainian, Urdu, Uzbek, Vietnamese, Volapuk, Wolof, Xhosa, Yiddish, Yoruba, Zhuang, Chinese, Chinese Traditional, Zulu
0
0
Mobile View
Unknown
Yes
Unknown
Unknown
Templates
CSS only
global and forum specific
global and forum specific
global and forum specific
Custom BBCodes
Patch
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Skin-Editor
No
Plugin
Yes
No
Smiley Packs
Patch
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Plugins
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Special Features FluxBB Vanilla vBulletin Phorum
Statistics
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Polls
Patch
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Calendar
Patch
Plugin
Yes
No
Friendly URLs
Patch
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Data Management FluxBB Vanilla vBulletin Phorum
Available Importers
All platforms use: https://open.vanillaforums.com/addon/porter-core
Pruning
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Archiving
Patch
Yes
Yes
No
Export Formats
Proprietary or MySQLDump
Single Table CSV, Single and Multi-Table SQL
Export private messages
No
Yes
Yes
No
Lo-Fi View
No
Yes
Yes
Optional
remove FluxBB remove Vanilla remove vBulletin remove Phorum