Invision Power Board vs. miniBB vs. phpBB vs. SMF vs. Vanilla vs. vBulletin

General Invision Power Board miniBB phpBB SMF Vanilla vBulletin
Version
3.2.3
2.4
3.0.8
2.0.6
2.6.4
4.1.5
Release Date
2011-10-17 (12 years ago)
2008-08-17 (15 years ago)
2010-11-19 (13 years ago)
2013-10-21 (10 years ago)
2018-10-28 (5 years ago)
2011-07-26 (12 years ago)
Last Update here
2012-02-07 (12 years ago)
2009-09-02 (14 years ago)
2011-06-22 (12 years ago)
2013-10-25 (10 years ago)
2018-11-01 (5 years ago)
2011-08-25 (12 years ago)
Author
Invision Power Services
miniBB Team
The phpBB Group
Simple Machines
Vanilla Forums Inc
vBulletin Solutions
URL
Free and Open Source
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
License
Commercial
GPL
General Public License
BSD
GPL
commercial / visible source
License cost
License from $175 / Hosted from $5 per month
Free
0.00
0
0
$285 Suite or $195 Forum
Main View
Both, can be configured
Thread-Type
Flat
Flat
Flat
Flat
Flat
Threaded or Flat
Setup Invision Power Board miniBB phpBB SMF Vanilla vBulletin
Installation method
wizard
wizard
wizard
wizard
wizard
wizard
Upgrade method
wizard
manual
wizard with manual interactions
wizard
manual
wizard with manual interactions
Hosting available
Yes
No
No
No
Yes
No
Technology Invision Power Board miniBB phpBB SMF Vanilla vBulletin
Programming Language
PHP 5.2+
PHP
PHP
PHP
PHP
PHP
UTF-8 Support
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Data Storage
1
MySQL Database
1
MySQL Database
6
Firebird Database, Microsoft SQL Database, MySQL Database, Oracle Database, PostgreSQL Database, SQLite File Database
3
MySQL Database, PostgreSQL Database, SQLite File Database
1
MySQL Database
1
MySQL Database
Other Storage
Source Code Repo
Issue Tracker
Posts Invision Power Board miniBB phpBB SMF Vanilla vBulletin
BBCode
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
HTML
Yes
Optional
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Emoticons
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Formatting Toolbar
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
WYSIWYG Editor
Yes
Plugin
No
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Quoting
Nested
Single
Nested
Nested
Single
Nested
Syntax Highlighting
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Attachments
Multiple files
Multiple files
Multiple files
Multiple files
Multiple files
Multiple files
Tags
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
Yes
Unknown
Mark as solved
A particular post can highlighted as accepted answer
Forums Invision Power Board miniBB phpBB SMF Vanilla vBulletin
Categories
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Subforums
unlimited
one level
unlimited
unlimited
unlimited
unlimited
Last Post
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Redirect Forums
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Trashcan Forum
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Anti-Spam and Security Invision Power Board miniBB phpBB SMF Vanilla vBulletin
CAPTCHA
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Groups
Multiple groups
No
Multiple groups
Multiple groups
Multiple groups
Multiple groups
Flood Control
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
ACLs
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Blacklist
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Warnings
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Suspension
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Bans
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
IP-Block
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Audit Logging
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
User Reports
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Other
Spam Monitoring Service, Flag As Spammer, Question & Answer System
Plugin-based CAPTCHA system, Newly Registered Users permissions
An Akismet mod is available
Community Curation & SPAM removal
Akismet
Notification Invision Power Board miniBB phpBB SMF Vanilla vBulletin
RSS/ATOM
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
E-Mail
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Instant Messaging
No
0
Jabber
Bookmarks
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Community Invision Power Board miniBB phpBB SMF Vanilla vBulletin
Avatars
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
User Ranks
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Rating/Karma System
Yes
Plugin
Patch
Yes
Yes
Yes
Signatures
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Users Online List
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Private Messaging
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Custom profile fields
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Moderation Invision Power Board miniBB phpBB SMF Vanilla vBulletin
Moderators
global and forums
global and forums
global and forums
global, forums and threads
global, forums and threads
global and forums
Move Threads
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Split Threads
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Close Threads
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Shadow Topics
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Sticky Threads
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Important Threads
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Search Invision Power Board miniBB phpBB SMF Vanilla vBulletin
Full-text search
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Author search
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Advanced search
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Unread Topics
Database tracked
Database tracked
Database tracked
Database tracked
Database tracked
Database tracked
Customization Invision Power Board miniBB phpBB SMF Vanilla vBulletin
Languages
0
0
0
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
Mobile View
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
Yes
Unknown
Templates
global and forum specific
global
global and forum specific
global and forum specific
global and forum specific
global and forum specific
Custom BBCodes
Yes
Patch
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Skin-Editor
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Smiley Packs
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Plugins
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Special Features Invision Power Board miniBB phpBB SMF Vanilla vBulletin
Statistics
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Polls
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Calendar
Yes
Plugin
No
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Friendly URLs
Yes
Optional
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Data Management Invision Power Board miniBB phpBB SMF Vanilla vBulletin
Available Importers
All platforms use: https://open.vanillaforums.com/addon/porter-core
Pruning
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Archiving
Yes
Plugin
No
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Export Formats
SQL
Users' logins/emails can be exported in CSV or TXT
SQL Dumps in .sql, sql.gz, and .sql.bz2
WAP(2), IMode
Proprietary or MySQLDump
Single Table CSV, Single and Multi-Table SQL
Export private messages
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Lo-Fi View
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
remove Invision Power Board remove miniBB remove phpBB remove SMF remove Vanilla remove vBulletin