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

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