phpBB vs. bbPress vs. SMF vs. Vanilla

General phpBB bbPress SMF Vanilla
Version
3.0.8
0.9.0.4
2.0.6
2.6.4
Release Date
2010-11-19 (13 years ago)
2009-01-02 (15 years ago)
2013-10-21 (10 years ago)
2018-10-28 (5 years ago)
Last Update here
2011-06-22 (12 years ago)
2009-03-11 (15 years ago)
2013-10-25 (10 years ago)
2018-11-01 (5 years ago)
Author
The phpBB Group
bbpress.org
Simple Machines
Vanilla Forums Inc
URL
Free and Open Source
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
License
General Public License
GPL2
BSD
GPL
License cost
0.00
0
0
0
Main View
Both, can be configured
Thread-Type
Flat
Flat
Flat
Flat
Setup phpBB bbPress SMF Vanilla
Installation method
wizard
wizard
wizard
wizard
Upgrade method
wizard with manual interactions
wizard
wizard
manual
Hosting available
No
No
No
Yes
Technology phpBB bbPress SMF Vanilla
Programming Language
PHP
PHP
PHP
PHP
UTF-8 Support
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Data Storage
6
Firebird Database, Microsoft SQL Database, MySQL Database, Oracle Database, PostgreSQL Database, SQLite File Database
1
MySQL Database
3
MySQL Database, PostgreSQL Database, SQLite File Database
1
MySQL Database
Other Storage
Source Code Repo
Issue Tracker
Posts phpBB bbPress SMF Vanilla
BBCode
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
HTML
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Emoticons
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Formatting Toolbar
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
WYSIWYG Editor
No
No
Yes
Plugin
Quoting
Nested
Nested
Nested
Single
Syntax Highlighting
Yes
Plugin
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 phpBB bbPress SMF Vanilla
Categories
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Subforums
unlimited
unlimited
unlimited
unlimited
Last Post
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Redirect Forums
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Trashcan Forum
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Anti-Spam and Security phpBB bbPress SMF Vanilla
CAPTCHA
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Groups
Multiple groups
One group only
Multiple groups
Multiple groups
Flood Control
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
ACLs
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Blacklist
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Warnings
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Suspension
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Bans
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
IP-Block
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Audit Logging
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
User Reports
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Other
Plugin-based CAPTCHA system, Newly Registered Users permissions
An Akismet mod is available
Community Curation & SPAM removal
Notification phpBB bbPress SMF Vanilla
RSS/ATOM
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
E-Mail
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Instant Messaging
Jabber
Plugin
Bookmarks
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Community phpBB bbPress SMF Vanilla
Avatars
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
User Ranks
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Rating/Karma System
Patch
Plugin
Yes
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 phpBB bbPress SMF Vanilla
Moderators
global and forums
global
global, forums and threads
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
Unknown
Yes
Plugin
Sticky Threads
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Important Threads
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Search phpBB bbPress SMF Vanilla
Full-text search
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Author search
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Advanced search
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Unread Topics
Database tracked
Database tracked
Database tracked
Customization phpBB bbPress SMF 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
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Skin-Editor
Yes
No
Yes
Plugin
Smiley Packs
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Plugins
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Special Features phpBB bbPress SMF Vanilla
Statistics
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Polls
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Calendar
No
No
Yes
Plugin
Friendly URLs
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Data Management phpBB bbPress SMF Vanilla
Available Importers
All platforms use: https://open.vanillaforums.com/addon/porter-core
Pruning
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Archiving
No
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Export Formats
SQL Dumps in .sql, sql.gz, and .sql.bz2
BBXF
WAP(2), IMode
Proprietary or MySQLDump
Export private messages
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Lo-Fi View
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
remove phpBB remove bbPress remove SMF remove Vanilla