Vanilla vs. XMB vs. phpBB vs. vBulletin vs. Phorum

General Vanilla XMB phpBB vBulletin Phorum
Version
2.6.4
1.9.11
3.0.8
4.1.5
5.2.9a
Release Date
2018-10-28 (5 years ago)
Febuary 28, 2009
2010-11-19 (13 years ago)
2011-07-26 (12 years ago)
2008-10-12 (15 years ago)
Last Update here
2018-11-01 (5 years ago)
2012-03-02 (12 years ago)
2011-06-22 (12 years ago)
2011-08-25 (12 years ago)
2008-10-16 (15 years ago)
Author
Vanilla Forums Inc
The XMB Group
The phpBB Group
vBulletin Solutions
Phorum Dev Team
URL
Free and Open Source
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
License
GPL
General Public License
General Public License
commercial / visible source
The Phorum License (BSD)
License cost
0
0.00
0.00
$285 Suite or $195 Forum
0
Main View
Both, can be configured
Thread-Type
Flat
Flat
Flat
Threaded or Flat
Threaded or Flat
Setup Vanilla XMB phpBB vBulletin Phorum
Installation method
wizard
wizard
wizard
wizard
wizard
Upgrade method
manual
wizard
wizard with manual interactions
wizard with manual interactions
wizard
Hosting available
Yes
No
No
No
No
Technology Vanilla XMB phpBB vBulletin Phorum
Programming Language
PHP
php
PHP
PHP
PHP
UTF-8 Support
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
1
MySQL Database
2
MySQL Database, PostgreSQL Database
Other Storage
Source Code Repo
Issue Tracker
Posts Vanilla XMB phpBB vBulletin Phorum
BBCode
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Optional
HTML
Yes
Optional
No
Yes
Optional
Emoticons
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Optional
Formatting Toolbar
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Optional
WYSIWYG Editor
Plugin
No
No
Yes
Plugin
Quoting
Single
Nested
Nested
Nested
Nested
Syntax Highlighting
Plugin
No
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Attachments
Multiple files
Multiple files
Multiple files
Multiple files
Multiple files
Tags
Yes
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
Mark as solved
A particular post can highlighted as accepted answer
Forums Vanilla XMB phpBB vBulletin Phorum
Categories
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Subforums
unlimited
one level
unlimited
unlimited
multiple levels
Last Post
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Redirect Forums
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
No
Trashcan Forum
Yes
No
No
Yes
No
Anti-Spam and Security Vanilla XMB phpBB vBulletin Phorum
CAPTCHA
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Optional
Groups
Multiple groups
Multiple groups
Multiple groups
Multiple groups
Multiple groups
Flood Control
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
ACLs
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Blacklist
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Warnings
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Suspension
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Bans
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
IP-Block
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Audit Logging
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Optional
User Reports
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Other
Community Curation & SPAM removal
Plugin-based CAPTCHA system, Newly Registered Users permissions
Akismet
Aksimet Plugin
Notification Vanilla XMB phpBB vBulletin Phorum
RSS/ATOM
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
E-Mail
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Instant Messaging
Jabber
0
Bookmarks
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Community Vanilla XMB phpBB vBulletin Phorum
Avatars
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
User Ranks
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Rating/Karma System
Yes
Plugin
Patch
Yes
Plugin
Signatures
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Users Online List
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Private Messaging
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Custom profile fields
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Moderation Vanilla XMB phpBB vBulletin Phorum
Moderators
global, forums and threads
global and forums
global and forums
global and forums
global and forums
Move Threads
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Split Threads
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Close Threads
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Shadow Topics
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Sticky Threads
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Important Threads
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Search Vanilla XMB phpBB vBulletin Phorum
Full-text search
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Author search
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Advanced search
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Unread Topics
Database tracked
Session tracked
Database tracked
Database tracked
Database tracked
Customization Vanilla XMB phpBB vBulletin Phorum
Languages
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
0
0
Mobile View
Yes
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
Templates
global and forum specific
global and forum specific
global and forum specific
global and forum specific
global and forum specific
Custom BBCodes
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Skin-Editor
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Smiley Packs
Plugin
Optional
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Plugins
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Special Features Vanilla XMB phpBB vBulletin Phorum
Statistics
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Polls
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Calendar
Plugin
Plugin
No
Yes
No
Friendly URLs
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Data Management Vanilla XMB phpBB vBulletin Phorum
Available Importers
All platforms use: https://open.vanillaforums.com/addon/porter-core
Pruning
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Archiving
Yes
No
No
Yes
No
Export Formats
Proprietary or MySQLDump
SQL Dumps in .sql, sql.gz, and .sql.bz2
Single Table CSV, Single and Multi-Table SQL
Export private messages
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
No
Lo-Fi View
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Optional
remove Vanilla remove XMB remove phpBB remove vBulletin remove Phorum