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

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