vBulletin vs. phpBB vs. Vanilla vs. XMB

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