XenForo vs. MyBB vs. Vanilla vs. phpBB vs. vBulletin

General XenForo MyBB Vanilla phpBB vBulletin
Version
1.5.2
1.6.3
2.6.4
3.0.8
4.1.5
Release Date
2015-10-19 (8 years ago)
2011-04-16 (12 years ago)
2018-10-28 (5 years ago)
2010-11-19 (13 years ago)
2011-07-26 (12 years ago)
Last Update here
2015-11-15 (8 years ago)
2011-06-22 (12 years ago)
2018-11-01 (5 years ago)
2011-06-22 (12 years ago)
2011-08-25 (12 years ago)
Author
XenForo Ltd
MyBB Group
Vanilla Forums Inc
The phpBB Group
vBulletin Solutions
URL
Free and Open Source
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
License
commercial / visible source
Custom
GPL
General Public License
commercial / visible source
License cost
$140
US$0
0
0.00
$285 Suite or $195 Forum
Main View
Both, can be configured
Thread-Type
Flat
Threaded or Flat
Flat
Flat
Threaded or Flat
Setup XenForo MyBB Vanilla phpBB vBulletin
Installation method
wizard
wizard
wizard
wizard
wizard
Upgrade method
wizard
wizard
manual
wizard with manual interactions
wizard with manual interactions
Hosting available
No
No
Yes
No
No
Technology XenForo MyBB Vanilla phpBB vBulletin
Programming Language
PHP
PHP
PHP
PHP
PHP
UTF-8 Support
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Data Storage
1
MySQL Database
3
MySQL Database, PostgreSQL Database, SQLite File 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 XenForo MyBB Vanilla phpBB vBulletin
BBCode
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
HTML
No
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Emoticons
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Formatting Toolbar
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
WYSIWYG Editor
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
No
Yes
Quoting
Single
Nested
Single
Nested
Nested
Syntax Highlighting
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Attachments
Multiple files
Multiple files
Multiple files
Multiple files
Multiple files
Tags
Unknown
Unknown
Yes
Unknown
Unknown
Mark as solved
A particular post can highlighted as accepted answer
Forums XenForo MyBB Vanilla phpBB vBulletin
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
No
Plugin
Yes
No
Yes
Anti-Spam and Security XenForo MyBB Vanilla phpBB vBulletin
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
Plugin
Yes
Yes
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
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Other
Advanced Spam Manager "Spam Cleaner", Questions and Answer System
Akismet plugin available.
Community Curation & SPAM removal
Plugin-based CAPTCHA system, Newly Registered Users permissions
Akismet
Notification XenForo MyBB Vanilla phpBB vBulletin
RSS/ATOM
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
E-Mail
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Instant Messaging
No
Jabber
Bookmarks
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Community XenForo MyBB Vanilla phpBB vBulletin
Avatars
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
User Ranks
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Rating/Karma System
Yes
Yes
Yes
Patch
Yes
Signatures
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Users Online List
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Private Messaging
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Custom profile fields
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Moderation XenForo MyBB Vanilla phpBB vBulletin
Moderators
global and forums
global and forums
global, forums and threads
global and forums
global and forums
Move Threads
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Split Threads
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Close Threads
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Shadow Topics
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Sticky Threads
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Important Threads
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Search XenForo MyBB Vanilla phpBB vBulletin
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 XenForo MyBB Vanilla phpBB vBulletin
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
0
Mobile View
Unknown
Unknown
Yes
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
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Skin-Editor
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Smiley Packs
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Plugins
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Special Features XenForo MyBB Vanilla phpBB vBulletin
Statistics
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Polls
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Calendar
No
Yes
Plugin
No
Yes
Friendly URLs
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Data Management XenForo MyBB Vanilla phpBB vBulletin
Available Importers
All platforms use: https://open.vanillaforums.com/addon/porter-core
Pruning
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Archiving
No
No
Yes
No
Yes
Export Formats
NA
Proprietary or MySQLDump
SQL Dumps in .sql, sql.gz, and .sql.bz2
Single Table CSV, Single and Multi-Table SQL
Export private messages
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Lo-Fi View
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
remove XenForo remove MyBB remove Vanilla remove phpBB remove vBulletin