XenForo vs. phpBB vs. Vanilla vs. vBulletin vs. SMF

General XenForo phpBB Vanilla vBulletin SMF
Version
1.5.2
3.0.8
2.6.4
4.1.5
2.0.6
Release Date
2015-10-19 (8 years ago)
2010-11-19 (13 years ago)
2018-10-28 (5 years ago)
2011-07-26 (12 years ago)
2013-10-21 (10 years ago)
Last Update here
2015-11-15 (8 years ago)
2011-06-22 (12 years ago)
2018-11-01 (5 years ago)
2011-08-25 (12 years ago)
2013-10-25 (10 years ago)
Author
XenForo Ltd
The phpBB Group
Vanilla Forums Inc
vBulletin Solutions
Simple Machines
URL
Free and Open Source
No
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
License
commercial / visible source
General Public License
GPL
commercial / visible source
BSD
License cost
$140
0.00
0
$285 Suite or $195 Forum
0
Main View
Both, can be configured
Thread-Type
Flat
Flat
Flat
Threaded or Flat
Flat
Setup XenForo phpBB Vanilla vBulletin SMF
Installation method
wizard
wizard
wizard
wizard
wizard
Upgrade method
wizard
wizard with manual interactions
manual
wizard with manual interactions
wizard
Hosting available
No
No
Yes
No
No
Technology XenForo phpBB Vanilla vBulletin SMF
Programming Language
PHP
PHP
PHP
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
1
MySQL Database
3
MySQL Database, PostgreSQL Database, SQLite File Database
Other Storage
Source Code Repo
Issue Tracker
Posts XenForo phpBB Vanilla vBulletin SMF
BBCode
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
HTML
No
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Emoticons
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Formatting Toolbar
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
WYSIWYG Editor
Yes
No
Plugin
Yes
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 phpBB Vanilla vBulletin SMF
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
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Anti-Spam and Security XenForo phpBB Vanilla vBulletin SMF
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
Plugin-based CAPTCHA system, Newly Registered Users permissions
Community Curation & SPAM removal
Akismet
An Akismet mod is available
Notification XenForo phpBB Vanilla vBulletin SMF
RSS/ATOM
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
E-Mail
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Instant Messaging
No
Jabber
Bookmarks
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Community XenForo phpBB Vanilla vBulletin SMF
Avatars
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
User Ranks
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Rating/Karma System
Yes
Patch
Yes
Yes
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 phpBB Vanilla vBulletin SMF
Moderators
global and forums
global and forums
global, forums and threads
global and forums
global, forums and threads
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
Plugin
Search XenForo phpBB Vanilla vBulletin SMF
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 phpBB Vanilla vBulletin SMF
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
Plugin
Skin-Editor
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Smiley Packs
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Plugins
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Special Features XenForo phpBB Vanilla vBulletin SMF
Statistics
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Polls
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Calendar
No
No
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Friendly URLs
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Data Management XenForo phpBB Vanilla vBulletin SMF
Available Importers
All platforms use: https://open.vanillaforums.com/addon/porter-core
Pruning
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Archiving
No
No
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Export Formats
NA
SQL Dumps in .sql, sql.gz, and .sql.bz2
Proprietary or MySQLDump
Single Table CSV, Single and Multi-Table SQL
WAP(2), IMode
Export private messages
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Lo-Fi View
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
remove XenForo remove phpBB remove Vanilla remove vBulletin remove SMF