XenForo vs. Vanilla vs. phpBB vs. vBulletin vs. Beehive Forum

General XenForo Vanilla phpBB vBulletin Beehive Forum
Version
1.5.2
2.6.4
3.0.8
4.1.5
1.4.7
Release Date
2015-10-19 (8 years ago)
2018-10-28 (5 years ago)
2010-11-19 (13 years ago)
2011-07-26 (12 years ago)
2015-06-03 (8 years ago)
Last Update here
2015-11-15 (8 years ago)
2018-11-01 (5 years ago)
2011-06-22 (12 years ago)
2011-08-25 (12 years ago)
2016-02-08 (8 years ago)
Author
XenForo Ltd
Vanilla Forums Inc
The phpBB Group
vBulletin Solutions
Matt Beale, Mark Rendle
URL
Free and Open Source
No
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
License
commercial / visible source
GPL
General Public License
commercial / visible source
GPL
License cost
$140
0
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 XenForo Vanilla phpBB vBulletin Beehive Forum
Installation method
wizard
wizard
wizard
wizard
wizard
Upgrade method
wizard
manual
wizard with manual interactions
wizard with manual interactions
wizard
Hosting available
No
Yes
No
No
Yes
Technology XenForo Vanilla phpBB vBulletin Beehive Forum
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
1
MySQL Database
Other Storage
Source Code Repo
Issue Tracker
Posts XenForo Vanilla phpBB vBulletin Beehive Forum
BBCode
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
No
HTML
No
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Emoticons
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Formatting Toolbar
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
WYSIWYG Editor
Yes
Plugin
No
Yes
Yes
Quoting
Single
Single
Nested
Nested
Nested
Syntax Highlighting
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Attachments
Multiple files
Multiple files
Multiple files
Multiple files
Multiple files
Tags
Unknown
Yes
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
Mark as solved
A particular post can highlighted as accepted answer
Forums XenForo Vanilla phpBB vBulletin Beehive Forum
Categories
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Subforums
unlimited
unlimited
unlimited
unlimited
Last Post
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Redirect Forums
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Trashcan Forum
No
Yes
No
Yes
Optional
Anti-Spam and Security XenForo Vanilla phpBB vBulletin Beehive Forum
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
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Unknown
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
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Other
Advanced Spam Manager "Spam Cleaner", Questions and Answer System
Community Curation & SPAM removal
Plugin-based CAPTCHA system, Newly Registered Users permissions
Akismet
Worming, Pilllorying
Notification XenForo Vanilla phpBB vBulletin Beehive Forum
RSS/ATOM
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
E-Mail
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Instant Messaging
No
Jabber
Yes
Bookmarks
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Community XenForo Vanilla phpBB vBulletin Beehive Forum
Avatars
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
User Ranks
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Rating/Karma System
Yes
Yes
Patch
Yes
Yes
Signatures
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Users Online List
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Private Messaging
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Custom profile fields
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Optional
Moderation XenForo Vanilla phpBB vBulletin Beehive Forum
Moderators
global and forums
global, forums and threads
global and forums
global and forums
global, forums and threads
Move Threads
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Split Threads
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Close Threads
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Shadow Topics
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
No
Sticky Threads
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Important Threads
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Search XenForo Vanilla phpBB vBulletin Beehive Forum
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 Vanilla phpBB vBulletin Beehive Forum
Languages
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
0
Mobile View
Unknown
Yes
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
Templates
global and forum specific
global and forum specific
global and forum specific
global and forum specific
CSS only
Custom BBCodes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
No
Skin-Editor
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Smiley Packs
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugins
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Special Features XenForo Vanilla phpBB vBulletin Beehive Forum
Statistics
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Polls
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Calendar
No
Plugin
No
Yes
No
Friendly URLs
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
No
Data Management XenForo Vanilla phpBB vBulletin Beehive Forum
Available Importers
All platforms use: https://open.vanillaforums.com/addon/porter-core
Pruning
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Archiving
No
Yes
No
Yes
Unknown
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 Vanilla remove phpBB remove vBulletin remove Beehive Forum