XMB vs. phpBB vs. SMF vs. vBulletin vs. bbPress vs. Beehive Forum vs. FUDforum vs. Invision Power Board vs. MyBB vs. Phorum vs. Vanilla vs. XenForo

General XMB phpBB SMF vBulletin bbPress Beehive Forum FUDforum Invision Power Board MyBB Phorum Vanilla XenForo
Version
1.9.11
3.0.8
2.0.6
4.1.5
0.9.0.4
1.4.7
3.0.9
3.2.3
1.6.3
5.2.9a
2.6.4
1.5.2
Release Date
Febuary 28, 2009
2010-11-19 (13 years ago)
2013-10-21 (10 years ago)
2011-07-26 (12 years ago)
2009-01-02 (15 years ago)
2015-06-03 (8 years ago)
2018-05-17 (5 years ago)
2011-10-17 (12 years ago)
2011-04-16 (12 years ago)
2008-10-12 (15 years ago)
2018-10-28 (5 years ago)
2015-10-19 (8 years ago)
Last Update here
2012-03-02 (12 years ago)
2011-06-22 (12 years ago)
2013-10-25 (10 years ago)
2011-08-25 (12 years ago)
2009-03-11 (15 years ago)
2016-02-08 (8 years ago)
2018-11-01 (5 years ago)
2012-02-07 (12 years ago)
2011-06-22 (12 years ago)
2008-10-16 (15 years ago)
2018-11-01 (5 years ago)
2015-11-15 (8 years ago)
Author
The XMB Group
The phpBB Group
Simple Machines
vBulletin Solutions
bbpress.org
Matt Beale, Mark Rendle
The FUDForum development team and user community.
Invision Power Services
MyBB Group
Phorum Dev Team
Vanilla Forums Inc
XenForo Ltd
URL
Free and Open Source
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
License
General Public License
General Public License
BSD
commercial / visible source
GPL2
GPL
GNU General Public License
Commercial
Custom
The Phorum License (BSD)
GPL
commercial / visible source
License cost
0.00
0.00
0
$285 Suite or $195 Forum
0
0
Free
License from $175 / Hosted from $5 per month
US$0
0
0
$140
Main View
Classic forum list
Both, can be configured
Thread-Type
Flat
Flat
Flat
Threaded or Flat
Flat
Threaded or Flat
Threaded or Flat
Flat
Threaded or Flat
Threaded or Flat
Flat
Flat
Setup XMB phpBB SMF vBulletin bbPress Beehive Forum FUDforum Invision Power Board MyBB Phorum Vanilla XenForo
Installation method
wizard
wizard
wizard
wizard
wizard
wizard
wizard
wizard
wizard
wizard
wizard
wizard
Upgrade method
wizard
wizard with manual interactions
wizard
wizard with manual interactions
wizard
wizard
wizard
wizard
wizard
wizard
manual
wizard
Hosting available
No
No
No
No
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
No
Yes
No
Technology XMB phpBB SMF vBulletin bbPress Beehive Forum FUDforum Invision Power Board MyBB Phorum Vanilla XenForo
Programming Language
php
PHP
PHP
PHP
PHP
PHP
PHP
PHP 5.2+
PHP
PHP
PHP
PHP
UTF-8 Support
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
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
3
MySQL Database, PostgreSQL Database, SQLite File Database
1
MySQL Database
1
MySQL Database
1
MySQL Database
7
DB2 Database, 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
2
MySQL Database, PostgreSQL Database
1
MySQL Database
1
MySQL Database
Other Storage
Source Code Repo
Issue Tracker
Posts XMB phpBB SMF vBulletin bbPress Beehive Forum FUDforum Invision Power Board MyBB Phorum Vanilla XenForo
BBCode
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Optional
Plugin
Yes
HTML
Optional
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Optional
Yes
No
Emoticons
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Optional
Plugin
Yes
Formatting Toolbar
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Optional
Plugin
Yes
WYSIWYG Editor
No
No
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Quoting
Nested
Nested
Nested
Nested
Nested
Nested
Nested
Nested
Nested
Nested
Single
Single
Syntax Highlighting
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Attachments
Multiple files
Multiple files
Multiple files
Multiple files
Multiple files
Multiple files
Multiple files
Multiple files
Multiple files
Multiple files
Multiple files
Multiple files
Tags
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
Yes
Unknown
Mark as solved
No
A particular post can highlighted as accepted answer
Forums XMB phpBB SMF vBulletin bbPress Beehive Forum FUDforum Invision Power Board MyBB Phorum Vanilla XenForo
Categories
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Subforums
one level
unlimited
unlimited
unlimited
unlimited
unlimited
unlimited
unlimited
multiple levels
unlimited
unlimited
Last Post
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Redirect Forums
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Trashcan Forum
No
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Optional
Yes
Yes
Plugin
No
Yes
No
Anti-Spam and Security XMB phpBB SMF vBulletin bbPress Beehive Forum FUDforum Invision Power Board MyBB Phorum Vanilla XenForo
CAPTCHA
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Optional
Yes
Yes
Yes
Optional
Yes
Yes
Groups
Multiple groups
Multiple groups
Multiple groups
Multiple groups
One group only
Multiple groups
Multiple groups
Multiple groups
Multiple groups
Multiple groups
Multiple groups
Multiple groups
Flood Control
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
ACLs
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Blacklist
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Warnings
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Unknown
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Suspension
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Bans
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
IP-Block
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Audit Logging
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Optional
Yes
Yes
User Reports
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Other
Plugin-based CAPTCHA system, Newly Registered Users permissions
An Akismet mod is available
Akismet
Worming, Pilllorying
Several others like SpamBot detection, prevent new users from posting links, etc.
Spam Monitoring Service, Flag As Spammer, Question & Answer System
Akismet plugin available.
Aksimet Plugin
Community Curation & SPAM removal
Advanced Spam Manager "Spam Cleaner", Questions and Answer System
Notification XMB phpBB SMF vBulletin bbPress Beehive Forum FUDforum Invision Power Board MyBB Phorum Vanilla XenForo
RSS/ATOM
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
E-Mail
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Instant Messaging
Jabber
Plugin
Yes
Yes - via ICQ, AIM, Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, Jabber, Google Chat or Skype.
No
0
No
Bookmarks
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Community XMB phpBB SMF vBulletin bbPress Beehive Forum FUDforum Invision Power Board MyBB Phorum Vanilla XenForo
Avatars
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
User Ranks
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Rating/Karma System
Plugin
Patch
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Signatures
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Users Online List
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Private Messaging
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Custom profile fields
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Optional
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Moderation XMB phpBB SMF vBulletin bbPress Beehive Forum FUDforum Invision Power Board MyBB Phorum Vanilla XenForo
Moderators
global and forums
global and forums
global, forums and threads
global and forums
global
global, forums and threads
global and forums
global and forums
global and forums
global and forums
global, forums and threads
global and forums
Move Threads
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Split Threads
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Close Threads
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Shadow Topics
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Unknown
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Sticky Threads
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Important Threads
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Search XMB phpBB SMF vBulletin bbPress Beehive Forum FUDforum Invision Power Board MyBB Phorum Vanilla XenForo
Full-text search
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Author search
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Advanced search
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Unread Topics
Session tracked
Database tracked
Database tracked
Database tracked
Database tracked
Database tracked
Database tracked
Database tracked
Database tracked
Database tracked
Database tracked
Customization XMB phpBB SMF vBulletin bbPress Beehive Forum FUDforum Invision Power Board MyBB Phorum Vanilla XenForo
Languages
0
0
0
0
0
0
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
0
Mobile View
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
Yes
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
Yes
Unknown
Templates
global and forum specific
global and forum specific
global and forum specific
global and forum specific
global
CSS only
global
global and forum specific
global and forum specific
global and forum specific
global and forum specific
global and forum specific
Custom BBCodes
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
No
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Skin-Editor
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Plugin
Yes
Smiley Packs
Optional
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Patch
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Plugins
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Special Features XMB phpBB SMF vBulletin bbPress Beehive Forum FUDforum Invision Power Board MyBB Phorum Vanilla XenForo
Statistics
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Polls
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Calendar
Plugin
No
Yes
Yes
No
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Plugin
No
Friendly URLs
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Data Management XMB phpBB SMF vBulletin bbPress Beehive Forum FUDforum Invision Power Board MyBB Phorum Vanilla XenForo
Available Importers
All platforms use: https://open.vanillaforums.com/addon/porter-core
Pruning
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
No
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Archiving
No
No
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Unknown
Optional
Yes
No
No
Yes
No
Export Formats
SQL Dumps in .sql, sql.gz, and .sql.bz2
WAP(2), IMode
Single Table CSV, Single and Multi-Table SQL
BBXF
PDF (Adobe), ATOM, RSS, RDF, HTML
SQL
Proprietary or MySQLDump
NA
Export private messages
No
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
No
Lo-Fi View
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Optional
Yes
Yes
Optional
Yes
No
remove XMB remove phpBB remove SMF remove vBulletin remove bbPress remove Beehive Forum remove FUDforum remove Invision Power Board remove MyBB remove Phorum remove Vanilla remove XenForo