Answer
Forums & CommunityModern Q&A platform for building knowledge communities
Replaces Stack Overflow, Confluence
Easiest Forums & Community to self-host
19 forums & community apps that are easy to get running, ranked by verified deploy effort, project health, and popularity. 1 have a verified ≈5-minute Docker setup.
Fider
Forums & CommunityOpen platform for collecting and voting on feedback
Replaces Canny, UserVoice
MyBB
Forums & CommunityFree and extensible community forum software
Replaces vBulletin, phpBB
SMF
Forums & CommunitySimple Machines Forum community bulletin board
Replaces vBulletin, phpBB
Lemmy-UI Alternative Photon
Forums & CommunityModern alternative web client for Lemmy instances
Replaces Reddit
Lemmy-Easy-Deploy
Forums & CommunityStreamlined deployment scripts for Lemmy
Replaces Reddit
Question2Answer
Forums & CommunityFree open-source Q&A platform in PHP
Replaces Stack Overflow, Quora
Mouthful
Forums & CommunityLightweight self-hosted commenting engine
Replaces Disqus
Commento
Forums & CommunityPrivacy-friendly embeddable discussion widget
Replaces Disqus, Facebook Comments
giscus
Forums & CommunityCommenting system powered by GitHub Discussions
Replaces Disqus
Flarum Tags Extension
Forums & CommunityOfficial tagging extension for Flarum forums
Replaces vBulletin categories
bbPress
Forums & CommunityLightweight forum software that integrates with WordPress
Replaces phpBB, vBulletin
ElkArte
Forums & CommunityModern, free community forum software
Replaces SMF, phpBB
Utterances
Forums & CommunityComments widget powered by GitHub issues
Replaces Disqus
FluxBB
Forums & CommunityFast, light and user-friendly forum application
Replaces phpBB
Schnack
Forums & CommunityLightweight self-hosted commenting system
Replaces Disqus, Facebook Comments
esoTalk
Forums & CommunitySimple, fast forum software for online discussion
Replaces phpBB, Discourse
PunBB
Forums & CommunityFast and lightweight PHP-powered discussion board
Replaces phpBB
phpBB mChat
Forums & CommunityShoutbox extension for phpBB forums
Replaces vBulletin chatbox
No apps match these filters.
The shortlist at a glance
| App | Deploy effort | Difficulty | Min. RAM | License | ★ Stars |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Answer | ≈5-minute setup | Easy | 512 MB | Apache-2.0 | 15,692 |
| Fider | Under-an-hour setup | Easy | 256 MB | AGPL-3.0 | 4,578 |
| MyBB | Under-an-hour setup | Easy | 256 MB | LGPL-3.0 | 1,243 |
| SMF | Under-an-hour setup | Easy | 256 MB | BSD-3-Clause | 750 |
| Lemmy-UI Alternative Photon | Under-an-hour setup | Easy | 128 MB | AGPL-3.0 | 557 |
| Lemmy-Easy-Deploy | Under-an-hour setup | Easy | 512 MB | MIT | 145 |
| Question2Answer | Under-an-hour setup | Easy | 256 MB | GPL-3.0 | 1,670 |
| Mouthful | Under-an-hour setup | Easy | 64 MB | MIT | 776 |
| Commento | Under-an-hour setup | Easy | 128 MB | MIT | 3,778 |
| giscus | Read-the-docs project | Easy | 64 MB | MIT | 12,154 |