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Paid vs. Free Forum Software
Posted by admin | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on 03-04-2008
I would recommend that people just starting out with forums use a free forum software. That way if you decide that you don’t want to use forums, it won’t be a waste of your money. For my own forum I have decided to use phpBB3 due to having a low budget. Again, I recommend anyone who has a low budget go with free forum software. The top two free forum softwares that are well known are phpBB and SMF (Simple Machines Forum). There are a number of free forum hosting websites that offer phpBB or SMF. I will be discussing these at a later date.
Paid forum softwares are good too. They are more likely to have more features, and are highly customizable. The top two paid forum softwares that I would recommend are vBulletin and IPB. Many professional websites use vBulletin, and there are currently no free hosting for this software. IPB (Invision Power Board), is also a well known paid forum software which unlike vBulletin, is offered for free by many free forum hosting websites.
All things considered, it comes down to the forum owners choice. My recommendation would be to go with either SMF or phpBB. Although, it does take a bit more work to customize and maintain, it won’t drain your finances and you would have some extra money in your budget.
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