Compare the Top Forum Software in 2025
Forum software is a solution to help organizations, communities, or individuals create, manage, and moderate online discussion boards or forums where users can post content, interact, and engage in conversations. These platforms typically offer features such as user registration, thread creation, topic categorization, private messaging, and moderation tools to ensure a safe and organized space for discussion. Forum software can be highly customizable, allowing administrators to set rules, manage access levels, and integrate with other systems such as blogs or social media. These tools are commonly used for customer support, community building, and niche discussions. Here's a list of the best forum software:
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1
ONLYOFFICE
Ascensio System SIA
ONLYOFFICE is an open-source project that offers cloud-based and self-hosted solutions for business of all sizes. The key product is ONLYOFFICE Docs, a secure office suite that seamlessly integrates into the most popular platforms, e.g. Odoo, Alfresco, Confluence, Pipedrive, Redmine, SuiteCRM and more. When integrated, ONLYOFFICE Docs provides the users of your business app with powerful editors for documents, spreadsheets, presentations, forms and PDFs. The ONLYOFFICE suite makes it possible to collaborate on office files in real time. The built-in AI assistant is compatible with ChatGPT, DeepSeek, Mistral and other AI providers to ensure a flawless editing experience. You can use Docs within ONLYOFFICE DocSpace, a room-based document collaboration platform that allows you to create dedicated spaces where you can assign access permissions and collaborate with your teammates. With DocSpace, you can store, share and co-edit office files, and even interact with third parties. -
2
MyHub Intranet Software
MyHub Intranet Solutions
MyHub is a revolutionary cloud-based intranet solution that provides business various manuals and tools to streamline workflow. Built to be mobile, MyHub offers users the ability to connect and collaborate with entire teams or just a couple of members. With a combo of in-app options to have email, social media, and the tools needed to be efficient, projects move smoother through any processes you design. Admins can give their users the ability to Manage Content, a Discussion Board, File-Cloud-Sharing, and more.Starting Price: $0.73/user/month -
3
Supportbench
Supportbench
Supportbench is a powerful customer service management tool that helps you deliver exceptional customer support. We are razor focused in helping teams that have to support other businesses (B2B) in helping to manage all of the complexities that arise when supporting these high volume environments. Supportbench provides enterprise-level tools that allow mid-sized businesses to help retain more customers, automate more, while saving costs. Features include customizable surveys including NPS and CSAT, seamless integrations to CRMs like Salesforce, real time analytics, built in scheduling tools, knowledge base, support ticketing system, agent and team scorecards, customer success health scoring, adaptive response times and much more. Our reviews SAY IT ALL ..🎤.Starting Price: $35.00/month/user -
4
eXo Platform
eXo Platform
eXo Platform is an open-source digital workplace solutions for growing teams and enterprises, featuring: ✅ Internal Communications ✅ Team Collaboration ✅ Knowledge Management ✅ Productivity and Employee Recognition use cases. eXo stands out by: 👍 its fluid and integrated employe experience, on desktop and mobile 👍 the platform’s ease of use 👍 innovative employee engagement features. eXo Platform is developed on open-source technology and supports open standards. The platform is extensible and interoperable, all services are exposed REST APIs. The platform also offers additional security capabilities, developed in collaboration with highly sensitive clients. With eXo Platform, companies can connect, engage and reward their employees, customers, and partners with its social, engagement and gamification capabilities.Starting Price: $3.00/user/month -
5
ClubExpress
ClubExpress
ClubExpress is a cloud-based club and association management software designed for smaller professional and trade associations (25-5000 members). ClubExpress offers all the tools associations need to manage their members and ensure growth. These include website, blast emailings, discussion forums, blogs, and surveys, membership database, online member signups/renewals/expirations, event calendar & registration, credit-card processing, membership directory, and more. Add-on features include mobile apps, E-Learning, Continuing Education, Point of Sale, Ride Cue sheets and Ride Logs. Our features are perfect for many diverse types of groups, from bicycle clubs, car clubs, booster and school support groups, professional associations and many more. We also include functionality for multi-tier groups and organizations to ensure proper allocation of funds and syndication of content.Starting Price: $0.10/month/user -
6
Joomla!
Joomla!
Joomla! is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) for publishing web content. Over the years Joomla! has won several awards. It is built on a model, view, and controller web application framework that can be used independently of the CMS allows you to build powerful online applications. Joomla! is one of the most popular website software, thanks to its global community of developers and volunteers, who make sure the platform is user friendly, extendable, multilingual, accessible, responsive, search engine optimized and so much more. The definition of a CMS is an application (web-based), that provides capabilities for multiple users with different permission levels to manage (all or a section of) content, data or information of a website project, or intranet application. Managing content refers to creating, editing, archiving, publishing, collaborating on, reporting, and distributing website content, data, and information.Starting Price: Free -
7
Bettermode
Bettermode
Customizable online community platform to connect, engage, and retain users. Bettermode is a cloud-based online community software empowering the new generation of branded communities. Enable your users to discuss and connect under your brand. Users can write articles, ask questions, submit answers, create polls, upvote, comment, and share multiple types of content. Leverage our highly modular community platform, native integrations, widgets, and API to create thriving customer communities. Enjoy the flexibility of premade templates to visually build your unique community. Fully adaptable to your brand guidelines and navigation structure of the primary site or product. Embeddable widgets to add community experience in the customer journey. Extensive API and app store with 20+ Integrations with leading third-party apps (including Zapier).Starting Price: $599 -
8
Disqus
Disqus
The internet's favorite comment plug-in makes it easy for publishers to bring their content to life, fuel colorful discussions, efficiently moderate comments, and build engaged communities. Convert casual readers into regular contributors. Disqus helps publishers capture readers and keep them coming back for more with robust sign-in options, cross-site notifications and more. Audience Analytics provide actionable audience insights, helping publishers to understand their audience, monitor engagement, and optimize content strategy. Turn engagement into revenue with new inventory through Disqus and highly configurable ad serving from top demand partners on your site. Capture readers and keep them coming back for more with robust sign-in options and cross-site notifications. Turn engagement into revenue with new inventory through Disqus and highly configurable ad serving.Starting Price: $0 per month -
9
inSided
inSided
inSided is the leading Community Platform for scaling Customer Success and Support. Reduce your churn rate, deflect calls and tickets and build better products with our Community, Knowledge Base, and In-Product Support products.Starting Price: $900 per month -
10
Discourse
Discourse
Free open source forum software. Engage in searchable discussions with your customers, superfans, and team members. Create a self-service hub of common questions, interesting ideas, and useful discussion. Our automatic trust system lets the whole community help cultivate fruitful conversation. Customize the style, integrate your favorite services, and create the community you need.Starting Price: $100 per month -
11
phpBB
phpBB
phpBB is a free flat-forum bulletin board software solution that can be used to stay in touch with a group of people or can power your entire website. With an extensive database of user-created extensions and styles database containing hundreds of style and image packages to customise your board, you can create a very unique forum in minutes. No other bulletin board software offers a greater complement of features, while maintaining efficiency and ease of use. Best of all, phpBB is completely free. We welcome you to test it for yourself today. If you have any questions please visit our Community Forum where our staff and members of the community will be happy to assist you with anything from configuring the software to modifying the code for individual needs. Learn more about phpBB. -
12
MyBB
MyBB
MyBB is the free and open source forum software powering thousands of engaging, vibrant, and unique communities across the internet. -
13
CODOFORUM
CODOLOGIC
Say good bye to the old, cluttered and cumbersome forum interfaces. Our Forum software has a fresh UI which is simple, clean and impressive with a fast and secure engine underneath. Mobile ready No more separate apps or websites for mobile devices. Codoforum provides a free layout structure that is fully responsive, which can not only spread throughout large screens but also squeeze into tiny devices. Our WYSIWYG shows live preview as you type. It recognizes Markdown as well as BBCode if you are coming from another forum script. Images and other rich content can be easily embedded, files can be attached and code blocks are prettified. Our discussion software integrates with your existing website's login system and it provides name and avatar synchronization too. Now you don't need a separate login for your website and your forum software. It also supports the most popular social logins, reducing the time-to-post and increasing the likelihood of engaging a visitor. -
14
Khoros Community
Khoros
Leverage the power of the crowd to turn your website into a social destination with Khoros Community (formerly Lithium Communities.) A leading online community and customer engagement platform, Khoros Community helps businesses create outstanding digital customer experiences. The platform provides a variety of tools to help businesses increase customer satisfaction and retention. These include forums, blogs, groups, Q&A, tribal knowledge base, ratings and reviews, gamification, value analytics, media, contests, and so much. -
15
Higher Logic Thrive
Higher Logic
Create powerful member experiences quickly and simply with Higher Logic Thrive. An integrated platform that’s designed for associations. Purpose built for associations to create an engaging member experience. Get started fast with out of the box templates. Simplify your technology with one integrated platform. Our platform is designed to increase engagement, loyalty and retention and is scalable and fully responsive to fit the specific needs of your organization. Our platform allows your community to engage and connect with members, customers and volunteers, find answers to burning questions, share best practices, insights, issues and relevant content at any time, on any device. Join the Higher Logic movement of over 350,000 successful communities with over 25,000,000 community members around the world. -
16
Activity Forum
Activity Forum
ActivityForum is a web-based service for clubs, societies, and social groups to maintain their list memberships and run events. You can keep an accurate register of your members, control your subscriptions and renewals, organise and publicise events and activities. ActivityForum is secure and easy to use, it provides the tools that allow your members to keep in touch with each other, as well as your group's activities. ActivityForum provides the environment where volunteer members come together to organise and promote events, select teams and communicate more effectively using the integrated target mailing, event management and forum systems. ActivityForum is internet based and shares the burden associated with running a club, society or community. -
17
OpenWeb
OpenWeb
Unleash Your Community with OpenWeb (formerly Spot.IM). Your top users drive your business. Our complete Community Platform helps you build, segment and monetize your core audience. Recirculating traffic and engaging users automatically translates into pageviews. Areas with user-generated content become monetizeable with advertising. Forget Comments and say hello to our "Conversation". Powered by real-time elements, our Conversation is the lightest in the industry, supports rich-media & emojies and is SEO friendly. User engagement creates data. From sentiment analysis to defining custom audiences, we help you monetize your community. Reduce your human moderation efforts with high-quality, brand-safe conversations. Our machine-learning moderation technology, removes illicit comments, spam and seamlessly integrates with leading security technologies. Identify your core audiences and allow them to connect amongst themselves, with key contributors -
18
Drupal
Drupal
We're the leading open-source CMS for ambitious digital experiences that reach your audience across multiple channels. Because we all have different needs, Drupal allows you to create a unique space in a world of cookie-cutter solutions. Drupal is the open-source platform of choice for media and publishing. Create engaging multi-channel experiences to connect with your audiences - everywhere. Top-notch security thanks to robust architecture and dedicated security team. Strong community support ensures regular updates and ongoing innovation. API-first with a rich theme ecosystem and integration capacities.Starting Price: Free -
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Chaordix Community Platform
Chaordix
The Chaordix Community Platform hosts communities for the world's top brands, connecting them with their customers, members, users or employees. Our Community Platform is a white label SaaS solution that connects your brand with the people who mean the most to you, so you can create, discuss & learn. - Engage community members with a stream of activities & content. - Customizable, ever-expanding profiles facilitate discovery & reporting - Run challenges to gather ideas, review submissions, and put them to a vote. - Build groups manually or automatically using detailed criteria. - Connect with customers, engendering brand loyalty and boosting advocacy. - Access an on-demand high-quality group of engaged fans and customers for research. -
20
Crowdstack
Crowdstack, Inc.
Crowdstack Pro is a hosted (SaaS) community and membership platform designed to help engage, retain and grow audiences. Site owners have complete control of their data. Crowdstack includes content feeds, direct messaging, moderation tools, member management/directory, automated rules, gamification, and permissions by role. There is also a turnkey Premium Member ship service where site owners can earn revenue. Everything needed to run an online community. Easily collaborate and communicate with fans, volunteers, constituents, customers, employees, and influencers. Bring everyone together in a public or private (or mixed) space with forums, blogs, photos, videos,Starting Price: $49 -
21
Jostle
Jostle Corporation
Jostle’s employee success platform is where everyone connects, communicates, and celebrates at work. It’s the heartbeat of our own company and has helped employees in over 1,000 organizations easily belong and contribute, anywhere, anytime. With industry-leading participation rates, we’re putting the joy into work and the life into organizations. Everyone wants to accomplish things at work. To feel the joy that comes from belonging to a vibrant culture and knowing that your contributions matter. Yet lots of employees never get to experience that joy. Time and time again, frustrations and disconnects block them from being successful. That’s not something the Jostlers were prepared to put up with. We’ve seen the impact that helping people feel successful brings. How it helps people want to stick around and contribute even more. So we created a platform that helps organizations make each and every employee successful.Starting Price: $10.00 per month per user -
22
Answerbase
Lumin Creative
Launch your own Q&A platform in minutes with Answerbase. Answerbase is a powerful Q&A knowledge sharing platform online communities, customer support, and ecommerce. With Answerbase, businesses can allow their users to ask questions, receive answers, and discover relevant content to get the information they need about certain products and services. The system supports a wide range of tools includeing, Q&A widgets and widget builders, content moderation and management tools, categorization and tagging, insights and analytics, and more.Starting Price: $19.00/month -
23
The Hub
Pancentric Digital
Rethink your intranet with HUB and experience a smarter, greener way of working! HUB transforms your organization by uniting resources, streamlining communication, and empowering your team to achieve more. Say goodbye to clunky directories and overloaded inboxes—HUB is your secure, intuitive, all-in-one digital workplace. With HUB, you can streamline processes, making project management and content sharing effortless. Deliver targeted communications to the right people at the right time, and create personalized experiences with custom content and branding tailored to your teams. All your tools and resources come together in one seamless platform that’s easy to use and manage. Designed for SMEs, HUB offers an all-in-one feature package at a budget-friendly price with no hidden costs—just incredible value. And as the first eco-conscious intranet, HUB uses low-carbon servers and supports reforestation projects, helping you work smarter while supporting the planet.Starting Price: £6.67 per user per month -
24
Disciple
Disciple Media
Take control of your community with a Disciple app. Get your own fully branded, independent and profitable social app – on iOS and Android. with the added benefit of being able to sell courses, charge subscriptions, live stream and so much more. Benefits: Your beautiful brand, on every device Let your community reflect your identity! Use your logos and colours. You are the leader! Customise your members journey Give your members what they want, right on time with a Newsfeed that’s optimised for every device. Reach your members with one tap Reach your members directly in real time via Livesteams, Broadcasts, Direct Messaging, Push Notifications, Polls and more. Fully tailored content library Finally, now all of your content and tools are seamlessly accessible from one central place. Make money doing what you love Turn your passion into profit with subscriptions, in-app purchases, sponsorships and more.Starting Price: $55/month -
25
Gluu
Gluu
Encourage team collaboration and improve business processes with Gluu, the process success platform. With Gluu, businesses can take advantage of three products in one integrated platform, which lets them make any process or task easy to understand, execute, and improve. Gluu can be used for business improvement initiatives, including compliance and auditing, knowledge sharing, risk management, continuous improvement, and systems implementation.Starting Price: $5.00/month/user -
26
KronoDesk
Inflectra
KronoDesk is a cloud-based customer support platform that is suitable for businesses of all sizes. With KronoDesk, users can gain access to desk ticketing, a online knowledge database, and customer support forums. KronoDesk allows businesses to receive customer queries and send them to relevant knowledge base articles. KronoDesk is accessible via mobile devices or a desktop computer and installable on the users' servers or the cloud.Starting Price: $19.99/month/user -
27
ONEsite
ONEsite
Custom White Label Social Networking Software. Activity Feed, Events, Groups, Commenting, Liking, Sharing, Forums, Blogs, Photos, Videos, Single Sign On and much more. Trusted by the New York Yankees, and Chelsea Soccer Club. Unmatched support, up-time (99.99%) and professional services. Add categories, sub-forums and threads. Includes social sharing features, rating and ability to discuss content. Network actions earn users points. Network created catalog allows users to spend points or achieve ranks. Modern chat experience blended with integrated forums, comments plus archiving. Integrated as a widget or page. Create custom widgetized polls with multiple voting and results options. Member can send messages to other users on site, manage actions, friendship requests and broadcasts. Provide an outlet to allow users and the network to ask and answer questions.Starting Price: $500 per month -
28
Twine
Twine
Helping fast growing companies bring their workplaces together. Twine is comms tool for the modern workplace. Bringing your people, content and ideas together in one place with apps such as a Knowledge, News & Broadcast, Wellbeing, People Directory, Team boards, Connected Search and more. These play nicely with your existing systems too: sign-on using Okta and Active Directory, pull in files from Dropbox, Google and Box, and much more. It's all built on a modular basis, so you can pick and choose the features you need and start building your ideal digital workplace. Check out the promo video here: https://www.twineapp.com/feature-videoStarting Price: $6.00/month/user -
29
Zapnito
Zapnito
Zapnito is the community platform built for personalized knowledge sharing. Maximize customer lifetime value by connecting customers to trusted knowledge and people — at the right time. With Zapnito, you can build a custom branded community platform and host discussions, content, courses, events and more – under one domain. To ensure your community’s long-term success – engagement dashboards help drive ROI, and our team of UK-based experts provide essential strategic guidance. Since 2015, Zapnito has helped industry leading B2B brands to transform millions of customers into community participants – making us the perfect technology partner to power community-led growth. In addition to providing a leading online community platform, Zapnito also offers expert strategic support and the Zapnito Community brings together 500+ community leaders to learn, share and connect.Starting Price: £1,100 p/m -
30
NodeBB
NodeBB
NodeBB is modern forum software. It is highly customizable, and combines all the advantages of today's mobile and social web with the deep community engagement of classic Internet bulletin boards. Built on the high-performance Node.js platform, NodeBB can scale to power the largest and most active brand communities.Starting Price: $250.00/month -
31
Open Social
Open Social
Open Social is a purpose-built community engagement platform. Developed on top of a powerful open-source Drupal technology framework, Open Social allows organizations to create a central online hub for their members. Open Social allows easy communication, group formation, content collaboration, event creation, social interaction and seamless sharing of ideas, experiences, expertise and more. A community is much more than just a group of people in the same place or space. A community is made up of members who connect and come together around a shared identity, interest, passion, project or purpose. Open Social specializes in creating highly engaging online community platforms. We tailor every platform to the unique needs of each organization, making sure we help you serve your member needs and reach your shared goals. Those needs and goals are different for each organization. It all depends on what type of community you are!Starting Price: $0 per month -
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Zendesk Gather
Zendesk
Zendesk Gather provides a community forum for customers to connect and collaborate. Sometimes customers just want a place to talk. And it doesn’t always have to be with you. Think about it—your customers use your products every day, and their expertise can come in handy. All you have to do is open the door so they can swap knowledge—and you can still provide support when they need it. Zendesk Gather is community forum software that makes it all happen by creating a space for customers to collaborate with your business and each other. With Gather, the trusted support your customers seek doesn’t always have to come from your team. Build a place where they can lean on each other for help. Let your customers share ideas, give feedback, and exchange their own tips and tricks. And if complex issues come up, loop in your agents, so conversations flow and remain productive.Starting Price: $9 per agent per month -
33
Honeycommb
Honeycommb
Connect your people. Launch a beautiful social network you own and control in no time and no code. Yes, "For real." Used by Lady Gaga, University of Michigan, Red Wing Shoes, and hundreds more. From storage and security to the more than 20 unique services we use to run your feature-rich community, we handle every last "byte." Native iOS, Android, and web applications, beautifully designed & built, continuously improved & maintained 24/7/365.Starting Price: $300 per month -
34
ProBoards
ProBoards
Simple, fast, easy to use, and fun these are words commonly used to describe ProBoards' free forum hosting service. Whether you're new to message boards or an experienced moderator, we invite you to review our features and start your new ProBoards forum today. Creating a new forum takes less than 30 seconds and immediately after that you can begin inviting your friends and colleagues to browse your new forum and start discussing topics! If you have questions or need help, our Support Forum community is the best in the business. Join the over 16 million monthly visitors on the Internet's largest, most enjoyed free forum hosting service. We offer additional premium forum options including the ability to use your own custom domain name, remove advertising from your forum, and the ability to change your forum URL.Starting Price: $49.99 per month -
35
Nabble
Nabble
All Nabble apps are naturally embeddable, which means that they can be easily displayed on any web page. All Nabble apps are built with NAML, a scripting language that gives you full control over the app pages. We can help with technical questions related to your Nabble apps, embedding, customizations, NAML language, bugs, and other issues. From now on Nabble users can switch from HTTP to HTTPS protocol. Nabble wants to improve public discussions on the web and provide useful embeddable applications to end-users. This includes forums, user groups, message boards, photo galleries, newspapers, blogs, etc. There are many vibrant discussions in these places, and so are problems such as cluttered UI, broken search, moderation, and cataloging. Nabble wants to be a place where your discussion can grow and be free of these problems. Nabble is absolutely free and will remain free to the users. This includes the end users and webmasters.Starting Price: Free -
36
Flarum
Flarum
The community framework for small to enterprise communities that is extensible, scalable, and completely free. Regardless of the size of your community, Flarum excels on every level. Building on top of the Flarum core experience with extensions allows you to customize your community to your needs. Permission groups allow easy configuration of permissions and members. Granting access to categories, but also defining global and category-limited actions like moderation, flagging, and much more. Whether you prefer a simple, bbcode/Markdown editor for typing or need a full-fledged WYSIWYG editor for your users, Flarum works with either of those. Increase engagement with your users using notifications in-browser, through email, or various other channels. Installing a WebSocket extension allows snappy interactivity to your community with real-time updates. Flarum is open source so anyone can install it anywhere, even on a shared hosting plan.Starting Price: Free -
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Kunena
The Kunena Project
Kunena is a free, fully integrated forum extension for Joomla that requires no bridges or hacks. Kunena offers easy customization through template overrides and the Hierarchical Model-View-Controller (HMVC) design pattern, allowing developers to tailor the forum's appearance and functionality to their needs. Optimized for performance, Kunena delivers faster loading times, especially when running on PHP 7, resulting in a 200-300% speed increase. It is designed with minimal requirements, is compatible with most web hosting providers, and supports various web servers, including Apache, Nginx, LiteSpeed, and IIS. Kunena continues to evolve, with a dedicated team of volunteers committed to providing a reliable, scalable, and robust forum solution for the Joomla community. Starting Price: Free -
38
Muut
Muut
The complete discussion system for your site. Muut powers lively discussions for millions of sites, making users happier and more likely to return. The fastest and simplest forums out there. For blogs, galleries, news… Make anything commentable. Private discussions anywhere on the site.Starting Price: $16 per month -
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PlushForums
Plush Content
With the most polished, user-friendly forum software ever. The easy way to build a great community. A perfectly integrated blog, private messaging, member directory, custom profiles, events, paid subscriptions and a polished set of forum features. All with absolutely no technical knowledge required and no plugins to install. Live notifications mean they won't miss a chance to get involved. And an intuitive feedback system promotes positive participation. Real-time discussions keep your users engaged and the conversation flowing. Every page is carefully designed to connect users with the information they need. The result is a beautiful site that feels natural to navigate, and effortless to brand. A world-class mobile experience, without yet another app to install. PlushForums looks great and loads quickly on smartphones, with no compromise on features. Easily add images, videos, tweets, polls, smart quotes, hashtags, emojis and rich text.Starting Price: $49 per month -
40
UNA.io
BoonEx
Take the lead - build your own community. UNA is a full-stack software platform for building custom community websites, social networks and collaboration hubs. Create a free account to try UNA in action; launch your community on UNA Cloud; access downloads for self-hosted sites and connect with fellow webmasters. From idea to thriving community - we help to design, implement, launch and maintain your unique multi-user website. Book a demo call to discuss how we can help with your project. All the tools and features you’ll ever need to realize even the most extraordinary social website idea. Use your logo, images, styles, texts and domain name. You fully control and own the site data - no strings attached. Grow big with multiple cache engines, custom storage engine, media transcoders and external storage support. Change navigation, pages, permissions, texts, forms, design and layout via UNA Studio. No coding required.Starting Price: $50 per month -
41
Salesforce Experience Cloud
Salesforce
Build customer journeys on a powerful digital experience platform. Create secure websites, portals, and apps with connected data — fast. Discover the experience platform that drives customer relationships and revenue. Pre-built apps. Drag-and-drop tools. Low-code web tools to help you grow. Empower your team to quickly iterate and build secure, engaging digital experiences with prebuilt apps and low-code web tools. Deliver personalized content with connected data and AI-driven processes. Build stronger relationships with a single source of truth. Unite your teams and give your customers a clear path forward. Deliver seamless journeys across sales, service, marketing, commerce, and more. Help customers find answers themselves, on their own terms and time frame. Whether you need a knowledge base, a self-service portal, or a forum, we’ve got you covered.Starting Price: $250 per month -
42
Dokit
Dokit
The Dokit manual software empowers you to create, share and track visual step-by-step instructions, user guides and best practices that fit any screen and device. Dokit includes features such as Cataloging/Categorization, collaboration, Page templates, Visual editor, Drag & Drop, Media Gallery, Image annotation, Multilingual, Document importation, Approval workflow, Notifications, Forum and Comments. Alternative competitor software options to Dokit include Dozuki, Swipeguide, Speachme and StepShotStarting Price: 60€/month -
43
Lernit
Lernit
Revolutionize your teaching process. Train your clients | with Lernit LXP. Stay ahead of the curve by optimizing your training processes, maximizing the potential of your work team. Boost learning and increase retention in your organization, using our Lernit LXP platform, the modern LMS. Add your logo, institutional colors, competitions and integrate it with Google Drive, Zoom, Skype and many more. Focused on user experience; the platform is friendly, interactive, intuitive and is available through any device. Share ideas and stay in touch with your collaborators, through forums, social walls, chats, and other social tools.Starting Price: $54 per user per month -
44
FluxBB
FluxBB
FluxBB is fast, light, user-friendly forum software for your website. FluxBB is designed as a lighter, faster alternative to some of the traditional feature heavy forum applications. It is easy to use and has a proven track record of stability and security making it an ideal choice of forum for your website. FluxBB is a fork of PunBB, which was created by Rickard Andersson. In 2007, PunBB was sold to a commercial company. Development continued under the direction of Rickard until April 2008. At that time, Rickard announced he would be ceasing his active involvement with the project. In light of the changed circumstances the remaining members of the development team decided they needed to exert more control over the direction of the project which meant the only option was to fork the project; that is when FluxBB was born. -
45
HospitalPORTAL
HospitalPORTAL
HospitalPORTAL is a healthcare intranets and policy management solution that is suitable for all types and sizes of clinics, hospitals, and other healthcare related organizations. With HospitalPORTAL, users are able to improve internal staff communications and collaboration. HospitalPORTAL features include document management, automated reviews, approval workflows, and notifications. HospitalPORTAL features a content management system (CMS) that enables users to make simple content editing and publishing. HospitalPORTAL users are also able to connect via chat, forums, message boards, and blogs with commenting features. -
46
AnswerHub
AnswerHub
Connecting the world’s software teams one business at a time is the mission of AnswerHub. If you are like most businesses, digital innovation is key to your success. Leaders like you must be concerned with capturing your team’s collective knowledge/expertise, increasing your team’s productivity, eliminating redundant work, and accelerating new technology adoption. Keeping your software development and technical teams productive and happy is challenging on many levels. Wouldn’t it be great if you had an enterprise class, fully configurable platform that would give your employees and your customers the information they need when they need it to be productive, engaged, and motivated? The AnswerHub platform is purpose-built to capture, curate, and distribute your software and technical team’s expertise, insights, and knowledge on a global basis for organizational consumption, eliminating unnecessary noise, and enabling your local and distributed teams to focus on business outcomes. -
47
Memeni
Memeni
Memeni offers a full suite of engagement and growth tools to help brands and businesses grow their community. With Memeni, a powerful community and customer engagement platform, companies can launch their own mobile app and community. This allows brands to understand their target audience better, collect important customer data and analytics, and develop new opportunities for brand growth. -
48
crowd-creation
crowd-creation
Create your own social network with Open Social - perfectly tailored to your needs: for employees of your company, for members of associations and organizations or for customer networks. Open Social offers you a platform that promotes community dialogue, enables easy knowledge sharing and facilitates collaboration. Open Social is a flexible coworking platform based on open source technology, which has been tested in more than 1,000 active installations. The participants can contact each other via private messages. Social interaction takes place through comments and reactions via the platform. Participants can manage personal information and easily personalize their community experience. Community members can create, manage and share information in a variety of ways. In groups and events, participants can work towards and achieve common goals. The community members are regularly informed about specific activities.Starting Price: $9400.00/year -
49
Crowded
Crowded
With Crowded, you can gather all your content & discussions in one friendly, modern and easy to use platform. Combine over 20 different modules to create an experience your members will love. Create a place for like-minded individuals to connect, share and curate knowledge. Create an environment that connects people, and increases visibility for your brand and your community members. Build a valuable source of industry information curated by your community, organized in neat information flows. Engage your members by share inspiring ideas, thought-provoking articles and must-see events in your community. Let experts in your community write and publish blog articles to inspire your members with engaging and thought-provoking content. List all the relevant events in your community and encourage members to build strong connections offline.Starting Price: €799 per month -
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DocMatter
DocMatter
DocMatter brings the knowledge of the medical community to your fingertips. Explore the new paradigm of learning and sharing information through the first global knowledge and discussion forum for medical professionals. Expand your information base by leveraging the collective experience of your peers, along with other thought leaders from top institutions and practices around the world. And increase your visibility in the community by contributing to ongoing discussions and beginning new ones. Secure Exchange of Information You Care About. DocMatter fosters the dynamic, secure exchange of information among health care professionals--from clinical discussions to industry innovations to evolving guidelines to any topic you propose--and enables you to compile a unique discussion stream to focus on high value conversations. You control your profile, connections and level of interaction in the system--and you will not be subjected to advertising. -
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XenForo
XenForo
There is no better platform upon which to grow your community. XenForo is the solution your customers would choose. Engage your customers with the premium community experience. Take advantage of our unrivaled reliability, flexible deployment and data security. Provide a forum where your customers can interact with you. Lighten the load on your support team. Your customers will be reassured that their information is not being sold off to big tech. User-generated content is priceless. Allow it to be easily found again, any time. Yesterday's facts are no less valuable than today's. Discussions on your forum contain a wealth of information. Assemble your content into an invaluable knowledge base for your subject matter. Leverage state-of-the-art software architecture. Create rich integrations and add-on systems to your own specification. -
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Influitive Virtual EventHub
Influitive
The Influitive Virtual EventHub is a fast, easy way to create a live digital event for unlimited attendees. Our highly scalable SaaS platform features industry-leading engagement mechanics based on recognition, rewards, gamification, and content targeting. The Influitive Virtual EventHub is a turnkey managed service for digital events of any size. But there’s no need to learn our software or hire or train staff. In collaboration with your events marketing team, Influitive will design, build and manage your virtual event hub for you. We can get you up and running in no time—and create an unforgettable experience for your attendees. Our robust engagement platform includes targeting, personalization, gamification and rewards features to attract and engage attendees—before, during and after your live event. Our staff will build, customize, and fully manage your virtual event hub. We’ll deploy personalized journeys, surveys, contests, scavenger hunts and more. -
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PunBB
PunBB
PunBB is a fast and lightweight PHP-powered discussion board. It is released under the GNU General Public License. Its primary goals are to be faster, smaller, and less graphically intensive as compared to other discussion boards. PunBB has fewer features than many other discussion boards, but is generally faster and outputs smaller, semantically correct XHTML-compliant pages. PunBB is written in PHP and thus requires the PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor. PunBB also requires a database for storing forum data. For that purpose, PunBB supports MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQLite. Some features that I have so far chosen not to implement are private messaging, file attachments, polls, linking to off-site avatars, advanced text formatting controls, subforums, etc. The jury is still out on some of these features, but don't expect them to pop up anytime soon. It should however be noted that most, if not all of these features have been realized in the form of third-party mods. -
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Wylo
Wylo
Wylo is an all-in-one, customizable platform that empowers brands, creators, and coaches to build and monetize vibrant, white-labeled communities under their own branding. With powerful features like forums, live events, courses, digital stores, and membership management, Wylo provides everything you need to engage your audience, foster loyalty, and drive growth. Whether you’re a startup, a growing brand, or an enterprise, Wylo allows you to run your community on your terms—paying only for the features you choose. Take full control, own your data, and create experiences your community will love with Wylo.Starting Price: $10/month -
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Insightrix Communities
Insightrix Research
Create inspiring online communities with Insightrix Communities, a leading online community software for brands and organizations looking to co-create with their customers or stakeholders. Insightrix Communities offers market researchers, communicators, and engagement professionals a complete solution to their research and community consultation needs. The platform features robust online community management tools, quantitative research and qualitative research tools, and a best-in-class user experience that is second to none. -
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Higher Logic Vanilla
Vanilla Forums
Vanilla Forums allows you to create an online community that your customers or audience will love. Thousands of companies use our open source and hosted products to increase loyalty, brand advocacy and reduce customer service costs. Vanilla's customers are made of a broad group of organizations from around the world. -
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Howtank
Howtank
Howtank is a social network that brings together brands and their users around common interests with a view to sharing and mutual aid, thus creating a new relationship experience in the brand's territory. We offer a space that allows all at once, the meeting between the brands and their communities, the sharing of the members between them but also with the users of passage on the site of the brand via gateways such as a live chat room and a chat window, and if they want to join the community afterward. These rich and real-time exchanges provoke a movement of natural mutual aid which is freely expressed between the different protagonists and allow the brand to build solid relationships with their users, to better understand their expectations, to share a different brand experience, … in short, to create commitment and put those who are its first prescribers at the heart of their development. -
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vBulletin
vBulletin Solutions
With vBulletin Cloud we host your community for you. You get a fully functioning and customizable vBulletin site with all the key admin controls, while we handle the back-end infrastructure for you. Explore vBulletin 5 Connect's revolutionary Site Builder tools for creating a community website in minutes with no programming skill required! Use the drag-and-drop tool to easily lay out pages. Create various content modules that feature specific site content on a page. Test drive the software's in-line editing and other simplified site admin tools. vBulletin 5 Connect provides unparalleled capabilities for building community websites. The software facilitates increased content creation, more engaging content discovery and simplified site management. The new Site Builder makes it easier than ever to build and manage a site. Customizable page templates, drag-and-drop configuration and in-line site editing simplify page layout. A variety of design themes can be easily selected.Starting Price: $14.99 per month -
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CampusGroups
Novalsys
Help your students, staff, alumni and community partners connect, collaborate and be successful. Create custom badges to recognize student for involvement, including memberships, leadership positions, event attendance, etc. Support retention initiatives with dynamic student success profiles. Let members see everyone's badges, points and ranks on the leaderboard. Guide students toward goals, competencies, and established learning outcomes by leading them through co-curricular involvement tracks. CampusGroups Tracks display clear & transparent program expectations and progress, connecting students to enriching outside-the-classroom experiences to earn credit for the requirements you set for them. Give advisors and student success staff centralized insight into students' involvement and engagement outside the classroom. -
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CommUnity
Personify
Tap into your community’s evolving needs in a secure and collaborative online space that’s exclusively for your members. An online community is a dedicated space for members, volunteers, donors, advocates, colleagues, friends, and teammates with common interests to socialize, learn, and plan. It’s the heart of your organization and provides a unique, members-only experience. Connect, communicate, and collaborate with CommUnity, and you’ll always have your finger on the pulse of your members. Empower member-to-member collaboration, communication, and sharing with online communities dedicated to your organization and its purpose and mission. You can also deepen community engagement by allowing rich content (photos, videos, embeds), Q&A, or voting. -
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Viafoura
Viafoura
Viafoura is a digital experience company that helps brands activate their audiences through a suite of engagement and personalization solutions, maximizing conversions of unknown to known users. We work with brands to build direct relationships with their audiences, creating the foundation for a scalable first-party data strategy while reducing dependency on social media. Our suite of engagement and personalization solutions — including real-time conversations, custom polls, community chat, ratings & reviews, an on-site community feed, personalized notifications and alerts — engage, convert and retain visitors directly on brands' owned and operated properties. Viafoura’s industry-leading, AI-powered content moderation solutions are customized to support each customer’s unique community guidelines. As a result, customers can scale and streamline their audience engagement and community-building initiatives while maintaining a civil and brand-safe environment. -
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Forumbee
Forumbee
Forumbee is a web-based community and discussion forum-creation platform that supports knowledgebase storage, mobile moderation, and social sharing. Featuring a range of moderation tools, Forumbee enables users to create private, public, hidden, and restricted-access forums for Q&As, feedback and idea generation, discussion, knowledgebase articles, and more. The forums can be customized with a built-in theme or user’s own logo, branding and message, and are typically ad-free, independent of social networks. -
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NING
NING
Create a social network that rocks with a customized community management and social media integration. Be vivid - create your own visual design, generate catchy content, and build trust. NING offers the possibility to create a community with a customized look and feel. Our team is here to back you up even with the most challenging initiatives. Create your personal social network and get ready to make money with its help. With NING, traffic monetization is no longer a fantasy. Monetize your blog, monetize your website, monetize your social media! It's all in your hands now thanks to NING’s new E-commerce platform. Be loud - share your ideas, target the right people, and raise awareness. With NING's help, you will be able to effectively promote any network, be it political, music, religious, arts, or any other type of online community. Here you can connect with partners and donors for charitable purposes, or conduct fundraising.Starting Price: $25.00/month/user -
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Simple Machines Forum (SMF)
Simple Machines Forum
SMF is all that in one package, giving you an easy to use forum with many powerful features for you as well as your users. SMF is an open-source project made by volunteers from across the world. SMF features a powerful Package Manager, allowing you to quickly apply any of the hundreds of modifications in our database, as well as a variety of custom themes that change the way your site looks. Should you run into any problem, SMF's experienced Support Team will come to your aid, along with our very helpful community members, ready to assist you and address whatever issue(s) you are encountering. Simple Machines Forum — SMF in short — is a free, professional grade software package that allows you to set up your own online community within minutes. Its powerful custom made template engine puts you in full control of the layout of your message board and with our unique SSI - or Server Side Includes - function you can let your forum and your website interact with each other. -
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Hivebrite
Hivebrite
Unlock the potential of your community with Hivebrite, the most advanced all-in-one community management and engagement platform. Easy to set up and fully branded to match your colors, Hivebrite helps you build brand engagement and create opportunities for your private community. Manage your member database, centralize the communication with your members, create events and collect online payments, all from a single user-friendly interface.
Forum Software Guide
Forum software is an internet application that allows a user to start, participate in, and moderate online forums or message boards. It provides users with a platform to discuss topics and exchange ideas.
Forums generally consist of threads that are collections of comments or posts made by multiple users. Each post can include text, images, videos or other kinds of multimedia content. Forum software usually consists of a few core components: a user interface, moderation tools, commenting tools, and search capabilities.
The user interface for forum software typically includes the ability to register an account and log in to post comments and interact with other users. It also often includes the ability to customize one’s profile page such as by adding pictures and setting up personal information like contact details or favorite interests.
Moderation tools are another important part of forum software which gives moderators the power to control what kind of content is allowed on their site as well as take action against any users who violate rules or terms of use. Moderators often have the power to delete posts, ban members from further participation and even alert relevant authorities when necessary. They may also be able to set certain topics as “locked” so that only administrators can access them or post new comments within them.
Commenting tools allow users to respond directly to each other’s posts in a variety of ways such as through upvoting or downvoting responses, posting replies within threads, and tagging fellow users in comments so they can easily be accessed again later. These features help ensure discussions remain civil while allowing for active involvement from different sides in any given discussion topic.
Finally, forum software needs some form of search capability so that users can easily find topics that interest them without having to wade through long lists of posts manually; this usually involves advanced filtering options based on keywords entered into a search bar or tags attached by members when creating new threads. Additionally, some platforms offer additional features such as private messaging capabilities between members or the ability for administrators to create polls within specific threads so they can gauge public opinion on certain topics quickly and accurately before taking action accordingly.
Features Offered by Forum Software
- Administrative Functions: Forum software provides administrative functions such as approving or denying user registrations, setting user privileges, and moderating posts. These features allow administrators to manage the forum and keep it running smoothly.
- User Management: Forum software provides user management features that allow administrators to control who can access the forum, set up moderator roles and view information about users. This allows administrators to ensure that members are following the rules of the forum and keeping it a safe environment.
- Threads & Posts: The core feature of any forum software is its ability to create threads, which are topics for discussion, and posts, which are individual messages within a thread. This allows users to start conversations with each other on a particular topic or share ideas in an organized way.
- Customization Options: Most forum software also provides customization options like themes, custom fields for posts, avatars and more. This allows users to customize their experience on the forum and make it more personal.
- Private Messages: Forum software also usually includes private messaging capabilities so that users can send each other messages without having them seen by everyone else on the forum.
- Search Functionality: Forum software also typically contains search functionality that allows users to quickly find content within the forums by searching for keywords or phrases within post titles or content.
- Subscription & Notifications: Finally, most forums come with subscription or notification features that allow users to subscribe or follow specific threads or get notifications when someone replies back on a post they’ve made or commented on previously.
Different Types of Forum Software
- Bulletin Board Software: Bulletin board software provides a simple platform for users to create and join various public or private communities. It allows members to post topics and messages, comment on other people’s posts, view user profiles, upload files, search for content and much more.
- Wiki Software: Wiki software is used to create collaborative websites with users securely editing webpages simultaneously. It typically has fewer features than forum software but is better suited for larger projects (like Wikipedia).
- Forum & Chat Software: This type of forum software combines discussions in forums with real-time chatroom capabilities. This format can be especially useful for customer support teams seeking quick answers from their customers.
- Social Networking Platforms: These platforms provide the ability for users to connect with one another in an interactive environment, similar to a traditional forum setup. They are often used by individuals and businesses alike as a means of connecting with existing or potential customers.
- Blogging Platforms: Blogging platforms offer a place where people can share their ideas and experiences through entries called “blog posts” which are generally organized by categories and tags. While blogging platforms provide some discussion capabilities, they are primarily focused on publishing rather than conversation like traditional forums or chatrooms do.
Benefits of Using Forum Software
- Increases Interaction: Forum software makes it easy for people to come together, discuss topics relevant to them, and interact with each other in a meaningful way. This helps foster collaboration and creates a sense of community among users.
- Increased Traffic: By providing a platform for people to engage in conversations, forum software can help increase website traffic. Since forums often have high-quality content, visitors are likely to stay on the site longer and engage in more conversations.
- Affordable Solution: Forum software is typically much cheaper than other interactive solutions such as chat rooms or webinars. This makes it an ideal choice for businesses who want to engage with their customers without breaking the bank.
- Improved Search Rankings: Forums are highly indexed by search engines which means they can help improve your website's SEO rankings. The more active your forum is, the higher its ranking will be in search engine results pages which will give you an edge over competing websites.
- Highly Customizable: Most forum software offers extensive customization options allowing users to tailor their experience according to their specific needs and preferences. Customization features include themes, plugins, user profiles and settings that can be used to create unique forums for any purpose or audience — from business meetings to gaming communities.
- Accessible from Any Device: Most modern forum software is designed with mobile-friendliness in mind meaning users can access it from any device regardless of whether they’re using a laptop, tablet or phone. This ensures that all members of the community have uninterrupted access at all times no matter where they are located or what devices they use.
Types of Users that Use Forum Software
- Casual Users: These are users who may browse forums for fun and to find interesting topics or conversations. They often don't post or comment, but rather lurk in the background just observing.
- Lurkers: Similar to casual users, these are individuals who may observe conversations without participating in them.
- Power Users: These are experienced forum users who may be moderators or administrators of a certain forum and offer guidance and helpful advice to other members.
- Contributors: Members that actively contribute to discussions across many threads and post multiple times on a variety of topics.
- Spammers: A subset of contributors, they generally post content which is not relevant to the topic being discussed on forums or spam other members with useless information or images.
- Trolls: Forum participants who deliberately provoke conversations by posting provocative, antagonistic comments as a method of entertainment for themselves at the expense of others.
- Experts/Influencers: Highly knowledgeable individuals who share their experiences and expertise with other forum members in order to help them out with various problems or issues they are having.
How Much Does Forum Software Cost?
Forum software can range in price depending on the features you need and the vendor that you use. For basic forums, you may be able to find free open-source options that could allow you to host a forum on your own server or web hosting account. However, these can require some technical know-how to set up and maintain.
If you are looking for an out-of-the-box solution with more features and customization, then there are several vendors who offer commercial solutions ranging from around $50/year for basic packages up to custom solutions costing thousands of dollars annually. Generally speaking, the more features that you need, such as user groups access levels, social media integration, analytics tools, or even custom-built plugins, the higher the price tag associated with your chosen forum software will be.
The best way to find out what kind of pricing is available is to contact a few different vendors and compare their offerings so that you can get an idea of which one offers the best value for your particular needs.
Types of Software that Forum Software Integrates With
Forum software can integrate with a variety of other types of software to enhance the user experience. Common integrations include digital analytics tools like Google Analytics, which offer valuable insights into user behavior; content management systems (CMS) such as WordPress and Drupal, which enable users to create complex websites; social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook, which allow for easy sharing of forum posts; email marketing campaigns, which provide automated notifications about new threads; and e-commerce solutions like Shopify and Magento that enable users to set up shopfronts within their forums. All these pieces of software work together to make it easier for forum owners to grow their user base, engage existing members, and monetize the platform.
What are the Trends Relating to Forum Software?
- Increased Functionality: Forum software has become increasingly more powerful and feature-rich over the years, allowing users to create complex interactions and experiences. Many of the most popular platforms offer a wide range of customization options, giving users the ability to tailor the platform to their specific needs.
- Improved Usability: Forum software developers have put great effort into improving the usability of their products, making them easier to use and understand. User interfaces are often designed to be intuitive and user-friendly, making it easier for users to find what they need quickly.
- Mobile Support: Most modern forum software platforms now offer mobile support. This allows users to access forums from anywhere with an internet connection, including on their smartphones or tablets. As more people rely on their mobile devices for internet access, this is becoming increasingly important.
- Increased Security: In recent years, cyber security has become a major concern for many forum owners and developers. Platforms are now offering enhanced security features such as two-factor authentication, secure socket layer (SSL) encryption, and more to help protect user data.
- Social Media Integration: Many forum software platforms now offer the ability to integrate with popular social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. This allows users to easily share content from the forum on social media sites, helping them reach a wider audience.
How to Find the Right Forum Software
Use the comparison engine on this page to help you compare forum software by their features, prices, user reviews, and more.
Selecting the right forum software for your needs can be a daunting task. To make sure you choose the best solution, follow these steps:
- Determine your goals: What do you want to achieve with your forum? Are you looking to communicate with customers, grow a community around your product/service or just provide a platform for discussion? Having clear goals will help narrow down your options.
- Consider features and functionality: Look at what features are offered by different forum software such as user management, customization, themes and plugin support, mobile optimization and more. Make sure that the features provided meet all of your requirements.
- Assess usability: Think about how easy it is to navigate and use the interface of each platform you’re considering. Try out demos when available and ask others who have used them for their opinion on ease of use.
- Check cost: Cost can be a major factor in deciding which forum software to opt for so always check if there are any hidden charges and how much support costs after purchase.
- Research security measures: Security is paramount when selecting any online tool so look into what measures are taken against potential data breaches or other vulnerabilities as well as how users can keep their accounts safe from hackers or malicious actors.