Discourse
Open source forum and community platform, hosted or self-hosted
1/3Discourse is an open source community platform used for support forums, developer communities and product feedback, built so that conversation becomes a searchable knowledge base rather than a feed that scrolls away. It combines discussion topics with real-time chat, private messages and posting by email, and leans on a trust system that lets members take on moderation as they earn it. The whole codebase is GPLv2 on GitHub, so it can be self-hosted for free or run on Discourse's own managed hosting, and there are Discourse Hub apps for iOS and Android.
- Discussion topics with real-time chat and private messages
- Searchable knowledge base with accepted answers
- Trust levels let the community take on its own moderation
- Discourse AI summarises topics and flags toxic posts
- Themes, components and plugins, with no proprietary edition
- SSO through OpenID and OAuth2, plus SAML on Enterprise
- Reply and post by email, with community summary digests
- GPLv2 source on GitHub, with full data export
What people are saying about Discourse
83% negative“our forum runs discourse right? hope someone on the mod team sees this and checks the version. last thing anyone needs is someone dropping a malicious HEIF and getting shell access through a picture of their thermostat dashboard”
“Heads up (mods I guess?) - a cyber security organization Hacktron AI has found an issue in image magic HEIF (used by a bunch of companies) in discourse.”
“If people need threads that are still useful six months later, moderation, search, and slower discussion, Discourse is hard to beat even for a small group. If the main use case is “a few mates online now,” then an XMPP/Matrix/Zulip-style setup will feel more natural.”
“It's a discourse forum with "trust levels", and you need the first one to get 20 votes.”
“It's obviously powerful enough that it has quite an effect.Not sure why modern alternatives to phpBB, like Discourse, feel so impersonal and boring. I rarely feel the urge to check back on a Discourse thread, but that may just be me.”
“Discourse UX is so much worse than phpBB because it merges all categories.”