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
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