MyBB, phpBB or SMF: which should you actually run?

The short answer

If this is your first forum and you have no specific requirement, run MyBB. If you expect a large board with heavy moderation and want the biggest extension library, run phpBB. If your community has structure — private sections, tiers, a committee — run SMF for its permissions.

All three are free, actively maintained, written in PHP with a MySQL database, and install in one click through Softaculous. None of them will be the reason your forum succeeds or fails. Choose in an afternoon and spend the saved time recruiting members.

MyBB

Best for: a first forum, a general community, anyone who wants to be posting today rather than reading documentation.

MyBB is the lightest of the three and the most immediately comprehensible. The admin panel is organised the way you would expect, themes can be edited in the browser, and the defaults are close enough to sensible that you can launch without changing much.

Where it gives ground: the default MyBB 1.8 theme isn't designed for phones, so plan to install a responsive theme before launch. Plugins are community-submitted rather than officially reviewed, so check each one is maintained. Heavily customised themes want reviewing at upgrade time.

MyBB hosting

phpBB

Best for: large boards, communities that will need serious moderation, and anyone who values having twenty years of answered questions behind them.

phpBB's depth is the argument. Reports, warnings, moderation queues, granular permissions and a large extension library, with each listed extension reviewed by the phpBB team. When a community grows past what one person can read, phpBB already has the tooling.

Where it gives ground: it is heavier to run and considerably heavier to learn — the admin panel is enormous. Extensions sometimes lag behind phpBB releases, so an extension-dependent board needs an update plan.

phpBB hosting

SMF

Best for: communities with structure — members-only areas, tiered membership, a committee board, or anything where who-can-see-what is a real question.

SMF's membergroup and board permission system is the most precise of the three and the easiest to reason about. It is lighter than phpBB, has a long record of stability, and its Package Manager makes mod installation straightforward.

Where it gives ground: the mod ecosystem is quieter, the default theme is plain (though responsive), and mods that patch files need re-checking after updates. Traxio publishes free modern SMF themes, which takes care of the second point.

SMF hosting

Flarum, Discourse and the rest

Flarum is modern and pleasant, closer to a chat interface than a traditional board. It isn't one of the one-click packages we document: it expects Composer and a hands-on install over SSH, so it only suits people comfortable at a command line.

Discourse is excellent and irrelevant here: it needs Docker and a dedicated server, so no shared host can run it. Budget for a VPS if you want it.

NodeBB is likewise out — it needs Node.js and a persistent process.

Anything else written in PHP with a MySQL database can be installed manually by uploading files and creating a database, whether or not it is in the one-click installer.

How to decide in five minutes

1. Do you need private or tiered sections? → SMF.
2. Do you expect hundreds of active members and heavy moderation? → phpBB.
3. Neither, or you are not sure? → MyBB.

Then stop deliberating. Install it during the free 30 days, create three boards, and see how the admin panel feels with real content in it. That tells you more than another evening of comparisons, and if you change your mind in week two you have lost nothing.