Xenforo vs NodeBB vs Invision in 2025 (and Beyond)

[ANONYMOUSKOREAN]

Not trying to step on any toes here, I've read thru the recent XF vs IPS thread here and it seems the consensus is that IPS has a rich feature set but may be a bit steep in price for what it's offering.

I'm starting a new site to merge existing communities into with some friends, this was originally going to be built from the ground up but now we're looking at existing forum solutions. One of the main reasons we're considering a pre-built solution is the ease of dealing with bugs, maintenance, and scalability. With a tried-and-tested framework, we can focus more on building features and expanding functionality rather than reinventing the wheel and troubleshooting core issues.

What we're looking for:

• Modern, responsive framework
• Easy moderation tools to help manage content and enforce community standards without hassle. Preferably user-owned groups as well.
• Plugin and extension support (e.g., for a custom film database) to expand functionality without heavy backend development.
• Open-source or self-hosted options
• Highly customizable UI, as we plan to allow users to customize profiles in a similar fashion to myspace as opposed to the current offerings.

We're leaning toward NodeBB right now due to its framework and plugin ecosystem, but we're open to hearing feedback about why XF or IPS might be worth considering instead or something entirely different that we haven't heard of. When it comes to choosing a solution money really isn't the problem we just really want something that's not going to force us in one specific direction.

 

[Suzanne O]

Yuck...
NodeBB is a take of MYBB
I prefer XF

 

[Digital Doctor]

Feature	Winner	Notes
Modern, responsive framework	Xenforo, hands down.
Easy moderation tools to help manage content and enforce community standards without hassle. Preferably user-owned groups as well.	Tie
Plugin and extension support (e.g., for a custom film database) to expand functionality without heavy backend development.	Xenforo, hands down.
Open-source or self-hosted options	Tie
Highly customizable UI, as we plan to allow users to customize profiles in a similar fashion to myspace as opposed to the current offerings.	Xenforo or Tie
B1tchy staff	Historically Invision, AINEC. Gap is closing
Future proof	Neither, Xenforo has the advantage.
Less exploits / Better Code	Xenforo
Speed	Xenforo
Best Forum	Xenforo (AINEC)
More than Just a forum	Invision	It is still not worth bothering with Invision. Smart move is to pay for an addon to Xenforo is your need something not available.
Conclusion	Xenforo

 

[ANONYMOUSKOREAN]

Feature	Winner	Notes
Modern, responsive framework	Xenforo, hands down.
Easy moderation tools to help manage content and enforce community standards without hassle. Preferably user-owned groups as well.	Tie
Plugin and extension support (e.g., for a custom film database) to expand functionality without heavy backend development.	Xenforo, hands down.
Open-source or self-hosted options	Tie
Highly customizable UI, as we plan to allow users to customize profiles in a similar fashion to myspace as opposed to the current offerings.	Xenforo or Tie
B1tchy staff	Historically Invision, AINEC. Gap is closing
Future proof	Neither, Xenforo has the advantage.
Less exploits / Better Code	Xenforo
Speed	Xenforo
Best Forum	Xenforo (AINEC)
More than Just a forum	Invision	It is still not worth bothering with Invision. Smart move is to pay for an addon to Xenforo is your need something not available.
Conclusion	Xenforo

As far as addons go, we'd have no problem having to develop some implementations ourselves. Wonder what you mean by *****y staff? Anyway thanks for the input.

 

[Digital Doctor]

*****y staff?

people say the invision staff are generally triggered. I have no personal dealings with them.
I tried to sign up at their forum, but it was so slow I gave up.

 

[ANONYMOUSKOREAN]

Yuck...
NodeBB is a take of MYBB
I prefer XF

Node isn't some fork of MyBB if that's what you mean. Node is almost entirely Nodejs where mybb is PHP. Of course, to most this distinction doesnt matter but MyBB is outdated and making very slow progress. The devs over at Node are very active and it's kind of got me confused.

Though I mostly just lurk the "admin circuit" almost nobody mentions NodeBB which I find really strange. The fact it's open source itself is a plus but there's virtually nothing Xenforo/Invision does to justify it's price in comparison for the average user. It's got real time posting, it's fast, nice activity feed/realtime notifications and has a modern ui. They're also planning to enable federation tools in the next update if thats your thing.

For what it's worth we originally planned to build the site from the ground up with Elixir/Phoenix and probably make it open source but decided that would take far too much time

 

[Forsaken]

Not trying to step on any toes here, I've read thru the recent XF vs IPS thread here and it seems the consensus is that IPS has a rich feature set but may be a bit steep in price for what it's offering.

I'm starting a new site to merge existing communities into with some friends, this was originally going to be built from the ground up but now we're looking at existing forum solutions. One of the main reasons we're considering a pre-built solution is the ease of dealing with bugs, maintenance, and scalability. With a tried-and-tested framework, we can focus more on building features and expanding functionality rather than reinventing the wheel and troubleshooting core issues.

What we're looking for:

• Modern, responsive framework
• Easy moderation tools to help manage content and enforce community standards without hassle. Preferably user-owned groups as well.
• Plugin and extension support (e.g., for a custom film database) to expand functionality without heavy backend development.
• Open-source or self-hosted options
• Highly customizable UI, as we plan to allow users to customize profiles in a similar fashion to myspace as opposed to the current offerings.

We're leaning toward NodeBB right now due to its framework and plugin ecosystem, but we're open to hearing feedback about why XF or IPS might be worth considering instead or something entirely different that we haven't heard of. When it comes to choosing a solution money really isn't the problem we just really want something that's not going to force us in one specific direction.

If you are looking for a framework to build your own community off of, then XenForo is generally the better choice.You can look at some of the work that @digitalpoint has done, and how he treats XenForo as a framework rather than as a pure forum solution. There are also a few other projects listed in forum showcase (forum, and I think the official listing on the main page), but a lot of the heavily customized projects I know of aren't listed here publicly.

IPB is moving more and more to being a cloud solution, and they have only promised that the newest version will be available for self-hosting (at least last I heard). XenForo has so far said that they will always intend to provide a self-hosted version, and there have been no signs that it is changing any time soon.

As far as staff attitude, I do not know specifically what @Digital Doctor is hinting at, however historically IPB has been much more moderation happy than XenForo, and they have also been quick to push back or argue with people in the past. You can see a lot of that pass drama if you look at TheAdminZone, where two of the main IPB people would often argue with people criticizing them. XenForo is generally not quick to moderate, and mostly only moderate when things get out of hand; there have been cases where

IPB is generally more moderation heavy than XenForo, and they have often done things that are questionable in their moderation. General attitude is a bit all over... XenForo is generally open to criticism and opinions on them, however there have been times that they will push back or be a bit blunt. I have generally found IPB to be much more unaccepting of criticism (which is where I say they are moderation heavy), and their staff have often been a lot egregious in their attitudes.

Development wise, XenForo is historically slower to release updates (they are moving to a faster update cycle, but I do not really expect that until 3.0 is out). I personally do not mind slower updates, because I run or manage multiple big communities and many of them are heavily customized so faster development cycles mean more work updating.

If you are going to move to XF, you are likely better off waiting for 3.0 as it is overhauling the whole design that is currently available, and the amount of work to update will be quite significant (I am not updating any communities until 3.0 is out personally).

 

[Digital Doctor]

NodeBB

I like NodeBB's structure.

DEMO:

Existing implementations of Conversation Containers (#Streams and #Hubzilla) add a context property to top-level posts of conversations.

Existing implementations of Conversation Containers (#Streams and #Hubzilla) add a context property to top-level posts of conversations. This is also what FE...

community.nodebb.org

Can it do pages ?

 

[Digital Doctor]

If you are going to move to XF, you are likely better off waiting for 3.0

Agreed.

 

[ANONYMOUSKOREAN]

If you are looking for a framework to build your own community off of, then XenForo is generally the better choice.You can look at some of the work that @digitalpoint has done, and how he treats XenForo as a framework rather than as a pure forum solution. There are also a few other projects listed in forum showcase (forum, and I think the official listing on the main page), but a lot of the heavily customized projects I know of aren't listed here publicly.

IPB is moving more and more to being a cloud solution, and they have only promised that the newest version will be available for self-hosting (at least last I heard). XenForo has so far said that they will always intend to provide a self-hosted version, and there have been no signs that it is changing any time soon.

As far as staff attitude, I do not know specifically what @Digital Doctor is hinting at, however historically IPB has been much more moderation happy than XenForo, and they have also been quick to push back or argue with people in the past. You can see a lot of that pass drama if you look at TheAdminZone, where two of the main IPB people would often argue with people criticizing them. XenForo is generally not quick to moderate, and mostly only moderate when things get out of hand; there have been cases where

IPB is generally more moderation heavy than XenForo, and they have often done things that are questionable in their moderation. General attitude is a bit all over... XenForo is generally open to criticism and opinions on them, however there have been times that they will push back or be a bit blunt. I have generally found IPB to be much more unaccepting of criticism (which is where I say they are moderation heavy), and their staff have often been a lot egregious in their attitudes.

Development wise, XenForo is historically slower to release updates (they are moving to a faster update cycle, but I do not really expect that until 3.0 is out). I personally do not mind slower updates, because I run or manage multiple big communities and many of them are heavily customized so faster development cycles mean more work updating.

If you are going to move to XF, you are likely better off waiting for 3.0 as it is overhauling the whole design that is currently available, and the amount of work to update will be quite significant (I am not updating any communities until 3.0 is out personally).

Thanks and yeah I think I'd probably be best to wait till 3.0 drops if it's around the corner. Same with Invision if we choose to go with them after 5 releases.

I like NodeBB's structure.

DEMO:

Existing implementations of Conversation Containers (#Streams and #Hubzilla) add a context property to top-level posts of conversations.

Existing implementations of Conversation Containers (#Streams and #Hubzilla) add a context property to top-level posts of conversations. This is also what FE...

community.nodebb.org

Can it do pages ?

Yes it's customizable I prefer pagination as well.

 

[Ricsca]

NodeBB is not as easy to install as xf unless you are an experienced user.
I wanted to try it but then I gave up because I didn't understand how to install it!

 

[Digital Doctor]

NodeBB, many years later, still has missing pieces.

Users are looking for a Moderation plugin to warn users.
Seems like a pretty key feature !

 

[ANONYMOUSKOREAN]

NodeBB is not as easy to install as xf unless you are an experienced user.
I wanted to try it but then I gave up because I didn't understand how to install it!

I do believe their digitalocean repo doesn't have the right dependencies because it's independently managed for some reason, with open source software you'll have headaches like this for sure.

NodeBB, many years later, still has missing pieces.

View attachment 317034

Users are looking for a Moderation plugin to warn users.
Seems like a pretty key feature !

All things considered this is not something we're looking for so this isn't a real drawback if this is the only lacking thing.

 

[Digital Doctor]

Can it do pages ?

It has a wiki pages type addon called Knowledgebase:

GitHub - julianlam/nodebb-plugin-knowledge-base: Knowledge Base plugin for NodeBB

Knowledge Base plugin for NodeBB. Contribute to julianlam/nodebb-plugin-knowledge-base development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

[Bounty of $500] Wiki plugin

Oh, yes, it was https://github.com/julianlam/nodebb-plugin-knowledge-base/

community.nodebb.org

• it just exposes a privilege that lets anyone modify OP.
• posts’ edit history are logged and and admin can restore different edits(You can even see who edited it).

The Groups section is well established.

NodeBB Community

A community to talk about development and ask questions about NodeBB modern forum software

community.nodebb.org

 

[Digital Doctor]

Quick Start - NodeBB Documentation

Documentation portal for NodeBB Forum Software

docs.nodebb.org

Availability: > 4.0.0

"Federation", used in a technical sense, is the ability for a software to interact with others outside of its own domain. NodeBB is working towards federation in version 4 by adopting the ActivityPub protocol.

What is ActivityPub?​

ActivityPub is a standardized protocol that allows software — like NodeBB — to communicate with other ActivityPub enabled software. This exchange could take place between two separate NodeBB instances, or even with non-forum software, such as microblogging networks, bookmarking apps, or image-based feed scrollers.

If enabled, your NodeBB installation would become part of a larger decentralized social network; a federated universe, or fediverse.

 

[ANONYMOUSKOREAN]

Quick Start - NodeBB Documentation

Documentation portal for NodeBB Forum Software

docs.nodebb.org

Availability: > 4.0.0

"Federation", used in a technical sense, is the ability for a software to interact with others outside of its own domain. NodeBB is working towards federation in version 4 by adopting the ActivityPub protocol.

What is ActivityPub?​

ActivityPub is a standardized protocol that allows software — like NodeBB — to communicate with other ActivityPub enabled software. This exchange could take place between two separate NodeBB instances, or even with non-forum software, such as microblogging networks, bookmarking apps, or image-based feed scrollers.

If enabled, your NodeBB installation would become part of a larger decentralized social network; a federated universe, or fediverse.

This I find really interesting, I mean I'm not the most knowledgeable about the fediverse but if more software like Xenforo implements the activitypub feature it would benefit a lot of forums I imagine.

Also might be good for future-proofing

 

[rdn]

Have you looked at Discourse?

Discourse features

Discover features your community will love.

discourse.org

 

[ANONYMOUSKOREAN]

Have you looked at Discourse?

Discourse features

Discover features your community will love.

discourse.org

The core of Discourse seems to be good for commercial businesses but not for communities. The layout is unique but also not really what we're looking for, plus it's ruby

 

[RobinHood]

If you are looking for a framework to build your own community off of, then XenForo is generally the better choice.You can look at some of the work that @digitalpoint has done, and how he treats XenForo as a framework rather than as a pure forum solution. There are also a few other projects listed in forum showcase (forum, and I think the official listing on the main page), but a lot of the heavily customized projects I know of aren't listed here publicly.

IPB is moving more and more to being a cloud solution, and they have only promised that the newest version will be available for self-hosting (at least last I heard). XenForo has so far said that they will always intend to provide a self-hosted version, and there have been no signs that it is changing any time soon.

As far as staff attitude, I do not know specifically what @Digital Doctor is hinting at, however historically IPB has been much more moderation happy than XenForo, and they have also been quick to push back or argue with people in the past. You can see a lot of that pass drama if you look at TheAdminZone, where two of the main IPB people would often argue with people criticizing them. XenForo is generally not quick to moderate, and mostly only moderate when things get out of hand; there have been cases where

IPB is generally more moderation heavy than XenForo, and they have often done things that are questionable in their moderation. General attitude is a bit all over... XenForo is generally open to criticism and opinions on them, however there have been times that they will push back or be a bit blunt. I have generally found IPB to be much more unaccepting of criticism (which is where I say they are moderation heavy), and their staff have often been a lot egregious in their attitudes.

Development wise, XenForo is historically slower to release updates (they are moving to a faster update cycle, but I do not really expect that until 3.0 is out). I personally do not mind slower updates, because I run or manage multiple big communities and many of them are heavily customized so faster development cycles mean more work updating.

If you are going to move to XF, you are likely better off waiting for 3.0 as it is overhauling the whole design that is currently available, and the amount of work to update will be quite significant (I am not updating any communities until 3.0 is out personally).

Agree with all apart from waiting for XF3.0, that could easily be another 6 months.

Nothing wrong with building on XF2.3 and 2.4 for now, I would just keep it as stock as possible in terms plugins and custom styling to make the upgrade easier when it does come.

 

[AWS]

If you want the same stagnate forum home that is more than 2 decades old and don't mind gaining extra features by installing addons that modern communities need then go with xenforo.

If you want to start out with a feature rich more modern design if you choose fluid or grid view then go with Invision.

I can't comment on NodeBB. never really looked into it. I have heard it is fine software, but, like xenforo needs addnons for extra functionality.

I like Discourse. It is what the future of forums will be. Sites like Reddit and StacK Exchange are the future. Old school forumers like you'll find here will argue to their death that it's not.

In any case go with what's best for you. Look at the support forums for other software. You'll find that Invisions are more professional and don't really want the sort of stuff you find here. The staff are cordial and quick to answer a support question. Almost real time. This is in no way me bashing xenforo or staff. It's what I observe by being active on other forum software support forums.