phpBB and SMF are two of the most popular free bulletin board applications. If you are looking for a free forum application, you will most probably end up using one of the two.

Here we will discuss the pros and cons of each one. 

• SMF:

pros:

- the installation/uninstallation of additional mods is done through an automatic package manager

- supports multiple languages at once

- option to display the query count per page

- full or partial word censoring

- cookie and session based authentication

- spell checker

cons:

- does not support custom BBCode buttons

- no custom profile fields

- no user rating

- no search flood control

- no customizable private message filters

•  phpBB:

pros:

- has a lot of free mods/plugins/templates

- supports MySQL, MSSQL and PostgreSQL database engines

- search flood control

- password protected forums

- sorting of posts

- private message filters which can be customized

 cons:

- no automatic mod installer

- the installation of some of the additional mods may require more advanced programming skills

- no HTML in posts

- no user rating

- no RSS

If you are ready to take your discussion board to the next level and purchase a commercial forum application, then our Invision Power Board vs vBulletin comparison will help you with your choice.

SiteGround offers the best forum hosting package so that no matter which forum application you choose, your hosting account can handle it without any problems.