Planet Discussions

Do you like to use premium software for creating forums or do you use free software? What are your reasons for using premium software or free software?
After using free software for forums for many years, I moved to premium software, I have been using premium software for almost a year and I find it better to use premium software instead free software because premium software comes with a lot of features.

It really doesn't matter to me, and I have enough skills to make free work quite well. For instance, my phpBB forum has a few drawbacks like no resizer avatar uploader and one click updater, but it's not enough to drag things down that much.

Note: Those drawbacks are highly unfixable at the moment. There are no extensions or extensions in development that either exist or work well enough.

I never bothered trying paid software. I've always used free and mostly just phpBB.

Megan wrote: ↑November 8th, 2025, 6:53 pm I never bothered trying paid software. I've always used free and mostly just phpBB.

Do you have any specific reasons for not using premium forum software. Well, phpBB is certainly good, I have used it. However, in my experience, if you are not using premium software, most people tend to believe that you are not a serious about your community

Mr.Green wrote: ↑November 12th, 2025, 10:16 pm

Megan wrote: ↑November 8th, 2025, 6:53 pm I never bothered trying paid software. I've always used free and mostly just phpBB.

Do you have any specific reasons for not using premium forum software. Well, phpBB is certainly good, I have used it. However, in my experience, if you are not using premium software, most people tend to believe that you are not a serious about your community

I don’t think that’s true at all. I’ve seen a lot of very successful forums on free software. And honestly if they think that that’s on them.

As for why I don’t. One I prefer phpBB and have used it for years. And two I don’t see the need to chuck out money for use of software when I can use something three. And finally it’s not something I can afford.

Some like the DIY nature of free software. I mean, not everybody needs and/or wants things out of the box.