This forum software is very good

Dafojk · February 2013

Hey there.

I like this forum alot. The features, reward things etc.

Does anyone know what the running cost for such a forum is, how hard it is to customize and manage?

Vanilla Forums is mentioned by a logo in the buttom on the site, but is bg forum running paid or open source versions?

Jalily · February 2013

If only we could do something about that search function.

Troodon80 · February 2013

Last I heard, Beamdog is rolling with the Enterprise package. If you host it yourself, then it is as expensive or inexpensive as you want. If you have your own server and domain name, you can be up and running in minutes with no additional cost.

From what I remember, the paid plans don't give access to the many plug-ins that are available. You get a featured set, but not all of them, apparently. On the free download, there is no badge/reward system, and it's very basic - it does have access to the plug-ins, however, so functionality is much more in that regard.

Hosting the downloaded package yourself will be free. If you don't have the ability to do that, then a hosting service, such as HostGator, will be required. Note that hosting a forum usually requires that you use a dedicated service, due to the traffic as compared to a standard business site, which is much more expensive than a shared service.

For a small to medium size community, you are probably as well off going with the Vanilla packages; $49/mo or $500 per year for the small group package or $149/mo for the advanced package. At a quick glance, a comparative basic package on HostGator will be about $180 (or ~$1700 per year), since there is a 20% discount on right now, and not forgetting that domain name registration is about $15, and there are some other security related features that are a wise addition (which are about $20-25 extra), which is about the same as Vanilla.