An overview of the best forum software available - Free and paid

What exactly is forum software? 

Want to make money with your forum? 

Commercial forum software - What are the benefits? 

1. Support: The company making the software will also provide support with it. Many times there is also a support forum itself, but you always have at least one point to go to for support.
2. Quality: If a company developing forum software wants to stay in business, they need to sell. And to sell, they need to supply a great product with great support. So you can be sure they will do anything to provide the best quality possible.
3. New feaures: When a new big feature is launched, it needs to be right directly. It is tested over and over again before it's launched, meaning fewer errors when it's actually launched. This means you can implement the feature right away, without getting too much errors.
4. Dedicated developers: A commercial software program doesn't have as many developers working on it as an open source software program. But the benefit of this is that the one and only job of these developers is to improve the product and provide the support. So they are dedicated to their forum software only.
5. Price: You may think price is a strange benefit, but it actually is a garanty for the future. Because you and other customers pay the company for development and support, the company will be able to keep doing business which means future development and support of the product.

Open source forum software - What are the benefits? 

1. Support: Since open source software allows you to dive into the code and make it the way you want, lots of people know how the software works. All the forum software programs I listed have got an active community of fanatics, which can help you when you need support.
2. Quality: Many developers working on/with the software means many eyes spotting errors and bugs. And since these people know the code, they can fix it instantly and will post these fixes to the community most of the times.
3. New features: Lots of people working on the forum software means lots of people can come up with new features and modifications. And since any skilled developer can implement these features, you can expect to get a lot of new features to choose from.
4. Enthousiastic developers: Open source software isn't published by one company, but by a group (community) of developers. Since many of these developers are real programming fanatics you are always assured of a group of enthousiastic developers to help you with your needs.
5. Price: I can keep this very short. All the forum software programs I listed are free, so you will keep your money in your pockets.

Commercial or open source software - Are there no downsides? 

1. Support: Commercial software has the benefit that there is always the support of the developers themselves. The downside of this is when the company goes out of the business, the support mostly goes down with it.
   Open source software has an lare community of developers to provide you support, but they don't need to do it. There is no guarantee that you will get any support at all, which means you're by your one when a problem occurs.
2. Quality: A commercial company will need to maintain a quality product because they want to sell as much as possible. But there is no quality guarantee. If it isn't good anymore, it's up to the company to improve. If they don't, the product will get useless to you.
   Open source developers make a quality product so they will have a good product for themself. But the is also no guarantee here. If the quality declines and no one wants to improve it, the product gets useless as well.
3. New features: New features for a commercial company will need to be developed by the company selling the product. If they don't make new features, no one does. Most forum software programs however do have the option to develop modifications and new features, but these are always add-ons to the original product. The only one to implement these features in the product itself is the developer.
   For open source software software it is also possible to make new features and modifications as an add-on. But the improvements can also be implemented in the product itself by anyone. This however can create the problem that there will be too much new features (since anyone wants to improve the product), turning it into an heavy and over featured product which isn't easy to use anymore.
4. Dedicated/Enthousiastic developers: A product is nothing without good support and development. For commercial forum software developers it's their job, for open source developers it's their hobby. Commercial companies can go brok, open source projects can close because of lack of interest. Both have it downsides, and you should really choose the solution on which you feel comfortable off.
5. Price: I can't really count this as a downside. Like I explained above, price shouldn't be a consideration in choosing the best forum software for you. Features and support should be the most important factors for you. But I needed to include price in this list of downsides to keep the list counting right...