Forum Hosting

The free, open source boards install in one click through Softaculous: phpBB and SMF (Simple Machines Forum), with Vanilla available in some cases. The commercial suites are manual installs rather than one-click apps. This covers XenForo and vBulletin, along with Invision Community (IPS). Elgg, although open source, is also a manual install via upload or Composer. Licences for the commercial suites are bought separately from each vendor and are not included with your hosting.

Our PHP version selector lets you match the runtime to your software. phpBB 3.3 runs on PHP 7.4 or above and works on PHP 8, while SMF 2.1 also runs happily on modern PHP. The current XenForo 2.3 release requires PHP 8. vBulletin, Invision Community and Elgg are PHP applications backed by MySQL or MariaDB, and we keep supported PHP versions available so you can run the release your board needs.

Most boards include their own caching, and our servers add PHP OPcache to speed up execution by caching compiled code. On Premium accounts you can also use Redis for caching and session storage, which helps a great deal once a board is handling many concurrent members. Fast SSD storage and optimised images round out the performance picture for high-traffic discussions.

Yes. With unlimited databases you can run several boards side by side from one account, mixing free and commercial software as you like. A free phpBB install and a licensed XenForo board can live happily together, each with its own database and domain or subdomain.

bbPress is a forum plugin for WordPress rather than a standalone PHP board, so it is best hosted on our WordPress hosting. If you want a dedicated standalone board instead, phpBB or SMF are excellent free choices that install in one click on this plan.

Yes. Our free migration service can migrate your forum, including files, database and configuration, when you are migrating from another host. We can move existing sites alongside it, so get in touch once your account is active and we'll aim for a smooth transition with minimal downtime.

We are a UK hosting company and hosting provider with shared hosting plans tuned for forum software. Every plan includes the cPanel control panel, generous server resources and a forum hosting service backed by a UK support team. It is reliable web hosting whether you host a small forum or a busy board, and our customer support is there to help your forum website grow.

Yes. You can create a forum with free, open source software like phpBB or SMF, which install in one click. We are not a free forum host, but the software itself is completely free with free upgrades from its developers, and you can download it free, so you only pay for the web hosting that runs it. A standalone forum costs little to run on shared hosting.

You can host any major forum software here, from a general forum to a large internet forum. Free options cover most discussion forums, and our phpBB and SMF hosting services install them in one click, while commercial suites such as XenForo and vBulletin (a classic bulletin board system) install manually. Plugins and extensions let you shape the feature set to your forum needs.

Pick your software, run the forum installation through Softaculous, and your forum quickly goes live. You can spin up a new test forum first to try a layout, or test phpBB before you commit, then point a domain name at the live board. It is a straightforward forum installation whether this is your first board or you are hosting forums for clients.

Yes. You can run multiple forums from one account, and as forum traffic grows you can move from standard shared hosting to VPS hosting or a dedicated server. Our VPS and dedicated hosting give you more server resources for an active forum, so the same hosting provider grows with you. This flexibility suits forum administrators managing forum activity across several boards.

The best forum hosting matches your software to the right resources. For most communities our shared hosting is the perfect forum hosting starting point, giving you a top forum platform with cPanel, SSD storage and caching. It is a hosting solution built around what an active board needs, not regular web hosting retrofitted for forums. As your business grows, cloud servers are available too.