By Isabelle Hahn

Forums provide the opportunity to build an online community that allows your audience to connect in a place where they know their interests are shared. This sense of connectedness is more important than ever in a time where more work, communication, and socialization is being done online.

Online communities are particularly beneficial for businesses because they allow customers to interact with each other in a smaller circle than they could via social media, which increases engagement and brand affinity.

For instance, let’s say one of your customers has a very unique problem with your product or service, and posts about it on your forum. That post is much easier to find than it would be on social media, where millions of users are talking about a million different things.

Even better, maybe another forum user has faced that same problem and can answer their question before your service reps even see it.

There is an incredible amount of value in reaching and building your community using a forum. Here, we’re going to explore the best forum software to get you started.

1. WordPress (With Plugin)

Price: Free (plus the cost of hosting)

Using a multi-purpose platform like a CMS to power your online community allows you access to many different software options in the form of plugins and applications. For instance, you might use the bbPress plugin to create multisite forums, and maintain them from one dashboard within your WordPress site. This is a great option if you want to set up a regular website and forum together.

There are many options to choose from using WordPress, all of which will provide you with the basic forum features you need, plus plenty of useful extras.

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2. Joomla!

Price: Starts at $99 per year (plus development and hosting costs)

Joomla! Is a CMS software like WordPress, but requires more attention to detail and management. This is a robust CMS that will power your forum plugins like Kunena or EasyDiscuss, which are specifically created for Joomla!’s system. The price point comes from the open-source content management system, which will allow you to build powerful online applications alongside your forum software.

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3. Discourse

Price: Starts at $100 per month (plus cost of hosting)

Discourse is open-source forum software that you can in tandem with your existing website and CMS platform. Not only can community members use it on their mobile devices, but they’ll also get dynamic notifications, badges, emoji, and more. Best of all, there’s a built-in moderation system to help you protect your community from spam and abuse.

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4. Vanilla Forums

Price: Variable based on your needs

Vanilla has an abundance of features — one of the most notable …read more

Source:: HubSpot Blog