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Jatra Community

  • Flarum or Discourse - Which is a Better Community Platform Overall?

    Chris A

    Member

    Updated: May 15, 2025
    Views: 11

    I'm planning to self-host a small community for AI developers. The idea is to start with an open-source platform to test the waters and validate early traction. Once things pick up, I’ll migrate everything to Jatra, which will be our final destination.

    Right now, I’m trying to choose between Flarum and Discourse.

    Both platforms seem solid, but they differ quite a bit when it comes to:

    • User experience

    • SEO capabilities

    • Server setup and resource needs

    I’m sure I’ve missed other important factors, so I’d love to hear from those of you who’ve used either platform or both.

    If you’ve self-hosted Discourse or Flarum, what was your experience like? What worked well? What could be a challenge?

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  • Kaustubh Katdare

    Founder • 6h

    Prior to founding Jatra, I built a video developers community -- first on Circle, then migrated it to Discourse. I’ve also followed Flarum’s development closely since Tauby and team started working on it.

    In my experience, Flarum is the better choice. Especially when you're building your minimum viable community. It's simple, lightweight, and has minimal server requirements.

    Most web hosting providers support it out of the box, and self-hosting is quite straightforward. If your goal is to test the community idea quickly and without headaches, Flarum gets the job done beautifully.

    Discourse is undoubtedly powerful, but having run a growing community on it, I’d advise caution. The user experience can feel clunky, especially for non-technical users. It heavily depends on plugins, and upgrades often break things...even core functionality. What’s more frustrating is their support model. Unless you're a paying customer, you only get help through forums. Even for serious issues, getting a timely response from the core team can take days.

    If you're looking for a simple, clean setup to get started, Flarum wins hands down.

    We will be happy to host your community, whenever you are ready! :-)

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