What is the difference between XenForo and Discourse?

The main difference between XenForo and Discourse is that XenForo follows a traditional forum structure while Discourse focuses on chat-like experience. There are other notable differences between these leading platforms:

1. Tech Stack: XenForo is built with PHP + MySQL; Discourse is built with Ruby on Rails and PostgreSQL
2. UI/UX: XF has categories and forums; Discourse is chat-like.
3. Customization: XenForo has theming options; Discourse has limited customization options
4. Performance: XenForo servers can run on low-end servers, while Discourse requires Docker and more resources.
5. Ecosystem: XenForo has robust plugin and theme ecosystem; Discourse has smaller but active ecosystem

Overall, XenForo would be a better choice to host your community; before moving to a more robust, dedicated community platform.

I'd stay away from Discourse for a new community. Nothing against them; but their UI/UX is pretty bad. I fail to understand why people call it 'modern UI'.

XenForo is pretty solid solution in the community world, especially if you are just testing your community.

PS: @Kaustubh - when are you releasing an importer to allow one-click migration from XenForo or Discourse to Jatra?

@Emma - it's in the works; but requires us to build a few core features first. Currently, we migrate communities manually because the volume is low. Just 1-2 migration requests per month. I request that you raise a feature request in our Feedback Section.

I came here looking for Discourse alternative. I've installed Discourse and found it too cluttered and difficult to use. Jatra on the other hand looks very intuitive. I am still learning about the community platforms and there seems to be a wide array of options to choose from.

XenForo is the best forum software for self-hosted communities. I've used Discourse for a private community; but the overall experience of managing the community is subpar. XenForo has a better UI, an intuitive admin panel and great customization features.

It's easier to find a web-host to run XenForo. They are PHP based and there are plenty of great hosts that offer web-servers that support latest PHP.

The only thing I did not like about XenForo is their Article CMS. It's boxy and has very limited customization options. I really like Jatra's take on community content - they've nailed the 'Article' and News system and you can customize the SEO title, meta description etc. Jatra however is a fully-managed community platform.

If you must choose between XenForo and Discourse, I recommend XenForo. But if you want an overall better community platform, I strongly recommend Jatra.

@butterfly-sara, Thank you for that insight. It's on point. We recently subscribed to Jatra, and I highly recommend

I'm grateful for the nice words about our community platform Both Xenforo and Discourse are good powerful platforms; but I believe they are stuck in the past. When we built Jatra as an alternative to both XenForo and Discourse - we were focused on solving two important problems:

• Organic Growth : Everyone ignores this, but we strongly believe that this is the best way to get traffic and grow your community.
• Multiple post types : Your modern community will need more than simple discussions. That's why we have multi-content approach with native support to all post-types.

We are somewhat opinionated about how community platforms should work.