9 Best WordPress Forum Plugins to Build an Online Community

Setting up an online forum on your WordPress website is a great way to build an online community and generate user engagement. They allow users to share ideas, discuss topics, and receive valuable input from other forum members.

WordPress, a comprehensive content management system, offers many high-quality forum plugins to help you set up and start running an online forum. In this post, we’ve rounded up some of the best WordPress forum plugins to help you build a solid online community and highlighted the standout features each one offers.

Let’s go ahead and put everything into context before we begin.

What Are Forum Plugins and Why Should I Use One?

WordPress forum plugins integrate forum functionality into your website, allowing you to set up a versatile platform for different users to collaborate. They’re straightforward to set up, and they bring a plethora of powerful options to the table.

Adding forum functionality to your WordPress website allows you to do more than expected. For instance, if you’re running an online store, you could set up a forum on your website, giving your customers a platform to discuss your product, review it, and share their experience with other prospects. In addition to this, forum plugins also make an excellent addition to:

• Educational websites.
• Sites that discuss technical topics.
• Sites for creatives.
• Video game platforms.

Now that you have a good idea of what forum plugins are and how to use them on your WordPress website let’s look at some of your best solutions.

What Are Some of the Best Forum Plugins for WordPress

In this section, we’ll run the rule over nine of the best forum plugins – free and premium – for WordPress websites and highlight the standout features each one offers. When you finish this section, you’ll hopefully better understand which plugin is right for you.

bbPress

Created by Automattic, bbPress is the most popular forum plugin for WordPress. And since it was created by the same people who made WordPress, you can rest assured that it will integrate seamlessly with your website. Once the plugin is installed and activated, you can manage your forum without leaving the WordPress back-end.

bbPress is an incredibly lightweight plugin designed with performance optimization in mind. The standout feature of bbPress is that it puts ease of use and web standards at the center stage. The core plugin is available for free, and when you want to kick things up a notch, you can pick from its wide range of free and premium plugins to access advanced forum functionality. This also helps ensure you’re using all the extensions you have installed and nothing more.

Key Features:

• Easy to use, intuitive user interface.
• Comes with tons of free and premium extensions.
• Designed with performance optimization in mind.

Price: Free

BuddyPress

BuddyPress is the best plugin if you are considering adding forums to your WordPress website. Although the BuddyPress plugin markets itself as a social media solution for WordPress, it has all the right features to add forum elements to your website.

Like bbPress, BuddyPress is easy to use and even more accessible to extend thanks to its numerous premium-quality extensions. And since BuddyPress is essentially a social media platform, its built-in features make it even easier to build an online community.

Key Features:

• Allows users to register with your website and create profiles.
• Offers a platform for members to create and interact in groups.
• Easy to use and comes with many extensions.

Price: Free

DW Question & Answer

DesignWall’s DW Question and Answer is a question-and-answer forum plugin for WordPress that allows users to create sites like Stack Overflow and Quora. As the forum moderator, you can fully manage individual questions, leave answers, and comment on them. In addition to this, the DW Question and Answer plugin comes with built-in functionality to set up a voting system so that forum members can vote for the best answer.

This feature-rich forums plugin has many powerful, helpful features, such as sticky questions, reCAPTCHA, and email notification functionality. These features make the plugin more secure and increase its user experience.

Key Features:

• Allows users to submit, order, filter, edit, and delete questions.
• Comes with a built-in email notification system.
• Allows users to make questions sticky.

Price: Free

CM Answers

CM Answers is another question-and-answer forum plugin for WordPress that transforms your forum page into a Stack Overflow-like page. Like Stack Overflow, the CM Answers plugin lets forum members post questions, allows other members to vote on answers and receive notifications, and makes it easy for the admin to moderate them.

In addition, the plugin lets forum members upload files from their drives and collaborate in a discussion board format. And as the forum admin, you can create as many forum categories as you’d like. Admins also have the power to customize every aspect of the forum and filter out any unwanted content.

Key Features:

• Allows admins to customize the forum and filter out unwanted content.
• Offers multiple file uploads, private messaging, and subscription functionality.
• Comes with a wide range of premium add-ons and extensions.

Price: Free

AnsPress

If you’re looking for a comprehensive forum plugin with the power to help you set up a question-and-answer system on your website, then you should consider AnsPress. AnsPress allows you to create a complete question-and-answer network on your site or integrate it as a page within your existing site.

This multi-language compatible plugin packs several premium-quality functionalities, including shortcode integration, reCAPTCHA, and email and push notifications. One of the best things about AnsPress is that it was created with performance optimization, so you can rest assured that it won’t slow down your site. The standout feature of this plugin is that it allows the admin to feature questions and close questions.

Key Features:

• Allows forum members to post questions, set up a user profile, and answer questions.
• Integrates seamlessly with the BuddyPress plugin.
• Supports reCAPTCHA and email/push notifications.

Price: Free

WP Symposium Pro

Although WP Symposium Pro is essentially a social media network plugin for WordPress, it comes with all the right features to help you set up and get started with a fully functional forum. Its built-in email alerts and profile creation functionality make it a perfect fit for any forum website.

WP Symposium Pro makes it incredibly easy for all users to leverage its customization power. It allows admins to mess around with the module layout, text, and buttons without coding. In addition, you can explore its configuration settings page and shortcodes to customize your forum pages further.

Key Features:

• Tons of customization options right out of the box.
• Comes with many premium extensions to access advanced functionality.
• Allows forum members to create profiles and set up email alerts.

Price: Free

Muut

Muut is a contemporary spin on the classic forum design. It allows website owners to create a modern-esque discussion platform on their WordPress website that is optimized for performance and highly scalable. Muut comes with features such as unlimited users, posts, threads, and comments.

Regarding design, Muut allows you to choose from two different commenting styles—flat or threaded—for your discussion topics. This powerful plugin also has several useful features to make your forum website deliver more value to its members, including spam filtering, language support (for over 20 languages), and email notifications.

Key Features:

• Has multiple widgets to display online users, the latest comments, trending topics, discussion channels, and your feed.
• Allows users to customize pages using CSS.
• Optimized for performance and SEO from the get-go.

Price: Free

SabaiDiscuss

SabaiDiscuss is a premium question-and-answer plugin for WordPress that features a design layout similar to Stack Overflow and Yahoo! Answers. In addition to the question-and-answer setup, SabaiDiscuss lets you create a discussion forum, a knowledge base, and a help desk portal within WordPress.

One of the best features SabaiDiscuss offers is its built-in permission system, which gives the admin complete control of the discussions posted on the forum. It also features a voting engine and comes with a report abuse module right out of the box.

Key Features:

• Allows forum moderators to review posts and take action without leaving WordPress.
• Built-in reputation engine allows forum members to earn reputation points based on the quality of their posts.
• Supports a code syntax highlighter, Markdown editor, social sharing tools, and widgets.

Price: $23

Simple Press

Whether you’re considering setting up a private forum or a large, public discussion platform, SimplePress is the go-to solution. It’ll integrate seamlessly with your existing WordPress website and scale as your online community grows.

Regarding customization power, SimplePress is driven by a collection of themes and templates, making it incredibly easy for users to modify their site’s design. Moreover, you can add to its core functionality simply by installing premium extensions.

Key Features:

• Has powerful forum searching functionality, post moderation, and custom icons.
• Allows the admin to view forum stats and receive email notifications.
• Themes and templates allow users to modify the forum’s design.

Price: Free

Conclusion

A forum can help you generate user engagement and deliver value to your site’s visitors by allowing them to interact with other members. Forum plugins make it easier for website owners to set up fully functional discussion spaces on their WordPress website.

• If you’re just starting out and looking for an easy-to-use forum plugin to get started with then bbPress is the best choice for you.
• However, if you’re thinking about setting up a question and answer style forum site should consider checking out the CM Answers plugin.
• Those of you who need access to advanced features and are willing to pay a premium should go for the SabaiDiscuss plugin.

Which forum plugin are you leaning toward? Which features are most important for your website? Let us know by commenting below!