What is the best free forum software?

[moneymaker2016]

Hey guys, I want to install a forum software on the subdomain of my website and want to know which one you think is the most appealing visually and functionally.
I would appreciate any input

 

[Lavizrap]

Simplemachines. It's very easy to use

 

[moneymaker2016]

Yeah, I think I'm gonna go with it. Other people recommended it too

 

[Bots-Scrapers]

Simplemachine
Mybb
Phpbb
PunjBi
Are best!

 

[xRex]

Mybb best man, is one of the best free forum software & easy to create stills with little html

 

[bullsbears]

Discourse if you have 2gb+ ram.

phpbb, smf etc do a good job but they are not great on mobile responsiveness.

Another free option is flarum..its in beta though.

I use fluxbb for one of my forums which is kinda the god of forums out there. I chose fluxbb coz it's really simple and fast enough giving users a breezy performance. But don't expect any fancy things from fluxbb.

 

[SoccerLover]

 

[J0sh]

I'd actually go with discourse, very SEO friendly.

 

[nohupt]

if you aren't doing anything extravagant, there's no reason why you can't code up your own board app. it's just user accounts and messages at a base level.

 

[coldboot]

I'd recommend giving Discourse a go

 

[NitashEU]

NodeBB is my favorite!

https://github.com/NodeBB/NodeBB

 

[social engineer]

NodeBB is my favorite!

https://github.com/NodeBB/NodeBB

I agree 100% nodeBB is the way forward