Best WordPress Forum Plugins Compared (2023)

Do you know all  WordPress Forum Plugins for Community building? Yes, I know and can help you find the Best WordPress Forum Plugins for your WordPress website. Adding a forum section on your website is a great way to develop a community, gain feedback, and encourage discussions. If you want to create a forum on your website but don’t know how then this post is for you. 

Forums are a great way to start discussing ideas, share information, and boost user engagement. They are superb at creating niche communities, where anyone can start with community building. If you want to add forums to your WordPress website then you can easily do so with the help of plugins. However, with so many plugin options it can be quite difficult to choose the best WordPress forum plugins and have all the features you require.

Running a website is one thing. But running an online forum or message boards is an amazingly popular way of staying connected with people. Also, including any kind of community on your website or getting people for discussion can help others to know about the topic. Or provide much more information about the selective topics.

As we all are aware of the fact that bulletin boards and forums are the most traditional way of connecting online, but still they are good reliable tools for setting up an online connection. You will be glad to know there are some WordPress Forum Plugins that can help you out if you are running any site. But when you are setting up a WordPress Site for the first time, it becomes a bit difficult to know the best way of choosing a better platform for engagement. So Here at our WordPress theme generator blog post,  check out the Best WordPress Forum Plugins list!

WordPress Forum Plugins

Again in this case, you may think of linking a social media profile and share buttons to encourage blog comments but let me tell you that the best way you can pursue choosing a platform is to go for a forum. Yes! You got me right I am talking about adding a forum plugin for the WordPress site. And this is pretty simple as you have to do nothing but just to install a plugin and configure the settings. Adding a plugin to your website provides you can offer an interesting way to initiate discussions, share ideas, and collaborate. Also, as an admin, you can check out common complaints and comments. This will help you gain a better idea of what users want from your website.

Well in this article here at TemplateToaster offline website builder, I am going to give you a quick overview of the top forum plugins for WordPress Sites, and I am also going to discuss their pros and cons so that you can be pretty sure about choosing the best plugin for your WordPress site, so without wasting a single second let us get started!

List of the best WordPress Forum Plugins for Community building

1. BbPress
2. Wpforo -Forum
3. Asgaros Forum
4. Anspress-Question-Answer
5. Sabai Discuss
6. CM Answers

WordPress Forum Plugins Compared (2023)

WordPress Forum Plugins (Review)

1. bbPress – Top Forum Plugin

So the first and the foremost one is bbPress. Well, talking about my favourite WordPress forum plugin let me tell you that it is one of the best WordPress forum software and it is easy to add a forum with this plugin in your WordPress. bbPress is very light weighed and runs very fast than any other popular forum software. So if you are looking for such software, you can go for it.

Pros

• bbPress provide us with more than 110 plugins though which you can do whatever you want to and along with that bbPress integrates with any theme in the WordPress and for that, you don’t need to suffer from painful modifications and steps.
• The user interface is really nice and it is simple and safe to use even for beginners.
• Easy-to-install, you can find a step-by-step guide to install the plugin.
• It is very light-weight and fast as it has got no bloat, making this WordPress Forum plugin more reliable. Also, it is exclusively made for WordPress and follows the same coding as WordPress does.

Cons

• WordPress forum plugin is slow and clunky.
• Technical support is not available immediately.
• It has limited features.

2. Wpforo – WordPress forum plugin

Wpforo is the best forum solution of WordPress, it has a ton of amazing and astonishing features that can make you go crazy, this WordPress Forum Plugin has a very good user interface and it is not expensive too, one can easily afford this.

Pros

• Wpforo is compatible with all you can use it for small to huge communities no matter what.
• Provides multiple layout options.
• Support multiple languages.
• It provides different and beautiful forum layouts, making it more attractive. Also allows drag and drop forum management system.
• It allows you to add more themes and you can also customise themes.

Cons

• Social networking buttons are not available, as they are still working on them.
• Documentation is very essential; it needs to be improved.
• The users need to pay for add-ons.
• Multiple settings and options can be intimidating especially for newbies.

3. Asgaros Forum

Asgaros Forum is one of the most powerful WordPress Forum plugin with beautiful bulletins and colour scheme and themes. If you are searching for a forum plugin that you can run in the efficient and professional community then I personally recommend you to go for this Asgaros Forum plugin, it almost has no cons and a lot of features.

Pros

• It allows you to customize colors very quickly and also allows its guest or I can say visitors to post anything if they want to.
• Easily add profiles and members lists.
• Provides approval, banning, and reporting features.
• You can find notifications and feeds.
• It also provides you with the multisite compatibility and it is also compatible with mobile devices.

Cons

• It does not allow files to upload except for files of these formats like jpg, jpeg, gif, png, bmp, pdf.
• There are no built-in captcha options for spam protection.

4. AnsPress – Question and Answer

This amazing WordPress Forum plugin allows you to put questions and get their answers on your site or I can say that the strategy is almost similar to the quora. AnsPress is the best platform for questioning as it provides you with the complete questions and answers. It has got a very good user interface with high customization capability.

Pros

• It has got friend and followers system that mean like Instagram you are going to have fans here too.
• AnsPress is a developer-friendly WordPress forum plugin.
• Provides free add-ons like reputations, tags, categories, email notifications, bad words filters, reCaptcha, and dynamic text avatar.
• It allows users to edit profiles and also has got very attractive colour schemes that attract the user towards your site.

Cons

• Only advanced user can access Anspress-question-answer
• Anspress question answer only allows participants, moderator and editor to take part.

5. Sabai Discuss

Sabai Discuss is a WordPress forum plugin which is great for creating Q&A pages on a website. The plugin lets you ask questions from the website users and receive their answers. It is a perfect plugin if you are looking forward to building a question-and-answers driven community, starting a discussion forum, building a knowledge base, or even creating a helpdesk portal on a website.

Pros

• It is a beginner-friendly plugin with powerful features.
• The WordPress plugin is lightweight and easy to set up.
• Ensure responsive designs and layouts.
• 5 shortcodes and 9 WordPress widgets.

Cons

• Limited documentation and tutorial.
• The technical support is available for premium plans only for 6 months, which can be extended but you have to pay additional charges.

6. CM Answers

CM Answers allows your customers to post questions and answers. It comes with the flexibility to include moderation, voting system, question & answer. The stack overflow is a different style. With the CM Answer WordPress plugin, you can quickly customize the question and answer page on your website. You can filter unwanted content and allow users to answer your questions. Using this plugin is not tough. Anybody who wishes to have a fully working community or question-answer page, it can be done this with ease.

Key Features

• CM Answer allows you to put a lightweight and easy-to-use discussion forum on your WordPress website.
• Allowing users to answer questions on your website can help you maintain a better relationship with your users.
• With the question and answer page, all users can answer any question. Even from the questions posted by all the users.
• You can include an answer count on your WordPress website.
• Users can receive notifications while managing the follow-up questions.

Pros

• CM Answer allows you to include sorting in the question-answer pages.
• You can easily customize the templates used for your WordPress website.
• It comes in multiple languages.
• You can adjust the design as well as UX for mobile devices.

Cons

• CM Answer provides premium support with a premium plan.

Bonus Best WordPress Forum Plugins

7. Discussion Board – WordPress Forum Plugin

Discussion Board – WordPress Forum Plugin is another functional WordPress plugin. You can easily add a discussion board to your WordPress website. It comes with a one-click installation that makes it super easy to integrate this plugin into your WordPress website. Let your users have the freedom to ask questions and others to answer the same questions. This way you can help them connect with each other without any difficulty. You can easily use this plugin for your website.

Key Features

• Discussion Board – WordPress Forum Plugin lets you register and log in through the front-end.
• You easily display the topic on your page and all your users know about it.
• You can have a log-in page.
• User management gets simpler with Discussion Board – WordPress Forum Plugin.
• You can have a complete front-end registration.

Pros

• You can easily block any user as per your needs.
• This plugin is amazingly beneficial for your website.
• It can flawlessly work with any WordPress theme.
• It would typically include training websites, discussion forums, niche sites, bulletin boards, etc.

Cons

• The advanced features are limited to the premium plan.

8. Simple:Press – WordPress Forum Plugin

Simple:Press – WordPress Forum Plugin lets you add forum capability to your WordPress website. The ability to start a forum on your WordPress website is one of the factors that drive traffic to your website. To run a successful forum on your website and add additional powerful features to it is pretty simple with Simple:Press – WordPress Forum Plugin. Unlike many other WordPress forum plugins, Simple:Press is more powerful. The security of your WordPress website can be easily ensured and you can quickly scale up to tons of users. That too without any technical knowledge or anything.

Key Features

• Simple:Press – WordPress Forum Plugin supports a multi-level forum structure.
• You can have threads of posts on your website.
• You can have unlimited forums on your WordPress website.
• The facility of private and public forums is also there.
• The freedom to use breadcrumbs can help you figure out things in a more appealing manner.

Pros

• Simple:Press offers you a strong user group and permission system.
• If you wish you can restrict user access to wp-admin.
• You can edit topics in a forum.
• You can easily control floods on your website.

Cons

• Features such as analytics, ads, private messaging system, etc. are limited to the premium plan.

How to Choose the Best Forum Plugin for WordPress Site?

As mentioned in our list of best Forum plugins for WordPress, there are so many options to choose from. And it can get a bit confusing to understand which plugin will be best suitable for your website. So while choosing the forum plugin there are a few important things to look into. So we’ve noted down the list of a few important points that you must look into while selecting the best forum plugin for your website.

• Responsive Design: It is important to choose a plugin that provides responsive design options. It should provide a good mobile experience, as well as on other devices.
• Usability: Forums can be complex, with so many different features, designs, and functions. You should look for a plugin that offers many features, which are beneficial for your website.
• Customization: While adding a forum on your website you must look for a plugin that provides enough customization options. When it comes to style and functions, it should look like something that belongs to your website.
• User-Friendly: Choose a plugin that provides a user-friendly experience. Make sure it is easy to sign up, use, and is fast.
• Affordable Options: Choose a WordPress forum plugin that offers effective services at a reasonable price. It is always a good idea to look for a plugin that provides a free version. So you can try and test what works best for you.

Which WordPress Forum Plugins you Decide to Use ?

Well, in this article we have discussed many forum plugins for WordPress with their pros and cons and now I hope you can easily compare these forum plugins and decide on one of the Best WordPress Forum Plugins that suits you. All of these plugins are certainly worth your time, so you must check them out and sort the options based on your website requirements. And see what works for you. While we have sorted these plugins on the basis of active installations, ratings, and updates, all of them are the most suitable to create a lively community with great features and functionalities.

To add more awesomeness to your WordPress Site, you can download TemplateToaster WordPress theme builder and design cool themes. Moreover, It is fully compatible with all the above-mentioned best WordPress Forum plugins.