If you’re building an online community, then there is a good chance you are considering adding a forum to your website to allow users to enter into discussions with each other.

We’ve noticed a lot of blog posts recommending outdated, no longer supported or non-forum solutions in their “best forum plugins” articles.

So to help you decide which forum plugin to use on your WordPress website we’ve created this post to give you a quick overview of the best forum plugins in 2019.

1. ForumWP

Pros:

• Most modern design and user experience
• Inherits theme styling
• Lightweight and fast
• Built by same developers of Ultimate Member with integration with Ultimate Member via the free ForumWP extension

Cons:

• Recently released so does not currently have as wide a feature set as offered by the other plugins
• No free plan if you are only using free plugins on your website

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2. bbPress

Pros:

• Most used forum plugin, with over 300,000 active installs
• Simple to install and use
• Lightweight and fast
• Integrated with Ultimate Member with paid extension

Cons:

• Outdated design and user experience
• No guaranteed support
• bbPress addons are made by different developers. Many are outdated and not supported

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3. wpForo

Pros:

• Various layouts to choose from
• Integration with Ultimate Member via their plugin

Cons:

• Amount of settings can be overwhelming
• Does not follow default wp-admin interface
• Does not inherit theme styling

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4. Asgaros Forum

Pros:

• Simple forum plugin
• Lightweight and fast

Cons:

• Does not follow default wp-admin interface
• Does not inherit theme styling
• Does not integrate with Ultimate Member

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Summary

If you are using Ultimate Member on your website we would recommend using either ForumWP or bbPress as we have built native integrations for these plugins via our own extensions.

ForumWP is the best option if you don’t mind paying for plugins and are looking for a forum plugin that has the deepest integration with Ultimate Member.

However, if you can only use a free plugin on your website then bbPress will still work fine with Ultimate Member.