Communa vs NodeBB
Communa
communa.app
NodeBB
nodebb.orgSide by side
| Figure | Communa | NodeBB |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | $20/mo |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| iOS | Yes | — |
| Android | Yes | — |
| API | — | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 6 |
| Spec score · Community Platforms | 8.0 (#64) | 9.3 (#3) |
| Company | The product is owned and operated by Moward, Inc., incorporated in Delaware, with an office in Richmond, Virginia; the pages opened do not state a founding year. | NodeBB says it was founded in 2014 by three developers and identifies the company as NodeBB, Inc. |
| Moderation tools | Yes | Yes |
| Private spaces | Yes | Yes |
| Product | Communa is association management software for professional societies, trade bodies, industry councils and chambers of commerce. | NodeBB is a community discussion platform for forums and online communities. |
| Security | The privacy policy says data is encrypted in transit and at rest, staff access uses multifactor authentication and least privilege, access is logged, and backups are encrypted. | NodeBB operates a bug bounty program, but eligible testing is limited to try.nodebb.org and third-party plugins are excluded. |
| Support | Communa says its team responds to contact requests within one business day and provides onboarding assistance. | Paid hosting plans list priority support, and NodeBB also points users to its community support forum. |
Plans
NodeBB
- Starter$20 a month
- Hamlet$100 a month
- Village$250 a month
- City$750 a month
- Self-hostedFree
- Enterprise SolutionsPriced on request
In their own words
NodeBB
NodeBB is a community discussion platform for forums and online communities, including brand communities and product support boards. Members can write topics and replies using a visual editor or Markdown, chat in real time, and receive notifications for follows, likes and topic subscriptions. They can form groups with activity feeds, tag topics and follow tags for updates. Administrators can create unlimited moderator and administrator accounts and set their permissions. More than 500 plugins and themes can be installed through the control panel, and public Read and RESTful Write APIs support integrations. Spam-prevention integrations include Akismet, StopForumSpam and Project Honeypot. Self-hosted NodeBB is free to download and install under GPLv3; hosted plans start at $20 a month and include priority support. Basic full-text search uses the bundled database engine; Solr and Elasticsearch search require third-party plugins. Installation guides cover Linux, macOS, Windows and cloud deployment options including Docker.