Community Engine vs NodeBB
Community Engine
communitystack.io
NodeBB
nodebb.orgSide by side
| Figure | Community Engine | NodeBB |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | £200/mo | $20/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 4 | 6 |
| Spec score · Community Platforms | 8.5 (#27) | 9.3 (#3) |
| Custom domain | Yes | Yes |
| Founded | 2025 | 2014 |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Moderation tools | Yes | Yes |
| Security | Identity options include passkeys, magic links, OAuth, SAML 2.0, OIDC, SCIM provisioning and two-factor authentication. | NodeBB operates a bug bounty program, but eligible testing is limited to try.nodebb.org and third-party plugins are excluded. |
Plans
Community Engine
- Enterprise£8,000 a year
- Directory API£2,400 a year
- Market Intelligence£6,000 a year
- CoreFree
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
Community Engine
Community Engine has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.
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.