NodeBB vs Nodyx

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.

Nodyx is a self-hosted community platform that brings forums, real-time chat and voice channels into one installation. Each installation serves an independent community rather than part of a shared multi-community service. Forum tools include categories, threads, rich editing, polls, pinned posts, reactions, thanks and tags; chat and voice features include WebRTC channels and screen sharing. The maker says direct messages use ECDH P-256, AES-256-GCM and an ESY layer for end-to-end encryption. Its Grid Builder supports resizable columns, previews, theme editing and ZIP-uploaded widgets running in Shadow DOM. Installations can discover one another through a global directory and relay through NAT using nodyx-relay. Documented security features include TOTP and Signet two-factor authentication and a honeypot suite. Nodyx is AGPL-3.0 licensed and listed as free, with no feature gating. Setup options include Docker, a Windows Server PowerShell installer or manual installation on Linux, Mac or Windows; manual installation requires Node.js 22+, PostgreSQL 16+ and Redis 7+.