NodeBB Reviews

Pros
We've been using NodeBB to run our forum for more than a year. Overall, it's a great *value for money* tool. The interface is relatively easy to use: after a bit of work of understanding where different settings are controlled, two people, one of whom was a trainee, could work it out alright. We like the look and feel it provides, which gives an impression of a website, rather than your average forum with pages and pages of content to scroll through and posts that look like a digitalised list of archives from the national library. The support team is responsive. Since they are a small company they take time to get back, but they almost always could help with the answer, or help to work out an alternative solution. They were one of the first forums to comply with GDPR, which was great news for us.

Cons
Since it's a new platform and a small team, there isn't a lot of learning materials about the software. Because plugins are open to the community to create, they would sometimes interfere with one another and break things. There is no curation to the list of recommended or updated plugins. And there is no quick way to understand if a task could be solved with a plugin or not (could be solved through documentation?). One needs to spend time with the community to work this out.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
Plugins are the best feature. There is a plugin for almost every need & its easy to install & use it quickly

Cons
Design can be better, need to do more research on how communities evolve & design patterns to make the product inherently sticky. Email freqency settings are quite poor. Its either spammy or no email at all.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
• Infinitely extendable with plugins and widgets • Open source, making it possible to find the source of any issue • The data sent to every page is easily accessible in JSON via API • Great support for forums hosted by NodeBB

Cons
• Plugins and widgets break on every upgrade. It's impossible to keep the system up to date without a lot of effort and developer resources • While the system is extendable, many things that should be built in are either second class add-ons or non existent. We had to build our own search widget, for example. • We have discovered numerous security issues and bugs that NodeBB should have been aware of themselves

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 5/10

Pros
There are several pros with NodeBB, it as a sleek design, not like old forums from the 90's. It's fast, I mean really fast. Functionalities as onsite chat makes the difference. The way it's built... to scale, that's a big plus.

Cons
The installation process is not that friendly, but, that's on the installer. Another con would be the lack of features as more mature alternatives do have, but, it's understandable, NodeBB is rather young with a 1.10 version.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
That it is both open sourced and that it can be hosted by the developer. The forum is both supportable and portable because of that. It's got a very nice user interface and I think it's just easy to get around, and it's responsive. Every part of the UI is clean and modern, and they've built it to accept many third-party integrations.

Cons
I wish there were more themes for the forums. There are alot of switches to see which fonts / colors work. I do like how it's very open, but it's not immediately obvious that in some cases those third party integrations cost additional fees.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
Easy to install, good extensions. Writing extensions is easy.

Cons
The API has no documentation. Wanted to make some integrations, but couldn't figure out how to authenticate from a third party.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
NodeBB is easy to setup, easy to personalize, and easy to administrate. There are several useful plugins that can be installed from the rich community.

Cons
Not all plugins have the same quality, meaning that compatibility of some of them can break when upgrading the forum.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
It's open source, very customizable. Their hosting plans are very competitive compared to similar competitors. The user interface is very modern. Their customer service is very quick to respond.

Cons
The UI isn't consistent in some areas, it's a bit of a tinkerer's software. I wouldn't put it as enterprise ready.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
Modern and easy to use interface for customers. Leaves the old "forum" look behind and brings new age tech to discussion boards.

Cons
Backend could be easier to use. Make it look more the the frontend

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 7/10

Pros
Clean and easy to use front facing software that has modern aesthetics

Cons
Backend could use visual work. Would like it to resemble more of the front end.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
The backend was simple and super user friendly.

Cons
The peer to peer engagement could be stronger

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
It's modern. It has modern features. Competitor platforms don't come close to being able to offer as slick of a solution. I like how easy the plugins are to use.

Cons
I don't have many complaints. It's pretty awesome.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10