# NodeBB Software Pricing, Alternatives & More 2026 | Capterra > With the help of Capterra, learn about NodeBB Software - reviews, pricing plans, popular comparisons to other Community products and more. Source: https://www.capterra.com/p/161236/NodeBB --- # NodeBB Software Review 2026: Features, Integrations, Pros & Cons Last updated on March 13, 2026 Provider data verified by our Software Research team, and reviews moderated by our Reviews Verification team. Independent research methodology Capterra’s researchers use a mix of verified reviews, independent research and objective methodologies to bring you selection and ranking information you can trust. While we may earn a referral fee when you visit a provider through our links or speak to an advisor, this has no influence on our research or methodology. [Learn more](https://www.capterra.com/resources/proprietary-data-research/) How Capterra verifies reviews Capterra carefully verified over 2.5 million+ reviews to bring you authentic software experiences from real users. Our human moderators verify that reviewers are real people and that reviews are authentic. They use leading tech to analyze text quality and to detect plagiarism and generative AI. [Learn more](https://www.capterra.com/resources/how-we-verify-reviews/) How Capterra ensures transparency Capterra lists all providers across its website—not just those that pay us—so that users can make informed purchase decisions. Capterra is free for users. Software providers pay us for sponsored profiles to receive web traffic and sales opportunities. Sponsored profiles include a link-out icon that takes users to the provider’s website. [Learn more](https://www.capterra.com/resources/how-we-ensure-transparency/) [Description](#description)[Use cases](#use-cases)[Alternatives](#alternatives)[Features](#features)[Pricing](#pricing)[Integrations](#integrations)[Support](#support)[Reviews](#reviews) NodeBB ## What is NodeBB? NodeBB is modern forum software. It is highly customizable, and combines all the advantages of today's mobile and social web with the deep community engagement of classic Internet bulletin boards. Built on the high-performance Node.js platform, NodeBB can scale to power the largest and most active brand communities. ## What is NodeBB used for? [Community](https://www.capterra.com/community-software/) Top alternative Featured Overall rating Based on 14 user reviews Reviews sentiment Positive \- Neutral \- Negative \- Starting price $250 Flat Rate, Per Month Free trial available Capterra Shortlist charts the highest-rated and most popular products... Our "Best of" badge program showcases products with the highest ratings... Our "Best of" badge program showcases products with the highest ratings... Do you work for NodeBB?[Manage this product listing](https://digitalmarkets.gartner.com/get-listed/claim-bx?url=https://nodebb.org&name=NodeBB) ## Compare with a popular alternative Capterra selects software alternatives based on relevant features, verified user reviews and user interactions. Placement may be influenced by client status. ### NodeBB 4.7 (14) VS. [4.7 (24,077)](https://www.capterra.com/p/135003/Slack/reviews/) Starting Price $250 Flat Rate, Per Month Starting Price $8.75 Per User, Per Month Free Trial Free Version Pricing Options Free Trial Free Version Ease Of Use 4.2 (14) Ease Of Use 4.6 (22,631) Value For Money 4.2 (13) Value For Money 4.5 (15,210) Customer Service 4.4 (14) Customer Service 4.4 (13,474) ## NodeBB alternatives [4.6 (5,138)](https://www.capterra.com/p/153140/Connecteam/reviews/) Starting price $29.00 Per User, Per Month Pricing Options Free Trial Free Version User Rating 96% of reviewers rated it above 4 stars [4.9 (151)](https://www.capterra.com/p/140805/ToucanTech/reviews/) Starting price $8000.00 Per User, Per Month Pricing Options Free Trial Free Version User Rating 99% of reviewers rated it above 4 stars Highest Rated [5.0 (11)](https://www.capterra.com/p/10029832/HOA-Central/#reviews) Starting price Contact vendor for pricing Pricing Options Free Trial Free Version User Rating 100% of reviewers rated it above 4 stars [4.8 (803)](https://www.capterra.com/p/133173/Brilliant-Directories/reviews/) Starting price $1450.00 Per User, Per Month Pricing Options Free Trial Free Version User Rating 99% of reviewers rated it above 4 stars [View all alternatives](https://www.capterra.com/p/161236/NodeBB/alternatives/) ## Features Features with the highest number of reviews are displayed first. Those that have no reviews appear next, sorted alphabetically. Alerts/Notifications Alerts or notifications of various types such as pop-up messages, sounds, banners, or badges API Application programming interface that allows for integration with other systems/databases Chat/Messaging Communicate using direct chat or messages within the system Contact Database Centralized database of stakeholders and their contact information such as names, address, phone number etc. Content Management Handles digital content throughout its lifecycle, from creation and storage to distribution and archiving Discussions/Forums Online forums/groups where users can ask questions, share ideas, best practices, etc. NodeBB 17 features Alerts or notifications of various types such as pop-up messages, sounds, banners, or badges Application programming interface that allows for integration with other systems/databases Communicate using direct chat or messages within the system Centralized database of stakeholders and their contact information such as names, address, phone number etc. Handles digital content throughout its lifecycle, from creation and storage to distribution and archiving Online forums/groups where users can ask questions, share ideas, best practices, etc. Find & retrieve relevant data or documents Organize and edit a group of people's policy and members The creation, development, and sharing of potentially innovative new ideas Comprehensive list that contains information and details of all the members associated with a particular organization or group Database of members to track personal information of individuals and families Access software remotely via mobile devices Controls/tools to moderate the session Notifications that are delivered to users as soon as an event occurs Collection, analysis, and representation of numerical data and generation of reports to understand various patterns Allow users to access multiple services after entering their login credentials once Integrate with social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. Features 4.0 (14) 4.0 Based on 14 reviews ## Pricing Value for money 4.2 (13) Free Trial Free Version [View pricing plan details](https://www.capterra.com/p/161236/NodeBB/pricing/) Village $250.00 Flat Rate,Per Month It includes: - Businesses and Groups - Plus Community Forum Support - Small Startups - Standard Email Support - Up to 2 Million Monthly Page Views City $750.00 Flat Rate,Per Month It includes: - Great Value for Growing Businesses and Groups - Plus Community Support Support - Priority Email Support - Up to 10 Million Monthly Page Views Value for money 4.2 (13) 4.2 Based on 13 reviews ## Integrations [ PayPal](https://www.capterra.com/p/207944/PayPal/)[ Slack](https://www.capterra.com/p/135003/Slack/)[ Mailchimp](https://www.capterra.com/p/110228/MailChimp/)[ WordPress](https://www.capterra.com/p/131687/WordPress/)[ Twilio](https://www.capterra.com/p/180158/Twilio-Communications-Platform/) ## Support, customer service and training options Customer Service 4.4 (14) Support - Email/Help Desk - FAQs/Forum - Knowledge Base - Phone Support - 24/7 (Live rep) - Chat Training - In Person - Live Online - Webinars - Documentation - Videos Deployment - Web - Android - iPhone/iPad Typical users - Freelancers - Small businesses - Mid size businesses - Enterprises Customer Service 4.4 (14) 4.4 Based on 14 reviews ## User reviews Overall rating 4.7 Based on 14 reviews Filter by rating 5(10) 4(4) 3(0) 2(0) 1(0) Mentioned topic Sorted by most recent Ramindu D. Software Technical Lead Computer Software ### "The modern bulletin board software" 5.0 Overall Rating 5.0 5.0 Ease of Use 4.0 4.0 Features 5.0 5.0 Customer Service 5.0 5.0 Likelihood to Recommend 8/10 January 3, 2020 NodeBB proved to be a cut above other outdated forum building tools in its speed and modern integrations. Pros NodeBB is a modern, fast forum building tool that brings a lot of current social features and integrations to the old-school bulletin board. IT provides lightening fast response times and is full open source so a breeze to clone from Github and set up. It provides multiple database integration options and quick integration with 3rd party services as well. Further integrations can be carried out through its comprehensive suite of RESTful web services. Cons While the provisioned services for NodeBB are quite useful and provide effective customer support, using a provisioned instance of NodeBB can be quite costly. Review source Incentivized review: software users are invited to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive for their time and effort. All incentivized reviews are subject to our verification process prior to publication. AU Anonymous User Manager, Data Analytics Financial Services ### "Good forum software" 4.0 Overall Rating 4.0 4.0 Ease of Use 4.0 4.0 Features 4.0 4.0 Customer Service 5.0 5.0 Likelihood to Recommend 9/10 September 6, 2018 A very active development team that is looking to improve their software. The forum software itself is pretty straightforward to use. We have it hosted by them so I couldn't say what it's like on the back end, but everything works for us on the front end. 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. Review source Incentivized review: software users are invited to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive for their time and effort. All incentivized reviews are subject to our verification process prior to publication. DG Danny G. CSR Retail ### "Great Forum Software" 5.0 Overall Rating 5.0 5.0 Ease of Use 4.0 4.0 Features 4.0 4.0 Customer Service 4.0 4.0 Likelihood to Recommend 8/10 September 4, 2018 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. Review source Incentivized review: software users are invited to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive for their time and effort. All incentivized reviews are subject to our verification process prior to publication. Vamsi K. Product Manager Financial Services ### "Neutral review" 4.0 Overall Rating 4.0 4.0 Ease of Use 3.0 3.0 Features 4.0 4.0 Customer Service 5.0 5.0 Likelihood to Recommend 8/10 September 2, 2018 When we first started building our community, it was so great to be able to setup nodebb quickly without much developer help. Things are very well thought through regarding user onboarding. But as the community grew, many features started to make little sense for a 2k+ community. Things where I would like to see NodeBB put more focus on: - Emails - Design elements (Ex: upvote and downvote buttons are too small & hard to locate. Social share buttons , almost impossible to figure out where they are) - More support in terms of how to build good communities. You have a good software, but most people are unaware what are user communities, how to build & grow them, their advantages etc. 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. Review source Incentivized review: software users are invited to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive for their time and effort. All incentivized reviews are subject to our verification process prior to publication. DE Danny E. Software Engineer Computer Software ### "Great Open Source Forum, Poor Business Decision" 4.0 Overall Rating 4.0 4.0 Ease of Use 2.0 2.0 Features 3.0 3.0 Customer Service 5.0 5.0 Likelihood to Recommend 5/10 August 31, 2018 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 Review source Incentivized review: software users are invited to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive for their time and effort. All incentivized reviews are subject to our verification process prior to publication. Mikey G. VP Music ### "Forum for College Radio" 5.0 Overall Rating 5.0 5.0 Ease of Use 5.0 5.0 Features 5.0 5.0 Customer Service 5.0 5.0 Likelihood to Recommend 8/10 August 30, 2018 Pros The backend was simple and super user friendly. Cons The peer to peer engagement could be stronger Review source Incentivized review: software users are invited to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive for their time and effort. All incentivized reviews are subject to our verification process prior to publication. AU Anonymous User Community Manager E-Learning ### "NodeBB Review" 4.0 Overall Rating 4.0 4.0 Ease of Use 3.0 3.0 Features 3.0 3.0 Customer Service 4.0 4.0 Likelihood to Recommend 8/10 August 29, 2018 Overall, I would recommend NodeBB as a forum software to companies who would like to test the very idea of having a forum, or who are not ready to commit to large budgets and extended functionality. If you don't have any resources to write custom CSS, you could rely on one of their pre-made themes, and select from among 10+ skins. If you have design and coding resources, your opportunities will be much greater. NodeBB allows you to have a SSO option, which was a strong requirement for us, and their most basic plan is more than enough for us at the moment. They were also very kind to refund us for a few months at the beginning of our cycle when we were not using the forum, which left us with a great impression and established trust. Repeatedly we reached out to them with a request to develop certain functionality, for which they provided reasonable quotes. 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. Review source Incentivized review: software users are invited to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive for their time and effort. All incentivized reviews are subject to our verification process prior to publication. MV Mukesh V. Systems Admin Computer & Network Security ### "Really, The best forum software I've used!" 5.0 Overall Rating 5.0 5.0 Ease of Use 5.0 5.0 Features 5.0 5.0 Customer Service 5.0 5.0 Likelihood to Recommend 10/10 August 28, 2018 For my business providing an intuitive, flexible and adaptable UI to the users is key. I have found this software meets all my needs and the NodeBB team are experts in what they do, "They know their stuff" I found that they will make your idea become reality, providing you with feedback on a possible alternative ways of meeting your needs, I have found the NodeBB team participate with what you are trying to achieve, you don't feel like your on your own, they help you get there. Pros The forum software is easy on the eyes, some forum software looks too busy, with too many options and not intuitive but, NodeBB is clean and easy to use. The software is flexible and adaptable for your needs. The software has many options, I have adapted it to what I need, switching off features I do not need for my business. Cons The software team at NodeBB are keen to help with every issue you may encounter, so I have not really found any cons as such which would deter me from using the software. The software team are constantly updating the software, with additions and new features. I have had suggestions for what I have considered improvements and the NodeBB have listened, the features could take some time to be released, but the team have to consider feedback from many users and the best for improvements is released. I have used the NodeBB's customisation route many times, to get the features I need. Review source Incentivized review: software users are invited to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive for their time and effort. All incentivized reviews are subject to our verification process prior to publication. AU Anonymous User Co-Founder and Developer Computer Software ### "Great! API needs documentation" 5.0 Overall Rating 5.0 5.0 Ease of Use 5.0 5.0 Features 3.0 3.0 Customer Service 2.0 2.0 Likelihood to Recommend 8/10 August 24, 2018 Using it as a community for hyperPad. Deployed using a docker container. Lots of different themes and examples of how to use things. Built in package manager (though might be tricky when using docker) 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. Review source Incentivized review: software users are invited to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive for their time and effort. All incentivized reviews are subject to our verification process prior to publication. RS Russell S. CEO Consumer Goods ### "Best "Forum" software there is" 5.0 Overall Rating 5.0 5.0 Ease of Use 5.0 5.0 Features 5.0 5.0 Customer Service 3.0 3.0 Likelihood to Recommend 7/10 August 24, 2018 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 Review source Incentivized review: software users are invited to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive for their time and effort. All incentivized reviews are subject to our verification process prior to publication. [View all Reviews](https://www.capterra.com/p/161236/NodeBB/reviews/) ## Top-rated software of 2026 ### Fill out the form and we'll send a list of the top-rated software based on real user reviews directly to your inbox. Independent research methodology Capterra's researchers use a mix of verified reviews, independent research and objective methodologies to bring you selection and ranking information you can trust. While we may earn a referral fee when you visit a provider through our links or speak to an advisor, this has no influence on our research or methodology. [Learn more](https://www.capterra.com/resources/proprietary-data-research/) How Capterra verifies reviews Capterra carefully verified over 2.5 million+ reviews to bring you authentic software experiences from real users. Our human moderators verify that reviewers are real people and that reviews are authentic. They use leading tech to analyze text quality and to detect plagiarism and generative AI. [Learn more](https://www.capterra.com/resources/how-we-verify-reviews/) How Capterra ensures transparency Capterra lists all providers across its website—not just those that pay us—so that users can make informed purchase decisions. Capterra is free for users. Software providers pay us for sponsored profiles to receive web traffic and sales opportunities. Sponsored profiles include a link-out icon that takes users to the provider's website. [Learn more](https://www.capterra.com/resources/how-we-ensure-transparency/)