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Flarum Hosting
Host a modern discussion forum with extensions, moderation, and mobile-friendly conversations.
No setup fees-
One click deploy -
1 GB RAM Memory needed -
15 GB Disk Space Needed -
From 2 € Price
Official links
Flarum’s official links and original website
Flarum Website
More
Tech
- Docker image
- mondedie/flarum:stable
- Default port
- 8888
- Database
- mariadb
How Flarum works
Flarum organises community conversation into discussions and replies that members read and answer through a responsive web interface. Administrators define categories or tag structures, user roles, moderation rules, and extension choices. The result is a focused forum where a topic can develop over time instead of disappearing through a fast-moving group chat.
Member accounts, discussions, permissions, and settings are stored in MariaDB. Notifications can appear inside the application, while upstream email-dependent functions ordinarily require a configured mail service. Extensions can change the feature set considerably, so the behaviour of one Flarum installation may differ from another even when both use the same core forum.
Key Flarum features
A streamlined composer makes it practical to read a discussion and write a reply without moving through several separate pages. Mentions, reactions, moderation tools, tags, and user controls support common community workflows. The responsive layout serves desktop and mobile browsers from the same installation.
Extensions are one of Flarum’s central strengths, adding integrations, appearance changes, authentication methods, and community functions. They also introduce compatibility responsibility. Administrators should evaluate each extension against the installed release, limit unnecessary additions, and test an update before relying on an extension for a critical moderation or sign-in path.
Flarum vs Discourse
Flarum is a compact self-hosted forum whose experience can be shaped through extensions. Discourse is a broader community platform that combines long-form topics with moderation systems, trust levels, chat, themes, plugins, social login options, and vendor-hosted plans.
Discourse may suit organisations that want a mature managed service, extensive governance controls, and several community modes in one platform. Flarum is attractive when a lighter discussion interface and direct extension choices matter more than the surrounding enterprise feature set, though administrators assume more responsibility for extension compatibility.
Who uses Flarum
Open-source projects, customer communities, clubs, and specialist groups use Flarum for searchable conversations that should remain useful after the day they were posted. Product teams can run announcement and support categories, while educators can create subject-based discussion spaces for a defined audience.
A forum still needs active moderation and clear participation rules. Software can organise topics and permissions, but it cannot decide what belongs in each category or resolve community disputes. Plan roles, moderation coverage, and extension ownership before public registration attracts a larger audience.
Self-hosting Flarum: requirements and cost
The practical workload comes from active members, discussion volume, searches, uploaded assets, enabled extensions, and concurrent page requests. MariaDB stores users, posts, permissions, and configuration. Its container is included but unmanaged, and its memory requirement is additional to the exported Flarum application minimum.
AvaHost recommends Plan 2 at €5 for the complete forum stack. The hosted forum includes one-click setup, custom-domain HTTPS, automatic application updates, and scheduled backups. Application email is disabled, so emailed notifications, digests, invitations, and email-based password recovery are unavailable; members should use in-app activity and administrators should retain a separate account-recovery process.
F.A.Q
Flarum starts at €5 on Plan 2 after including capacity for its MariaDB container. This recommendation covers a modest community with ordinary discussion and browsing activity. Active members, posts, searches, uploads, enabled extensions, and simultaneous requests are the main factors that indicate whether the forum should move to a larger plan.
The one-click stack creates MariaDB and connects Flarum to it automatically. User accounts, discussions, replies, tags, permissions, and configuration depend on that database. MariaDB is included but unmanaged, so administrators should keep database data aligned with persistent application files and extension choices when planning an update, migration, or restoration.
A custom forum domain can be connected, and automated HTTPS is applied after the DNS records point to the hosted service. Choose the final hostname before publishing invitation links or configuring external integrations. After attaching it, test sign-in, discussion links, uploads, moderation pages, and any extension that stores or validates the public application URL.
In-app activity remains available, but AvaHost disables application email. Flarum therefore cannot deliver emailed notifications, digests, invitations, or email-based password recovery from this deployment. Community owners should explain that limitation to members, retain administrator access carefully, and avoid installing extensions whose primary workflow depends on outbound mail.