What’s the cheapest way to create a forum?

[Sai]

What’s the cheapest way to create a discussion forum these days? The target audience is a bunch of developers. 50-100 max users.

 

[Navjot Singh]

For the forum software, use Discourse. And the cheapest server from Vultr or DigitalOcean.

 

[Skeeter]

How much discourse costs for 1 month?

 

[Smh]

It's free if you host it yourself.

 

[pothi]

Whatever the forum software we use, the cost of sending emails need to be considered if we are self hosting.

Basically, there are three types of coats involved for the self-hosted...

1. Hosting
2. Email sending cost
3. The forum software (there are plenty of free and open source forum softwares are available too)

There are some other costs involved too such as add-ons and customisations.

 

[Navjot Singh]

For emails, I recommend Amazon SES. It has a bit of a learning curve to set it up, but cheap as fuck and doesn't require a fixed monthly fees. Its pay per use.

 

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[Sai]

Do we have any managed offerings? Self hosting Discourse will need some regular maintenance work.

 

[Sushubh]

Managed hosting that keeps your forum software updated is going to be expensive. Managed Discourse Hosting - Communiteq seems to be one apart from the official cloud hosting option.

Discourse pricing

Official Discourse hosting plans for communities of every size.

www.discourse.org

 

[pothi]

Communiteq primarily focuses on customers from Europe due to their timezone and working hours. Just two people behind it. They are incredible people, though. I can vouch for their support and knowledge.

 

[Sai]

Before I jump into Discourse either on Communiteq or official hosting, is there any option I should explore?