Flarum
Hosting
Install Flarum in one click on our fast, reliable UK web hosting. Fully managed with free SSL, daily backups, and dedicated expert support.
What is Flarum?
Flarum is a modern, lightweight forum platform written in PHP using the Laravel framework on the back end and a single-page Mithril.js application on the front end. It started as the successor to esoTalk and FluxBB and reached its 1.0 release in 2022 after a long beta. It has been actively developed since.
The default look is clean and mobile-first, with a discussion-thread style UI that feels closer to Discourse than to traditional bulletin-board software like phpBB. Features include tags, sticky discussions, mentions, real-time updates, OAuth login (Google, GitHub, Facebook, custom OIDC), markdown posting, file uploads, moderation tools and a permissions system that supports multiple groups.
Flarum suits modern community projects: SaaS user communities, open-source project forums, niche enthusiast groups, support communities and small to medium online clubs. The extension catalogue is healthy and growing. Performance on our shared hosting is excellent for forums up to a few hundred posts a day, and bigger sites can scale onto our cloud servers.
365i’s editorial review of Flarum
Flarum is the forum software I get genuinely excited about, and I don't say that lightly. I've hosted forums on phpBB since the early 2000s, on vBulletin and IPB and Discourse and a dozen smaller players. Most of them were fine. Flarum is the first one in years that I actually want to set up for clients because the experience is so much better.
The thing that hits you first is the speed. The Mithril.js front end loads once and then most navigation is instantaneous, with new posts streaming in over a websocket connection. It feels like a modern web app, not a traditional forum. On our PHP 8.5, MySQL 8 and OPcache stack, Flarum is genuinely quick even on the £5.99 shared plan.
"In over 20 years of hosting, I've watched forum software go through several waves. phpBB and SMF dominated the 2000s, vBulletin took the commercial side, then Discourse modernised the conversation. Flarum is the first open-source forum in a decade that genuinely competes with Discourse on user experience while running on standard PHP hosting that small communities can actually afford."
Mark McNeece, Founder, 365i Hosting
The second thing is how clean the moderation tools are. Tags replace traditional categories and feel more flexible. The mentions and notifications system is sensible. The permissions UI doesn't make you want to throw a chair. Adding a new moderator takes about 10 seconds, and the audit trail of moderator actions is built in.
Where Flarum trades off is feature breadth. Compared to phpBB, which has had two decades to grow every feature anyone has ever wanted, Flarum is leaner. There's no built-in arcade mod, no point system out of the box, no signature blocks (intentional, to keep posts clean), no traditional polls. Most of those exist as extensions, but the catalogue is smaller than phpBB's. If your community absolutely needs a 2005-era feature, check it's available before committing.
For hosting, Flarum needs PHP 8.0 or higher, MySQL 5.7+ or PostgreSQL, and a couple of standard PHP extensions (mbstring, exif, gd, fileinfo). All of those are available on our hosting by default. The one-click installer takes care of the deployment, sets up the database, and you're posting in about a minute.
One word of practical advice. Flarum's extensions install through Composer rather than a plugin uploader inside the admin. We support Composer on all hosting plans, but the workflow is different from WordPress's "click to install". If you're not comfortable with the command line, our support team can install extensions for you within reason. For active community managers we usually recommend the cloud server tier (£9.99/mo) because SSH and Composer access feel more natural there.
For the right kind of community, modern, fast-paced, design-aware, Flarum is the best forum experience you can self-host today. And it's free.
Why Host Flarum with 365i?
Our web hosting is built for PHP applications like Flarum. Every plan includes everything you need to launch and grow.
One-Click Installation
Install Flarum with a single click from your control panel. No manual configuration, no FTP uploads, no database setup.
Free SSL Certificate
Every site gets a free SSL certificate, automatically configured and renewed. Keep your Flarum installation secure from day one.
99.9%+ Uptime Track Record
Enterprise-grade data centres in the UK, US & Asia with redundant power, cooling, and network connectivity. Shared hosting runs on autoscaling cloud infrastructure with a 99.9%+ historical uptime record; Managed Cloud Servers target 99.99% uptime; our VPS products carry a contractual 99.99% network availability SLA with service credits.
Daily Backups
Automatic daily backups with easy one-click restore. Your Flarum data is always safe and recoverable.
7-Day Expert Support
UK-based hosting specialists available 7 days a week including evenings, weekends, and bank holidays. Real people, real help.
SSD Storage
All plans run on fast SSD storage for snappy page loads and responsive admin panels. Flarum performs at its best.
Where Flarum Fits
Best for
Modern, design-conscious community projects: SaaS user communities, open-source project forums, niche enthusiast groups, support communities and online clubs that value speed and a clean interface over depth of legacy features. Particularly suited to communities of up to a few thousand active members posting up to several hundred posts a day, where mobile experience matters and traditional bulletin-board features aren't essential.
Watch for
Flarum's extension catalogue is smaller than phpBB or vBulletin, so check that any specific feature you need (polls, signatures, arcade, gamification, custom BBCode tags) is available before committing. Extensions install through Composer rather than a click-to-install admin uploader, which suits developers but feels alien to some forum admins. The platform doesn't have a built-in private-message system as rich as older boards.
Web Hosting for Flarum
Get Flarum up and running in minutes with our fast, reliable web hosting. Every plan includes one-click installation, free SSL, UK, US & Asia data centres, and dedicated expert support.
- 1 website
- 10 GB SSD storage
- Free SSL certificate
- 80+ 1-click installs
- Unlimited LVE resources
- Autoscaling cloud platform
- UK, US & Asia data centres
- 5 websites
- Unlimited SSD storage
- Free SSL certificate
- 80+ 1-click installs
- CDN included
-
Timeline Backup/Restore
Timeline Backup
- Website files and databases
- Daily snapshots, 30-day retention
- One-click file and database restore
- Everything above, plus email mailbox backups
- 60-day database retention
- Mailbox restore (to a temporary mailbox first, then sync back)
- Unlimited LVE resources
- Autoscaling cloud platform
- UK, US & Asia data centres
- 10 websites
- Unlimited SSD storage
- Free SSL certificate
- 80+ 1-click installs
- CDN included
-
Timeline Backup/Restore (Pro)
Timeline Backup
- Website files and databases
- Daily snapshots, 30-day retention
- One-click file and database restore
- Everything above, plus email mailbox backups
- 60-day database retention
- Mailbox restore (to a temporary mailbox first, then sync back)
- Unlimited LVE resources
- Autoscaling cloud platform
- UK, US & Asia data centres
All prices exclude VAT. No contract, cancel any time.
Need More Power for Flarum?
For high-traffic sites, large catalogues, or mission-critical deployments, our fully managed cloud servers give Flarum dedicated resources and enterprise-grade performance.
- Dedicated CPU, RAM & SSD storage
- 99.99% uptime
- Fully managed by our team
- Choose 365i, AWS, or Google Cloud
Servers
Servers
Servers
A Flarum case from our books
A UK indie game developer came to us in late 2024 wanting to launch a player community forum to support their first commercial release. They had previously tried Discord, found it noisy and unsearchable, and wanted a real forum. Their requirements were modern UI, mobile-first, fast on flaky hotel wifi at conferences, and a budget that would survive their first 18 months of solo running.
We installed Flarum on our £5.99 shared plan, ran a soft launch with 80 beta testers, and helped them set up tags, moderator roles and OAuth login through their existing Steam account using a community extension. By month six the forum had 1,400 registered users averaging 60-90 posts a day. Page-load times stayed under 700ms, the websocket-based real-time updates worked reliably, and they were spending around 15 minutes a day on moderation thanks to the clean tools. Hosting cost over the year was £71.88, which is roughly the same as one month of a managed forum SaaS service.
What we would tell anyone in the same spot: don't pick a forum platform because it has every feature in the world. Pick the one your community will actually enjoy using on their phone at 11pm.
Anonymised at the client's request. Industry, scale, and timeline preserved.
What we look for in forum software hosting
Forum software has aged interestingly. The core engineering questions have not changed in fifteen years (database schema for threads, search across many posts, spam handling, mail flow for notifications), and we have tuned for them on shared hosting since 2002. Our default PHP and MySQL settings cope with forums up to several hundred thousand posts. Above that, the shape of the queries matters more than raw CPU and a small managed cloud server with predictable I/O is the right step.
More applications you can install on 365i hosting
Beyond Forum Software, our one-click installer covers 79 open-source PHP applications across 27 categories. A small selection from across the catalogue:
Flarum Hosting FAQ
Common questions we hear from people running Flarum on our hosting.
Yes. Flarum is in our one-click installer, so you choose your domain, set the admin user, and the system deploys with the database configured. After installation, extensions are normally added via Composer (the PHP package manager), which we support on all hosting plans. If you'd like help installing a specific extension we're happy to do it for you within reason as part of standard 7-day expert support.
phpBB is more feature-rich but feels dated and the default UI is showing its age. Discourse is excellent but has higher hosting requirements (Ruby, Postgres, Redis, Docker) and is harder to self-host on a budget. Flarum sits in the middle: a modern feel and good performance on standard PHP hosting that any decent shared host can run. If your community values speed and design over breadth of legacy features, Flarum is hard to beat. If you need every traditional forum feature, phpBB still wins.
Yes, but plan it properly. There are community-maintained importers for phpBB, SMF and a few other older platforms, which handle users, posts and basic structure. vBulletin imports are more variable. Custom modifications, signatures, attachments and private messages are usually the trickiest parts. We have helped clients with several of these migrations and would recommend running a parallel test forum for a couple of weeks before switching the main domain.
Yes, through extensions. Official extensions cover Google, Facebook, GitHub and generic OAuth/OIDC providers. Community extensions add Steam, Discord, Twitch, Microsoft, Apple and others. The extension marketplace tracks active maintenance status, so stick to extensions that have been updated within the last few months. Setting up an OAuth provider involves creating a developer app on the provider side and pasting the client ID and secret into the extension settings.
Very well, which is one of its biggest strengths. The default theme is mobile-first by design, the UI is touch-friendly and the single-page application means navigation feels instantaneous after the initial load. Image uploads from mobile work, push notifications via the native Notifications API are supported, and the design avoids the cramped feel that plagues older forum software on small screens. For a forum where most traffic is mobile (which today is most of them), Flarum is genuinely well suited.
Ready to Host Flarum?
Get started with Flarum on our fast UK web hosting. One-click installation, free SSL, and dedicated expert support included.