UNA CMS
Hosting

UNA CMS is what Dolphin became after BoonEx sat down and rebuilt the whole thing for modern PHP. If you remember Dolphin from the 2000s and 2010s, you'll recognise UNA's general shape; if you don't, that's fine, UNA stands on its own. The platform is for building community sites and member networks where you want full control over the data, the design, and the moderation rules.

I've hosted UNA for a couple of community organisers over the years: a hobby network with a few thousand members, a regional special-interest group, and one professional networking community for a niche industry. The common thread is the same as with Elgg, the community has identity, the organisers want ownership, and they're willing to put moderator time in to make the platform work.

What works well: the out-of-the-box admin is polished, more so than Elgg or most older community platforms. Module installation through the marketplace is genuinely smooth. Themes are a real choice, with several free and paid options that look modern. The mobile experience on the default UNA themes is reasonable, which matters when most community traffic is mobile. The permission system is granular without being overwhelming.

"UNA is what you pick when Elgg feels too dated and Discourse is the wrong shape for your community. It's a community-first CMS that takes social-network expectations seriously without trying to be Facebook."

Mark McNeece, Founder, 365i Hosting

What's annoying: the licence model. The CC BY-NC-SA licence is unusual for a CMS, and the non-commercial provisions raise questions if you're running paid memberships, sponsored content, or any kind of revenue model. You'll want to read the licence carefully or pay BoonEx for a commercial licence option if your community has a commercial dimension. The marketplace is a mix of free and paid modules, and several useful features (advanced moderation, certain payment integrations) are paid add-ons rather than core features.

Hosting notes: UNA is moderately heavier than Elgg or basic forum platforms, mostly because of the broader feature set and the more modern UI. Our shared hosting from £5.99/mo handles UNA comfortably for communities up to maybe 500 active members. PHP memory at 256MB is enough for typical use. MySQL 8 handles the schema fine. Cron is essential, used for activity stream digests, email notifications, and various scheduled tasks. Image uploads can grow significantly, so factor in storage planning.

For larger UNA deployments (1,000+ active members, video uploads enabled, real-time chat modules), the application benefits from our managed cloud servers from £9.99/mo with proper memory and database tuning. UNA's database can grow large with active social use, similar to Elgg, and CDN with pre-caching helps significantly with anonymous-user page loads.

If you're choosing between UNA, Elgg, and a hosted community platform like Mighty Networks or Circle, the trade-offs are clear. UNA gives you ownership and customisation in exchange for setup work and moderator commitment. Hosted platforms give you faster setup and less moderation overhead in exchange for monthly fees and platform dependence. There's no universally right answer; it depends on your community size, technical capability, and licensing situation.