There are a few new forum software providers on the market which makes it even more crowded. The new ones get the advantage of using new languages and databases such as node.js for programming and MongoDB and Redis for databases. This results in a significant speed advantage. A few softwares using node.js with these databases are: NodeBB Discourse Muut We interviewed Julian Lam from NodeBB (nodebb.org) and got a better insight into the software. You can read the interview here. For those that are considering upgrading their forums or starting a new one, the new companies seem to have a lot to offer. For NodeBB their pricing is more expensive than vBulletin cloud forums however they offer their software completely free to download just like Wordpress.