Guide · Published 8 Jun 2026 · 5 min read
ForumForge offers the same full product on hosted and self-hosted plans. The difference is who operates infrastructure, handles backups, and carries uptime responsibility.
This guide helps buyers explain the choice internally without turning it into a technical debate.
Choose ForumForge hosted when
Hosted is the managed option and fits teams that want to launch quickly without hiring for server operations. Self-hosted costs more because you get source code access and run ForumForge yourself.
- —You want managed infrastructure, backups, and updates included
- —Your team lacks dedicated ops or prefers one vendor to hold accountable
- —Predictable monthly or yearly spend matters more than owning servers
- —You are launching a new community or migrating on a fixed timeline
Choose self-hosted when
Self hosted costs more because you receive a full license to run ForumForge on your own infrastructure.
- —You already operate production servers and monitoring
- —Compliance or data residency requires your own environment
- —You want long-term license control on your hardware or cloud
- —Your IT team prefers to manage backups, scaling, and patching
Same product either way
Forums, members, moderation, clubs, pages, forms, commerce, and staff controls are included on every plan. Hosting choice does not mean feature tiers.
How to decide quickly
If nobody on your team wants to be on-call for forum infrastructure, choose hosted. If someone already owns production operations and wants license control, choose self-hosted.
Compare current pricing on the ForumForge pricing page or contact us with your member size and launch date.