What we do
SMFFree.com hosts Simple Machines Forum communities. You pick an address, we create a fully configured SMF 2.0 board on our servers, and you run it. There is nothing to download, no database to create, no PHP version to worry about, and no monthly invoice.
That covers a specific gap. Setting up forum software yourself is not difficult for a developer, but it is a genuine obstacle for the person who simply wants somewhere for their model railway club, their game clan, their neighbourhood, or their fandom to talk. Those people should not have to learn server administration first. Our job is to remove that step and then stay out of the way.
Why forums, in this era
Social platforms are excellent at reach and terrible at memory. A thread that solves a hard problem is buried within a day, the archive is not searchable in any useful sense, and the rules of the room are set by a company that has never heard of your community.
A forum behaves differently. Discussions are organised by subject rather than by recency. A question asked in 2019 is still findable, still indexed, and still answering the same question for somebody today. Membership is yours, moderation is yours, and the tone of the place is something you set rather than something an algorithm decides. For any community built around a durable subject, that structure is still better than anything that replaced it.
How a free service pays for itself
We are straightforward about this because you deserve to know what the arrangement is. Hosted forums display advertising, and that advertising covers servers, bandwidth, backups, and staff time. It is the only revenue the free service has.
Two things follow from that. First, the terms of service ask you not to remove, hide, or deface the ads on your board, because doing so means other forum owners are paying for your hosting. Second, we have no incentive to hold your community hostage. There is no growth tier that suddenly costs money, and no point at which a popular forum gets throttled into buying an upgrade.
Simple Machines Forum is free, open-source software. You can download it from Simple Machines and run it on hosting you pay for. We would rather tell you that than have you discover it after moving a thousand posts here.
What we handle, and what you handle
The division of labour is simple. We take care of the infrastructure: server maintenance, security patches, SMF upgrades, database backups, uptime, and the baseline anti-spam configuration every new forum starts with. When a vulnerability is disclosed in forum software, patching it is our problem and not yours.
You take care of the community: the board structure, the rules, the moderation, the theme, the tone, and the members. We do not appoint moderators, edit your posts, or interfere in disputes between your members. The only time we intervene on a hosted board is when it breaks the terms of service, and the usual triggers are illegal material, spam operations, and content that puts the whole platform at risk.
Our commitments
- Your content is yours. We do not claim ownership of your discussions and we do not sell your forum's posts as a dataset.
- You can leave. It is a standard SMF 2.0 installation underneath. Ask us and we will arrange a database export so you can move it elsewhere.
- No surprise paywalls. Features described on this site as free stay free for forums already using them.
- Clear rules. The terms of service spell out exactly what gets a board suspended, so nobody is guessing.
- A real privacy policy. Our privacy policy states plainly what is collected, what advertising cookies do, and how to opt out.
Getting help
Most questions are answered fastest on the support forums, where staff and long-time forum owners both read and reply. It is a community of people running the same software with the same constraints, which usually beats a ticket queue.
For anything that does not belong in public, including abuse reports, account recovery, and press enquiries, use the contact form. If you have found a hosted forum breaking the rules, the report form goes straight to the staff who can act on it.
A note on Simple Machines
SMF and Simple Machines are registered trademarks of Simple Machines LLC. We host their software and we think it is excellent, but we are an independent company. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Simple Machines LLC, and questions about our hosting should come to us rather than to them.
Creating a forum takes about two minutes and costs nothing. Create a free forum, or read the starter guide first if you want to think the structure through before you begin.