# About this forum itself

**URL:** <https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/about-this-forum-itself/4488>\
**Category:** support\
**Created:** [November 5, 2016, 2:53pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/about-this-forum-itself/4488 "2016-11-05T14:53:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![ITSecMedia](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/itsecmedia/32/1552_2.png) [@ITSecMedia](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/ITSecMedia)\
**Post date:** [November 5, 2016, 2:53pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/about-this-forum-itself/4488/1 "2016-11-05T14:53:00Z")

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I’m working on a new domain and I think about to use discourse as forum software.  
On other domains I use Woltlab and Vanilla … but discourse is getting more and more popular.

How is this forum hosted itself, self-hosted on a VPS or as paid service?  
[https://payments.discourse.org/buy/](https://payments.discourse.org/buy/)

So what are the bigger forums doing, do they pay the SaaS to avoid the administration trouble  
or do they maintain their own servers?

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**Author:** ![mpaluchowski](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/mpaluchowski/32/3459_2.png) [@mpaluchowski](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/mpaluchowski)\
**Post date:** [November 6, 2016, 6:30am UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/about-this-forum-itself/4488/2 "2016-11-06T06:30:08Z")

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> [@ITSecMedia](#):
>
> So what are the bigger forums doing, do they pay the SaaS to avoid the administration trouble or do they maintain their own servers?

Discourse has pretty beefy hardware requirements, with a minimum 1GB of RAM and recommended 2GB. So it won’t work on shared hosting.

Then the [only installation method they support](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/master/docs/INSTALL.md) is with Docker, so that adds more requirements.

You’ll have to decide on what you’d rather spend: money or time. DigitalOcen has compatible machines for $20/month, while the smallest Discourse plan is $100/month. That’s almost a difference of $1000/year.

I guess if you’re doing server administration already, then adding one more wouldn’t be a big hassle. Otherwise the hosted option could end up being cheaper.

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**Author:** ![ITSecMedia](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/itsecmedia/32/1552_2.png) [@ITSecMedia](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/ITSecMedia)\
**Post date:** [November 6, 2016, 8:43am UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/about-this-forum-itself/4488/3 "2016-11-06T08:43:04Z")

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@mpaluchowski - thank you very much!

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**Author:** ![samozzy](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/samozzy/32/1861_2.png) [@samozzy](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/samozzy)\
**Post date:** [November 6, 2016, 11:42pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/about-this-forum-itself/4488/4 "2016-11-06T23:42:35Z")

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+1 for DigitalOcean. I’ve got a Discourse up on there and it’s much more cost effective than AWS - while our community is small (\<100 users, with ~25 active), our post index is huge, as the forum dates back 15+ years (150k posts). The specs for the money at DO made a lot of sense.

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**Author:** ![dertuxmalwieder](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/dertuxmalwieder/32/496_2.png) [@dertuxmalwieder](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/dertuxmalwieder)\
**Post date:** [November 10, 2016, 1:08am UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/about-this-forum-itself/4488/5 "2016-11-10T01:08:09Z")

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I find Discourse with its Javascript sickness rather disturbing, especially since its structure (categories are not the default view…?) makes it incredibly hard to find what you’re looking for.

I don’t get the hype and I hope it will be over soon.

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**Author:** ![Jura](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/jura/32/13581_2.png) [@Jura](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/Jura)\
**Post date:** [November 29, 2016, 6:39am UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/about-this-forum-itself/4488/7 "2016-11-29T06:39:31Z")

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> [@dertuxmalwieder](#):
>
> I find Discourse with its Javascript sickness rather disturbing

I’d also prefer a lighter forum theme, that would likely give a smoother and quicker browsing experience.