Product, trial and plans
This guide explains what Forum Fortress does, which forum platforms it supports, and how plans work.
What Forum Fortress is
Forum Fortress is spam and abuse prevention for self-hosted online communities. A plugin inside the forum checks supported activity with the Forum Fortress service and receives an allow or block decision. It is not a hosted forum, a general community-management product or a replacement for the forum’s own administration and moderation tools.
It checks new registrations, posts, replies, profile updates, signatures and other actions supported by the installed plugin. It combines network, account, content, link, reputation and behavioural signals rather than relying on one blocklist entry. A decision can include an explanation and a Decision Reference for investigation.
Forum Fortress does not add a CAPTCHA and does not require a Forum Fortress browser script on forum pages. It is intended to stop new spam after installation; it does not automatically remove spam that was already present.
Supported forum software
Current supported platforms are:
| Forum software | Supported series |
|---|---|
| Flarum | Flarum 1.8.x and Flarum 2, from 2.0 RC5; current extension is 1.4.0 |
| XenForo | XenForo 2; current add-on is the stable 1.9.0 release |
| phpBB | phpBB 3; current extension is the stable 1.3.0 release |
| Invision Community | Invision Community 5; current application is the stable 1.4.0 release |
| SMF | SMF 2.1; current plugin is the stable 1.1.1 release |
| MyBB | MyBB 1.8; current plugin is the stable 1.2.0 release |
| Discourse | Current self-hosted Discourse; current plugin is the 0.2.0-alpha.1 release |
Forum Fortress currently supports the seven platforms above. If your forum software is not listed, please contact us before planning an installation.
Getting started, accounts and the trial
You can install the plugin before creating a portal account. After enabling it, run bootstrap or the connection test, then use Open Forum Fortress in the plugin to open the selected forum in the portal. Use Complete registration or Register Site in the plugin when you want to associate the forum with an account. The portal is useful for reviewing decisions, managing settings, seeing usage, using reports and contacting support, but account association is not required for initial protection.
New eligible forums receive a 30-day Pro trial without entering card details. After the trial, you can continue on Free or choose Core or Pro. The protection engine is the same on every plan.
Use the installation guide for your platform and version. The package and steps differ between Composer, ZIP extensions, applications and forum package managers.
On Flarum, search in Extension Manager for Forum Fortress to install the official Composer extension, then enable it and open its administration page to configure and test the connection.
Current plans and prices
The published pricing is annual:
| Plan | Price | Checks each month | Automatic blocks each day | Connected forums |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 2,000 | 50 | 1 |
| Core | $10 per year | 20,000 | 250 | Up to 2 |
| Pro | $40 per year | 100,000 | Unlimited | Up to 5 |
All three plans use the same core protection engine and include Decision history, Insights, 24/7 AI live chat and telephone support, and human support tickets. Plans change capacity, automation, reporting, multi-forum tools and the priority or type of human support; paying does not buy a different spam-detection engine.
Which plan is likely to fit?
- Free suits evaluation and smaller forums that fit one forum, 2,000 monthly checks and 50 automatic blocks per day.
- Core is the usual fit for one or two active forums needing 20,000 monthly checks, more automatic blocks, 30-day Insights and faster human ticket handling.
- Pro suits busier forums or networks needing up to five forums, 100,000 monthly checks, unlimited automatic blocks, longer and custom Insights ranges, interactive graphs, advanced reports, exports, combined multi-forum analytics, the moderation workspace, priority tickets or human telephone support.
Choose a plan based on your forum count, monthly check volume, days on which the automatic-block cap is reached, reporting needs, and support preference. The Plan page in the portal shows the limits and options for your account.
What a check or automatic-block allowance means
A check is a supported forum action submitted to Forum Fortress for a decision. Monthly check usage is shown in the portal. An automatic block is a suspicious action which Forum Fortress would otherwise block automatically; Free and Core have daily automatic-block allowances.
If your site reaches a plan allowance, the portal explains which automatic protection actions may be limited and when the allowance resets. It also records relevant activity so you can decide whether a larger plan would help. Attack Mode, where available in the portal, is temporary emergency protection for 24 hours and can bypass plan limits.
Performance, hosting and other security tools
The forum server needs outbound HTTPS access on port 443 to *.ffapi.net; no inbound connection to the forum is required. Forum Fortress can work behind a CDN, WAF or firewall because the plugin initiates the connection. A restrictive hosting provider may need to allow the outbound destination.
Forum Fortress can be used alongside other anti-spam controls, although duplicated or conflicting enforcement can make false positives harder to diagnose. If a forum becomes slow, check the plugin connection test, exact error, forum and plugin versions, approximate time and any Decision Reference rather than assuming the cause.
The independently monitored current service status is at status.forumfortress.com. It covers the website, API, portal, edge network, live chat and telephone support.
Decisions, false positives and missed spam
Use the Decision log and Decision Reference to understand what happened. If legitimate activity was blocked, restore or approve it with the forum’s normal moderation tools, review the displayed reasons and report a repeating pattern to support. If obvious spam was allowed, confirm that protection is enabled for that action, check the connection and plan-limit notices, and provide a Decision Reference where available.
No anti-spam service can guarantee perfect detection. The forum owner remains in control of configuration and moderation outcomes.
Privacy, policy and legal questions
Forum Fortress limits unnecessary data collection, may pseudonymise identifiers, may reduce links to domains or hostnames and limits decision logging. This is not legal advice, certification or a guarantee that your use is compliant. The current Privacy Policy explains the service's data handling.
The Terms of Service govern the websites, accounts, APIs, dashboards and hosted service. Separately distributed Forum Fortress plugin code is free and open-source software under the GNU General Public License, version 2 or later; see Plugin licensing. The plugin licence does not provide a service subscription, credentials or private backend code. For an interpretation of the Terms, a legal commitment, a data-subject request, a complaint, a refund or billing dispute, an account deletion, a security incident, or advice about your own compliance, contact support through the portal.
Support choices
AI live chat and AI telephone support are available around the clock and identify themselves as AI. Human support tickets are included on every plan. Core includes faster ticket handling, while Pro includes priority ticket handling and human telephone support during configured availability. The portal shows the support options that apply to your account.