Forumer reviews

Worst forum host I've ever come across

Before being acquire by 'Crowdgatherer' in 2011, Forumer operated independently and was a decent free forum host. Not perfect, but bearable. Then Crowdgatherer took over. Within a few months, they announced plans (only on the support forum - no email or other notification) to transfer all forums on all servers over onto new servers and a new forum platform. This new platform was a modified version of the default phpbb3/phpbb2/IPB forum software, with the admin control panels greatly modified, more limited functionality (e.g. no custom domain names) and more ad space. This quickly turned into a saga that continues to this day. Many forums were down for weeks on end, and some have still not been recovered to this day. Technical support was and is terrible, with many posts and threads going unanswered for weeks or even months before a reply from one of the three support staff is received. These support staff also appear to have very limited knowledge of anything technical. One administrator didn't even know how to set up a CNAME on a DNS server. There are countless examples of this and similar right across the Forumer Support Forum, so if you don't believe me please take a look for yourself. Even leaving aside the technical 'support', the new system has also made forums operate slower. It also destroyed all permalinks to posts and threads under the old system, so forums that were transferred over to the new servers can no longer use the same thread/post permalinks as before (causing major SEO and bookmarking issues, amongst other things). In summary, stay well away from Forumer, if only for the woeful technical support. Again, I would highly encourage all to look for themselves - check out the support forum, specifically the section relating to forums that have been transferred onto the new platform.

Biggest Pro: Relatively fast servers
Biggest Con: Woeful technical support