Many forum software spread all over the internet, free to download, free to use, but which one is the right for you to do the right thing for providing forums for your internet user and for your community. I compare three forums software, which i knew these three forums software is more popular and many website using it. The first software is phpBB, phpBB is the fantastico deluxe choose to install when you have webhosting that provide and using CPanel. SMF or simplemachine forum is the list number two at fantastico deluxe, the third forums software is the commercial one which many website using it, the commercial forums software is vBulletin. If you already using CPanel at your webhosting, you don’t need to worry about downloading phpBB or SMF, to compare three software forums, i use ForumMatrix.org, let’s not talk to much and let see the result:

Forum Matrix, compare phpBB vs SMF vs vBulletin

From this comparison, you can make assessment which the right forum software for you, if you want free you can go between using phpBB or SMF, if you want get the commercial license you can go with vBulletin.
The decision back on your budget and your goal when building the forums. If you expert enough to do php or write programming code in php you can go with open source and free, if you want support you can go with vBulletin, there many company offering support also for open source.