XenForo alternative
Enderbeam and XenForo, honestly compared
We ship the live server data, the account linking, the rank sync and the store modules as the product. On XenForo those are add-ons you assemble: the Minecraft bridge is a £35 add-on last updated in January 2022, and we could find nothing at all for playtime, leaderboards or punishments.
What XenForo is
XenForo is commercial forum software — a $195 self-hosted licence, or their own hosted plans from $60 a month. The licence is lifetime use; the yearly $60 extension buys updates and support rather than the right to keep running it. SpigotMC itself runs on XenForo, which is the shortest way to say how serious it is.
- It is, on the evidence, the best forum software available: moderation queue, spam cleaning, and a permission system that holds up under communities far larger than a Minecraft server.
- A real add-on market, including a well-maintained Discord add-on that syncs usergroups and roles both ways.
- The one platform outside the Minecraft-specific CMSes with any Minecraft bridge at all — MineSync links accounts and maps in-game groups to forum groups.
- The licence is lifetime use: stop paying and it keeps running, you just stop getting updates and support.
- Their hosted plans take the whole maintenance job away, the same as we do.
What Enderbeam is
A hosted website builder for Minecraft servers. You make a project, drop our plugin in /plugins, and drag 70+ modules onto a page — your server’s status, online players, ranks, playtime, leaderboards, punishments and forums, all fed from your own server. There is nothing to install anywhere else and nothing to keep patched.
The free plan is a working site with live server data, forums and leaderboards, with no card and no ads. Premium is $9.99 a month per site and adds your own domain, every theme and full control of the styling.
Side by side
| XenForo | Enderbeam | |
|---|---|---|
| Forum | Yes:The best there is | Yes:Good, not world-class |
| Connecting to your server | Partly:A £35 add-on, last updated 2022 | Yes:Our own plugin |
| Ranks | Partly:Through Vault, via that add-on | Yes:LuckPerms or Vault |
| Leaderboards | No:We could not find one | Yes:From your server |
| Playtime and punishments | No:We could not find one | Yes:Built in |
| Hosting | Partly:Cloud from $60 a month | Yes:Done for you |
| Price | No:$195, then $60 a year | Yes:Free, or $9.99 a month |
| Footer credit you can remove | Partly:$350, or $360 a year | Partly:Premium removes it |
Checked on 17 September 2026. Doing the work is not a promise of uptime — we publish no service-level agreement, and neither does any hosted alternative here.
Who should pick XenForo
If your site is a forum, buy XenForo. Theirs runs some of the largest communities on the web and goes deeper than ours does. Buy it, and put the Minecraft pieces together yourself or do without them.
Your server still needs a website. Ours takes an afternoon.
Build it freeEnderbeam is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to XenForo. Their name is used here only to say what this page compares. Everything stated about XenForo was checked against their own site, documentation and source on 17 September 2026; prices and versions move, so check theirs before you decide.