Comment by phendrenad2

Running a Discord "server" is a lot easier than running a forum.

Most paid forums suck (they try hard to not look like forums, which also makes them not usable like forums).

The alternatives are PHP (why are they all PHP?!) open-source dumps you get to install on an Apache node yourself. Or you can get a generic VPS and use tools like softaculous to set up the forum app. Most of these projects don't come with CAPTCHA out of the box, or proper GDPR compliance, or other things you'll want.

That all said, running a forum is DEFINITELY worth it, and your customers will thank you (if not in actual words, in traffic).