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Terms and Conditions & Fair Use Policy⚓︎

Thank you for using FreeFlarum. As a forum owner, you are expected to agree with FreeFlarum's Terms & Conditions and Fair use Policy. The terms are explained in a rather non-formal way, to make them more legible for everyone.

Please note that this document may change at any time, either with or without prior notice.

Terms & Conditions⚓︎

The Terms & Conditions explain what should/shouldn't be done at your forum.

1. Agreement⚓︎

By creating your forum at FreeFlarum, you agree with these Terms & Conditions. Forums that do not comply with these terms may be suspended (either with or without prior notice) by FreeFlarum at its sole discretion.

2. Privacy Policy⚓︎

This document does not cover FreeFlarum's privacy policy. For reference, please view FreeFlarum's Privacy Policy.

3. COPPA⚓︎

If you are under the age of 13 without having your parent's/legal guardian's consent, per the requirements of COPPA (Children's Online Privacy Protection Act), you can't use the FreeFlarum service.

4. Forum content⚓︎

All users of your FreeFlarum forum (including you) mustn't share forum content that falls into one or more of the following categories:

  • Content deemed illegal, per your state/local laws & regulations;
  • Personal attacks, harassment, absuvie or hate speech, bullying or otherwise attacking someone based on their gender, race, social or religious beliefs, sexual orientation, etc.;
  • "NSFW"/"NSFL" content (pornography/heavy nudity, "gore", heavy/excessive profanity, etc.);
  • "Warez/cracked/pirated" internet content sharing;
  • Multi-level marketing schemes;
  • Anything else that could be viewed as inappropriate for someone's well-being.

You are allowed to modify the full appearance of your forum (through the "Administration > Appearance" page at your Flarum instance), but it is not allowed to change the appearance as in to hide or otherwise hinder the FreeFlarum footer. If you would like to remove that footer, please consider donating.

6. Forum removals⚓︎

Forums that meet certain criteria of activity may be removed by FreeFlarum's system automatically, based on certain metrics such as discussion, post and user counts. For details, please see the Fair Use Policy below.

7. Forum monetization⚓︎

You are not allowed to monetize your forum (e. g.: by using the "Google Adsense" service, having a "pay-to-see" content, or by using other similar techniques).

We are a free and community provided service and we are not looking towards becoming a commercial entity. Getting profit from something that is provided for free is not very nice either.

Your forum may, however, accept voluntary donations from your community, e. g.: via a PayPal button.

8. Other⚓︎

  1. Although generous efforts are undertaken to maintain the availability and performance of this service, there is explicitly no warranty given. Use it at your own risk.
  2. The FreeFlarum service is not available to persons or legal entities who operate legal constructs for the purpose of tax evasion or concealment of the ultimate benefactor, such to be determined by FreeFlarum at its sole discretion.
  3. FreeFlarum reserves the right to cancel forums that are detrimental to its quality of service or reputation, at its sole discretion.
  4. You are required to promptly address any security vulnerabilities or bugs found at FreeFlarum's website or API by contacting us. For bugs and vulnerabilities related to the Flarum software, please refer to Flarum's GitHub issues page.
  5. FreeFlarum does not support premium Flarum extensions (not even if you pay for them yourself).
  6. If you believe that a certain forum hosted at FreeFlarum is violating these terms, contact us.

Fair Use Policy⚓︎

1. Limits⚓︎

As an ever-growing, free service, FreeFlarum reserves the right to impose certain limits related to its forums' storage space, user limit and other metrics, to ensure its stability and availability for everyone.

FreeFlarum isn't recommended for big forums. FreeFlarum's main goal is to help you start from zero. Specifically, this means that FreeFlarum does not currently support more than 50 active visitors at the same time. This limit is not enforced.

You will be notified via E-mail if your forum reaches more than 1 000 (offline) users, 5 000 discussions or 10 000 posts, which FreeFlarum considers to be "very active".

2. Inactive/too active forums⚓︎

FreeFlarum checks for inactive/way too active forums every 3 months.

  • Inactive are forums that have existed for at least 1 month and the main admin account of that forum was last seen/was online before 60 days.
  • Too active, are forums that have more than 20 000 (offline) users, 20 000 discussions or 35 000 posts.

Forums that match one of these criteria are archived by FreeFlarum. If that happens, you will be notified via E-mail that you entered when registering your forum.

Inactive forums can be reactivated for 6 months before they are fully erased from FreeFlarum (too active forums are not eligible for reactivation, because big forums are problematic for FreeFlarum). If your forum was archived, please contact me and I will reactivate it for you, or alternatively send you an E-mail with your data, if that's still possible.

These limits may be surpassed and your forum can function properly, however FreeFlarum does not officially provide support for forums above these limits regarding their functionality - in other words, if you want to run a busy forum, your best option might be to self-host it instead or switch to a solution such as Blomstra, as FreeFlarum is not built, nor intended for large forums.


This document was last updated on the 27th of July, 2023