Discourse Hosting

Discourse hosting from Germany: what is included

Discourse hosting at miTT Hosting means your own dedicated Discourse instance on Hetzner servers in Nuremberg or Falkenstein — set up within 48 hours, with your own domain, a dedicated IP, an SMTP relay for reliable forum mail, daily backups and managed updates. You take care of your community, I take care of operations.

Behind the offer is not an anonymous hosting corporation but the owner-run web agency mittl medien from Stuttgart, Germany. You talk directly to the engineer who runs your instance — in English or German. Every package comes with a 7-day free trial and can be cancelled monthly.

Discourse hosting pricing compared (2026)

When people look for Discourse hosting, they usually compare three routes: a managed offer like this one, the official Discourse.org hosting, and self-hosting. The honest comparison:

As of June 2026, official pricing per discourse.org/pricing. For communities in the EU, the EUR 49 plan here is not a limited budget tier but a dedicated instance with your own domain, a dedicated IP and a German data location — points the official free tier lacks and that raise GDPR questions with US providers.

Managed Discourse hosting vs. self-hosting

The technical requirements of Discourse sound modest — a modern single-core CPU and around 10 GB of disk are enough to start. In practice, self-hosting rarely fails because of hardware. It fails at operations: Discourse updates and Docker rebuilds, security patches, backups that actually restore, and above all e-mail deliverability. A forum lives on notification mails — if they land in spam, participation dies.

My clear recommendation: if you enjoy administering servers and have the time, self-hosting is the cheap route. If you want to build or run a community, managed hosting serves you better — updates, daily backups, SSL and a configured SMTP relay with a dedicated IP are already part of the package.

GDPR: your forum data stays in Germany

A forum holds personal data: e-mail addresses, IP addresses, private messages. With miTT Hosting this data lives in Hetzner data centers in Nuremberg or Falkenstein by default — not with a US cloud provider. Daily backups protect your content, a data processing agreement (DPA) is available on request, and I support you with access or deletion requests from your members.

The servers run with a 99.9% uptime target and 100% green energy. If you need a different location, hosting in the EU (for example Helsinki) or in the US is available on request — the choice is yours.

Your forum, your rules: domain, plugins, themes, push

Your forum runs under your own domain and with your branding. Themes define colors, fonts and layout. Plugins extend functionality — from the Cakeday plugin and the integrated chat to the Patreon integration; from the Professional package on you choose your own plugins. Push notifications reach your members via the Discourse Mobile app, browser push or services like Pushover.

Your own Discourse forum within 48 hours

1. Choose a package and order — or clear up open questions by e-mail first.
2. I set up your Discourse instance within 48 hours, including domain, SSL and outgoing e-mail.
3. You test for 7 days, free of charge, with full functionality.
4. Continue or cancel — monthly cancellation, no minimum term.

Already running a forum? An existing Discourse moves over via backup import, and for phpBB there is a dedicated migration service.

Still using phpBB?

Many communities still rely on phpBB and want to take the step to a modern forum solution. We offer a professional migration service that safely transfers all your data - users, posts, categories, and attachments.

Learn more about our phpBB to Discourse migration service. More GDPR-compliant hosting from the same provider: Nextcloud hosting and PWA hosting.