Dagon Design is the developer behind Simple:Press, a forum plugin for WordPress. You install the plugin on a WordPress website, and it adds forums, topics, and replies that share your WordPress theme, users, and login. The core plugin is free and includes a wide set of forum features, while premium add-on bundles add more capability. Website Toolbox is a fully hosted, turnkey forum service: we host, set up, customize, and maintain the forum for you, so you never manage a server or patch a plugin. Both can run a thriving discussion community, but they differ sharply in who does the technical work, how tightly the forum is tied to WordPress, and what the service really costs over time. This article compares Dagon Design's Simple:Press with Website Toolbox to help you decide which one fits your situation.

Quick Comparison: Dagon Design vs Website Toolbox

Hosting and Maintenance

The biggest difference between Dagon Design's plugin and Website Toolbox is who runs the servers. Simple:Press is not a hosted service. It is a plugin that runs inside WordPress, so before you have a forum you need a WordPress website, web hosting that meets WordPress's requirements, a database, and a domain. From then on you are responsible for updating WordPress core, the forum plugin, and your theme, backing up the site, and dealing with downtime or a broken layout after an update. Any plugin you add for extra features is another update and another place a conflict can appear. Security fixes only help if you install them promptly, which matters on a forum that collects member accounts and posts.

Website Toolbox is the opposite. Everything runs on our managed platform, backed by a company with 24 years of experience keeping forums online and secure. There is no server or plugin for you to set up, patch, or back up. You focus on your community, and we handle the operations and the security patching.

Ease of Setup

Getting Simple:Press up and running is straightforward if you already have WordPress: you add the plugin, activate it, and create your forums. But a working plugin is not the same as a finished community. You still configure the many settings, adjust the styling so it looks like part of your brand, decide how registration and login should work for your site, and keep everything compatible as WordPress and your theme update. Features beyond the core come from premium add-on bundles, and each one is something else to buy, configure, and maintain.

With Website Toolbox, setup is fast and guided, and our support team will even do the setup and customization for you. We include everything you need in a user-friendly way, without the bloat that comes from stacking feature after feature, so you build the community you want instead of wrestling with your website or a long list of settings.

Customization and Embedding

Simple:Press's biggest strength is its integration with WordPress. Forums, topics, and replies live inside your WordPress site, they share your theme and user accounts, and they appear naturally within your existing pages. It is also a genuinely capable plugin, with rich forum features such as a powerful user group and permission system, public and private forums, and subscriptions so members get notified of activity, all under the WordPress login your visitors already use.

The flip side is that the forum only lives inside WordPress. If your audience is spread across other platforms, or you want one community that your whole site points to, you are locked to WordPress and its hosting. Website Toolbox is designed to look and feel like part of your own site from day one, and you can embed it directly into a site built on WordPress, Squarespace, Wix, Shopify, or dozens of other platforms, or run it as a standalone forum on your own domain. If your site is WordPress and you want a forum that embeds seamlessly with single sign on handled for you, our WordPress plugin is the easiest path: it handles embedding, member accounts, and login without any of the plugin maintenance.

Themes

With Simple:Press, your forum's design is built on your WordPress theme combined with the forum styling you choose and customize. Making the forum look distinctive across WordPress updates is styling work you maintain yourself.

Website Toolbox offers multiple genuinely different themes that are maintained for us, plus an easy theme builder, so you can change the look of your forum without hiring a designer or editing template files. Different themes are not just color tweaks; they are real layout and design changes you can apply in a click.

Single Sign On

Simple:Press uses WordPress's own user accounts, so if your members already have WordPress logins they can use those. Connecting a separate membership system or an external login is where it gets complicated: you research, install, and maintain additional plugins, and anything that touches authentication is code you are responsible for securing.

With Website Toolbox, single sign on is seamless and our team sets it up for you. Members log in on your site without being sent away to a third-party service, which keeps the community feeling like a natural part of your website rather than a separate destination. For WordPress sites, our WordPress plugin makes single sign on work automatically. You can also read more about single sign on methods.

Branding and Mobile App

Because Simple:Press runs on your own WordPress site and domain, no third-party brand is forced on your forum, and that is a real point in its favor. But the polish is on you: building and maintaining a distinctive, modern design is work you take on, and there is no branded mobile app. The forum is responsive, so it works in a mobile browser, but anything more is a project you build yourself.

Website Toolbox can be made completely invisible to your community. The branding is 100% yours, and your members do not even know they are using a third-party platform. That includes a fully branded mobile app, so the experience stays consistent on desktop and mobile, under your own name and colors.

Customer Support

Simple:Press offers support through its own community forums, with further help available through separately purchased support plans. The help is general rather than focused on your specific site, and when a problem takes your forum down, your forum stays in whatever state it is while you wait and troubleshoot.

Website Toolbox offers email, phone, and chat support, and our team can help you set up, customize, integrate, and use your community. When you need help, there is a responsive team that knows your forum, not just a general help forum.

Features and Focus

Simple:Press is a capable forum plugin, and its free version already includes a wide range of features out of the box, from unlimited forums and a strong permission system to private forums, subscriptions, and built-in search that is SEO friendly. That breadth is useful, but it also means the finished product is whatever you assemble, and with a large settings panel and premium add-ons in the mix, it is easy for the forum to become complex and for plugins to conflict or slow your site down.

Website Toolbox is forum-first, a master of one. We focus entirely on being an excellent discussion forum, and we add everything you need in a user-friendly way, so you get a complete, modern community without assembling it from parts.

Pricing

Simple:Press's core plugin is free, which is genuinely appealing if you already run WordPress and can maintain it. The full product, though, is built on a growing collection of premium add-on bundles that each cost money, plus the ongoing cost of your WordPress hosting, a domain, and the hours you spend installing, updating, securing, and styling everything.

Website Toolbox has simple, transparent pricing, with migration included in every plan, and webhooks and API access included in the standard plan. You pay one clear price and get managed hosting, done-for-you setup, and responsive support in return, without paying separately for hosting or add-ons.

Migration

Moving an existing community onto Simple:Press is a project you plan and run yourself. You handle the technical work, the testing, and any problems that come up, and with a plugin tied to WordPress, a move can also mean first settling on WordPress hosting and setup. The support forum is your only help.

Website Toolbox includes migration in every plan, and our team handles it for you, so your members and their history carry over without you doing the technical work.

Conclusion

Dagon Design's Simple:Press is a strong, feature-rich choice if you already run WordPress, are comfortable maintaining it, and want a free forum that lives inside that site with a powerful permission system and tight WordPress integration. Choose Website Toolbox if you want an embeddable, fully branded forum that we host, set up, and support for you, with transparent pricing and migration handled by our team, so you can spend your effort on your community instead of your website. Check out our WordPress plugin for seamless embedding inside WordPress, or our single sign on documentation if you need to integrate an existing login system.