Looking to switch from Vanilla, and have a few questions

Welcome, I’m glad you’re looking into using Discourse! The version of Discourse you get when you pay us for hosting through discourse.org is the same version of Discourse you get when you host it yourself or with another provider.

I assume you’re talking about the plugins we list here: Plugin directory | Discourse - Civilized Discussion

These aren’t plugins that are only available on our paid hosting, it’s actually the reverse — these are the only plugins we allow when you’re on our hosting. Plugins can do just about anything in Discourse, so a poorly built one can be interruptive to our hosting. Because of this we only allow sites we host to install plugins we maintain (These same plugins are also free to use on sites hosted elsewhere).

When you host Discourse yourself you’re completely unrestricted when it comes to plugins. You can install anything available here from our #plugins category, or even custom plugins you’ve built yourself.

There are a few plugins that may help with what you’re looking for

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