Why vBulletin?

Just wondering, what are the advantages of vBulletin that motivate people to pay $160 for a single license?

I'm currently in the process of developing an open source, free forum service and am wondering if there's something I'm not catching that makes vBulletin so appealing?

 

1 - Hard to hack
2 - Lots of modification
3 - Easy to customize
4 - Well known and good for SEO
5 - Easy to install? (Not really sure because all forums type are easy to install for me)

 

Thanks for the response argothiusz.

All of your points seem reasonable, but I have one question... What specifically about vBulletin is so good for SEO. I have noticed in my time at this particular forum that pages are indexed extremely rapidly, and that they tend to rank quite high depending on the subject. But what is it that causes this? Other than the obvious things such as the title being related to the thread?

 

Its because vb do not use session url. most of the other popular forum software like ipb or phpbb uses that.

 

Care to elaborate?

 

If you've budget go for VB, it is more secured and feature rich.

 

My concern isn't in purchasing VB or any other forum service. Rather, as a competitor, I'm wondering if you can elaborate on these features.

*Read my first post

 

Ease of use for the end user. Like quick replies, drop down menu when you click a username etc.

 

You will not get lots of spam post.

 

Its one of the most widely used forum script on the internet so users are familiar with its interface. I was earlier using phpbb for my travel forum, however when I switched to vBulletin, almost every user appreciated it (click here to read their views).

Administration and moderation part of vBulletin is very-very good and makes the job maintaining and running a forum quite easy.

Script itself is quite flexible and there are tons of hacks available to add more functionality to it. It is search engine friendly, though there is a bit of effort required to remove all the duplicate content and make it even more search engine friendly.

From the user perspective, it is quite easy to understand and navigate through and add to that, a user can customize a lot of aspects of the forum to suit their needs.

 

Thanks for all of the replies, they will be helpful!

 

It has ALOT of features/mods. Its worth paying.

 

Actually, I don't think it is worth paying. That's why (first post) I'm planning on developing a free, open source forum service. I don't think anyone should have to pay $160 for such a simple forum service.

 

Vbulletin is much better than phpbb and others due to its solid backend and hard to hack backend

 

DP is using vBulletin. Just look at how smoothly it runs

(Don't base it on speed as DP is slow)

 

vb is really good in making a forum because its useful and easy to use it.

 

lol@ such a simple forum service

I look forward to seeing the forum script you develop
It's always nice to see what else is out there..

you can find a list of options for vbulletin at vb.com I'm sure.

cheers
-Brandon

 

i never like anything abt vb
according to me ipb is best and very user friendely

 

I'll make sure and let you all know when I complete my project! And thanks for the pointer as far as looking for options at vbulletin.com, it came in handy!

 

I personally even like IPB for its flexibility