Is Vbulletin worth purchasing?

No it's not. MyBB offers all of the features and more of what vBulletin has to offer, and it's free and open source.

 

Yes, it's worth purchasing unless you know a forum is going to be a success or your transfering.
It's not good for a start because sometimes you buy it and you think "Oh, I'm going to make a forum and It's going to be a success". And then it doesn't and it's a waste of money. I suggest you start off with a free forum software or if you are confident go for it. !

 

I've been running a vBulletin, and I won't settle for anything else. It's equipt with a huge options panel to develop the site however you want. Its plug-in and hook system allows you to easily mod yourself, and equipt other mods. The template system offers custom HTML access, so you can professionally mod the site layout simply with custom HTML converted to PHP. Don't even get me started on the user and maintenance tools.

It's worth your time.

 

I have just finished using vBulletin after my previous three year experience with it. Yes, it is expensive and some would say overpriced. But it is worth the purchase.

It has everything you need to make a great forum. Just look at the most popular forums, the majority of them are on vBulletin.

If you don't want to go with vBulletin, I would go with IPB or MyBB.

Good luck with the software you choose.

 

Ok thanks.. I think it will definitely be worth the money.

 

It's really only overpriced if you get the branding free, the blog and all that other happy horse shit. Just a simple vBulletin cost us $180 and that's pretty cheap if you think about it.

 

Why would you want to pay $180 when you can get all of the features with a free forum software?

 

This. And the huge amount of styles and mods etc

 

I have used phpbb (all versions) SMF, IPB, and vbulletin. Out of all of them I have to say vbulletin and IPB are the best. The Latest version IPB however I am not too fond of but that may only be because its still so new. But any version of IPB before 3 was great, tons of awesome mods/plugins/themes. vBulletin is just great period I think, again tons of great mods like ipb (some even better than ipv mods) some really sharp looking themes as well. Tons of security features with vbulletin as well. So i would definitely have to say vbulletin is worth buying!

SMF does have quite a bit of mods and themes (some really nice ones you can pay for) but there are way too many security holes in SMF.

phpbb i just never really liked so I never really used it much.

 

I've pretty much said it over here. In summary, I could say that after making the switch to vBulletin, my discussion forum performed as though it had just been injected a pack of steroids

 

i would say it i used to run a phpbb board before i bough vb and it got hacked twice my vb forum has been running 2 years and its still all good

 

If you are just starting a forum, no, I do not recommend that you buy a vbulletin license. The reason being, 80% - 90% of all new forums close before they are one year old. Use a free forum script for the first year, see how your forum does and then make a decision.

At the end of the first year - if you like the way things are going, then buy a vb license and convert your forum. If you do not like how things are going, close the site and walk away.

Running a forum takes a lot of work, dedication, sweat, tears and everything else. Most people do not have what it takes to make a successful forum. Because of this, I recommend waiting 1 year to see how the forum goes.

After that first year and you decide to keep the forum open, yes, I recommend that you buy either Vbulletin or Invision Power Board.

I respectfully disagree.

 

start off with mybb and once your forum starts growing eventually transfer to vbulletin

 

I honestly don't understand why you guys don't like MyBB? The biggest two problems I've heard from it are lack of mods and lack of themes. After some inspection, I couldn't find any mod that I would really want that I didn't find. And if you plan on making a successful community, you shouldn't be using premade themes.

 

VB is the powerful forum script but it's would be great if they can reduce the price.

 

Go for it. If you have some time than wait for few months for Vbulletin 4.