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I originally made a list for price comparisons to give to anyone I knew who was being asked why to buy vBulletin when there are free options or who were complaining it was too expensive. I then published this entry on my blog to explain why vBulletin is the price it is, why it's cheaper than the rip off forum software and to say vBulletin is overall good. Hope you like it, and if you have any suggestions, comment away:
Original article can be found here:
vBulletin called expensive? Happens every day it seems, with some potential user looking at the $180 fee, comparing to phpBB and having a heart attack at what they consider a 'high' price for an internet forum.
However, this is not the case. Compare to some software which does the exact same job, vBulletin is extremely cheap, and hence the more the price list is considered, the more vBulletin starts to sound like a bargain in comparison. Let's look at that list of more expensive pieces of forum software:
Whoa, that's not cheap, and you thought even UBB was a rip off (it is, but continue reading anyway). So why is vBulletin not expensive then in comparison, and why is vBulletin actually a bargain?
1. It's self hosted
This itself is one key difference between the 'higher' end of enterprise and the lower end of it, and also an advantage of vBulletin. You host it yourself, you pay for the hosting, and you don't need the super specialist servers some forum hosts claim to have. This means that it can be cheaper, since the hosts you can find for vBulletin or Invision Power Board have enough competitors to keep prices at some kind of remotely low cost, and basically, you aren't getting ripped off with thousands of dollars in dedicated server fees all of a sudden.
2. vBulletin runs on software that is free (sort of)
In that PHP is free, and MYSQL is either free (one edition) or relatively cheap (the higher edition). And that often runs on Linux, which is again, often free likely depending on the exact configuration and version. On the other hand, many of these 'enterprise' pieces of software run on commercial coding languages (ASP/.NET/JSP/Coldfusion) and often on commercial database solutions (Oracle?) and maybe even using a commercial Windows Operating System if they're powered by ASP/.NET (because Windows is supposedly better for running ASP based applications, partly linked to ASP's developers being Microsoft). Guess who likely gets the price hike, especially if they're hosting the forum for you?
3. You Don't Pay Monthly/Yearly for vBulletin
And of course, if you've used vBulletin, you'll know how much money in comparison you pay to your webhost than the forum provider. This of course leads to how many of these 'enterprise' pieces of software are hosted by the software company, not by the purchasing client, and hence the costs are often monthly or yearly, like on a webhosting plan with a webhost AND the software and maybe even some support costs and management costs.
4. vBulletin is not expensive for the sake of being so
Because as you can likely guess, I'd say many of these enterprise software solutions charge so high because:
But now with that over, why should you actually buy vBulletin? Well as well as the advantages implied above (host and configure it yourself, far cheaper and works on more hosts), there are potentially these reasons:
1. You can easily modify vBulletin (criticism of forced hosting enterprise software)
Aka, you get code access more and easier. No relying on their tech staff to change things, and you have a community making amazing modifications to vBulletin that just don't exist for these enterprise pieces, just because they can't reach the code. This also means you can move your forum to another host or change the domain without literally losing everything, or even switch software without losing it all.
2. vBulletin has far more features of use (all)
Seriously, these enterprise pieces of software make phpBB like advanced in terms of feature set, and some probably make punBB look feature packed. They certainly aren't much more than basic message boards in terms of style and features, and user commentable, friends list showing and private album able profiles? No chance in hell.
3. More support from independant sources (all)
Like with the mods to an extent, vBulletin, being cheaper (and better) has a lot more in terms of community support. You won't find 3 million odd members who've paid 20 grand a year for their forum, that's for sure, and you won't find paid skin sites styling Jive that have as many resources either. Nor will you have much to go to other than support tickets and phone support if your 'enterprise' piece of software self destructs for some unknown reason (not that you could often fix it anyway, with encoded source code and/or forced hosting with said company).
Now for some price checking, over 6 year periods (estimated long living forum here with decent activity):
Hell, even Ezboard costs a freaking ton, and for an activity community, thousands for ad free (major, major ripoff).
So before you start whining, consider that vBulletin is thousands of dollars cheaper than the alternatives, some of which would literally drive the common person completely bankrupt to run, and many small businesses. It's not expensive, and just because phpBB/SMF/MyBB release software for free doesn't make vBulletin a rip off based on price.
Of course, this still asks the question about why you should pick vBulletin over the free pieces of forum software, if even they often have better features than the enterprise versions. Well again, there are plenty of reasons to pick vBulletin, and they are:
1. vBulletin has paid support and company guarantee
They won't likely just shut up shop when the going gets bad, like quite a few free forum software types have done (I know personally about 20 odd that have just shut down out of boredom or the creator moving on for example), and vBulletin also has staff, not volunteers. This partly accounts for the cost (they have to be paid you know), and also guarantees you'll get decent support rather than waiting for a couple of people who may have three jobs and a social life outside of helping on an official forum, chat channel or mailing list.
2. Many Good Mods, Styles and Resources for vBulletin
It also has a lot of good things created for it. You can find literally thousands of modifications to extend the forum at vBulletin.org, and unlike many free forums, you can also make your own mods with far less effort than directly editing PHP files. You can also find and add styles extremely easy, and there's always an abundance of support resources for the software (which many lesser known pieces of software just don't have available).
3. vBulletin has the features, and will add the features people request
Again, another massive problem with various free forum software groups is there is sometimes quite a dimissive attitude towards adding new things. I hear phpBB for example, actually refused adding Quick Reply for said reason because it'd make the forum like a chat room, and various other developers have been reported doing similar. Indeed, it's like the common attitude on Proboards with some of the group's ideas on what should and should not be added. At least vBulletin has many of the common features expected of forum software, and albeit quite slowly adds features by requests and to improve what's already there.
4. Professionalism counts
Arrogant as it is, there is an effect in terms of activity of using paid forum software, at least from my experiments. Members have indeed gone up by a few hundred times as a result, and posts have indeed soared. People on vBulletin.org and The Admin Zone have frankly said themselves that forum software choice can be a deciding factor on whether they'll join a forum, and I do know people who ONLY join a forum powered by certain software, most often vBulletin.
All in all, vBulletin is in all honesty, well justified in it's price. It's not expensive, at least compared to some of it's true competitors, it's price justified in terms of what's available and the presence of a support team means wonders. Hope you now realise exactly why vBulletin is not expensive, why it's worth it and why it's cheaper than these types of 'enterprise forum software' sometimes being advertised.
However, this is not the case. Compare to some software which does the exact same job, vBulletin is extremely cheap, and hence the more the price list is considered, the more vBulletin starts to sound like a bargain in comparison. Let's look at that list of more expensive pieces of forum software:
- 575$/year (Professional)- Mes Discussions Professional
- Free (Express Edition), $3000/yr or $5000 perpetual (Professional), $50 per seat/yr (Intranet), $20000/yr (Enterprise)- Community Server
- $689 (Basic), $3,398 (Standard), $2,898 (Education), $4998(Enterprise)- FuseTalk.NET
- $299- IdealBB (actual, misleading name)
- Free / $79 / $149 / $499- Toast Forums
- $689 (Basic), $3,398 (Standard), $2,898 (Education), $4998(Enterprise)- FuseTalk CF
- $25/month on shared server, $499/month on dedicated server- Groupee forums
- $49,950 per year for one CPU, $19,950 per year for additional CPU.- Jive Forums
- Thousands depending on size- Lithium forums (same that run Nsider and the Playstation forums)
Whoa, that's not cheap, and you thought even UBB was a rip off (it is, but continue reading anyway). So why is vBulletin not expensive then in comparison, and why is vBulletin actually a bargain?
1. It's self hosted
This itself is one key difference between the 'higher' end of enterprise and the lower end of it, and also an advantage of vBulletin. You host it yourself, you pay for the hosting, and you don't need the super specialist servers some forum hosts claim to have. This means that it can be cheaper, since the hosts you can find for vBulletin or Invision Power Board have enough competitors to keep prices at some kind of remotely low cost, and basically, you aren't getting ripped off with thousands of dollars in dedicated server fees all of a sudden.
2. vBulletin runs on software that is free (sort of)
In that PHP is free, and MYSQL is either free (one edition) or relatively cheap (the higher edition). And that often runs on Linux, which is again, often free likely depending on the exact configuration and version. On the other hand, many of these 'enterprise' pieces of software run on commercial coding languages (ASP/.NET/JSP/Coldfusion) and often on commercial database solutions (Oracle?) and maybe even using a commercial Windows Operating System if they're powered by ASP/.NET (because Windows is supposedly better for running ASP based applications, partly linked to ASP's developers being Microsoft). Guess who likely gets the price hike, especially if they're hosting the forum for you?
3. You Don't Pay Monthly/Yearly for vBulletin
And of course, if you've used vBulletin, you'll know how much money in comparison you pay to your webhost than the forum provider. This of course leads to how many of these 'enterprise' pieces of software are hosted by the software company, not by the purchasing client, and hence the costs are often monthly or yearly, like on a webhosting plan with a webhost AND the software and maybe even some support costs and management costs.
4. vBulletin is not expensive for the sake of being so
Because as you can likely guess, I'd say many of these enterprise software solutions charge so high because:
- They can and have no real competition
- Businesses find comfort in the idea of paying more or something.
But now with that over, why should you actually buy vBulletin? Well as well as the advantages implied above (host and configure it yourself, far cheaper and works on more hosts), there are potentially these reasons:
1. You can easily modify vBulletin (criticism of forced hosting enterprise software)
Aka, you get code access more and easier. No relying on their tech staff to change things, and you have a community making amazing modifications to vBulletin that just don't exist for these enterprise pieces, just because they can't reach the code. This also means you can move your forum to another host or change the domain without literally losing everything, or even switch software without losing it all.
2. vBulletin has far more features of use (all)
Seriously, these enterprise pieces of software make phpBB like advanced in terms of feature set, and some probably make punBB look feature packed. They certainly aren't much more than basic message boards in terms of style and features, and user commentable, friends list showing and private album able profiles? No chance in hell.
3. More support from independant sources (all)
Like with the mods to an extent, vBulletin, being cheaper (and better) has a lot more in terms of community support. You won't find 3 million odd members who've paid 20 grand a year for their forum, that's for sure, and you won't find paid skin sites styling Jive that have as many resources either. Nor will you have much to go to other than support tickets and phone support if your 'enterprise' piece of software self destructs for some unknown reason (not that you could often fix it anyway, with encoded source code and/or forced hosting with said company).
Now for some price checking, over 6 year periods (estimated long living forum here with decent activity):
- vBulletin- $430 plus server costs
- UBB Threads- $694, $598 or $725 depending on package
- Mes Discussions- $3450 (plus server costs?)
- Community Server Enterprise- $120 000
- FuseTalk.NET- $4998 possibly plus
- FuseTalk- $4998 (wow, same!)
- Groupee- $1800 shared server, $35928
- Jive- $299700 minimum, and for 4 CPUs, $778500 dedicated server
- Lithium- I really don't want to know, way too high
Hell, even Ezboard costs a freaking ton, and for an activity community, thousands for ad free (major, major ripoff).
So before you start whining, consider that vBulletin is thousands of dollars cheaper than the alternatives, some of which would literally drive the common person completely bankrupt to run, and many small businesses. It's not expensive, and just because phpBB/SMF/MyBB release software for free doesn't make vBulletin a rip off based on price.
Of course, this still asks the question about why you should pick vBulletin over the free pieces of forum software, if even they often have better features than the enterprise versions. Well again, there are plenty of reasons to pick vBulletin, and they are:
1. vBulletin has paid support and company guarantee
They won't likely just shut up shop when the going gets bad, like quite a few free forum software types have done (I know personally about 20 odd that have just shut down out of boredom or the creator moving on for example), and vBulletin also has staff, not volunteers. This partly accounts for the cost (they have to be paid you know), and also guarantees you'll get decent support rather than waiting for a couple of people who may have three jobs and a social life outside of helping on an official forum, chat channel or mailing list.
2. Many Good Mods, Styles and Resources for vBulletin
It also has a lot of good things created for it. You can find literally thousands of modifications to extend the forum at vBulletin.org, and unlike many free forums, you can also make your own mods with far less effort than directly editing PHP files. You can also find and add styles extremely easy, and there's always an abundance of support resources for the software (which many lesser known pieces of software just don't have available).
3. vBulletin has the features, and will add the features people request
Again, another massive problem with various free forum software groups is there is sometimes quite a dimissive attitude towards adding new things. I hear phpBB for example, actually refused adding Quick Reply for said reason because it'd make the forum like a chat room, and various other developers have been reported doing similar. Indeed, it's like the common attitude on Proboards with some of the group's ideas on what should and should not be added. At least vBulletin has many of the common features expected of forum software, and albeit quite slowly adds features by requests and to improve what's already there.
4. Professionalism counts
Arrogant as it is, there is an effect in terms of activity of using paid forum software, at least from my experiments. Members have indeed gone up by a few hundred times as a result, and posts have indeed soared. People on vBulletin.org and The Admin Zone have frankly said themselves that forum software choice can be a deciding factor on whether they'll join a forum, and I do know people who ONLY join a forum powered by certain software, most often vBulletin.
All in all, vBulletin is in all honesty, well justified in it's price. It's not expensive, at least compared to some of it's true competitors, it's price justified in terms of what's available and the presence of a support team means wonders. Hope you now realise exactly why vBulletin is not expensive, why it's worth it and why it's cheaper than these types of 'enterprise forum software' sometimes being advertised.
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