Price of vBulletin

[MissKalunji]

Let me just put it this way: People pirate phpBB... that should tell you something.

I love vBulletin, and gladly paid for my three licenses. Sure, I could only afford the leased at the time, but I'm moving up to owned pretty soon since they'll start to expire in the next few months or so.

Oh boy same here very satisfied! wasnt too sure about it but i know i made the best choice!

[Traz]

Hey, I've got no problem with the price (my opinion, I know you have yours.) Especially when you compare it to say, a more limited forum type like IPB, where the Owned license is $175. vB may be regarded as expensive for the younger folk who may not have the budget to fork out $160 to own it, but even then I don't think it would be that hard to save up for whilst using an alternate free board in the meantime. I know that some forums don't always have a lengthy life expectancy; like if the members stop showing up and the place just dies. But owning the thing indefinitely, and let's just say you ran a successful site for five years with it installed. You could say you were paying just over $30 each year.)

I bought the owned program mostly on a whim, and even if it turns out to be nothing more then a test for me, I won't regard it as a loss. I just love the amount of things you are capable of doing with vB (though some of the ingenious hacks out there appeal to me the most.) Heck, there is no need to defend the forum-type on my end. If the price is regarded as too steep, and you don't have the right amount of money to splurge on an owned license; well it is not like a house, you could easily save up for it. Especially if you join up with a friend or two to split the bill. Realistically, it's more than fare. But if the Support wasn't decent, then I wouldn't recommend this or anything to anyone. Such is definitely not the case though.

Good luck in deciding which way to go.

[bplinson]

The price IMHO is a bargin! If you can not afford it right now then let you users pay for it by using Google Adsense. If you have a halfway popular forum then there is no reason why you can not make $500 plus a month.

I have to permanent licenses and am contemplating a third.

[FLMom]

I think the price is more than fair for what you get! I love all of the extra things that other boards don't offer. If you can't afford it now, save your money and get it when you can. Most of us did the same thing

[_Rusman_]

I believe that the price is reasonable for some countries and unreasonable for another.
For example, I live in Russian Federation, and most people average income is about $200-$300 per month, which is comparable with owned license price.
I also believe that one year license should be about $30-50 for such countries without any support (we love to found solutions ourselfs and have our own Russian community ) but with download access to all updates of the vBulletin during that time
The problem is $85 is too much for both of us, so most Russian people just unable to buy the license and using pirated versions.

[LeeD]

The price IMHO is a bargin! If you can not afford it right now then let you users pay for it by using Google Adsense. If you have a halfway popular forum then there is no reason why you can not make $500 plus a month.

I have to permanent licenses and am contemplating a third.

I to think it is a bargain compared to accounting software or something.

I own 8 licenses and love every minute of it!

[Zachery]

I believe that the price is reasonable for some countries and unreasonable for another.
For example, I live in Russian Federation, and most people average income is about $200-$300 per month, which is comparable with owned license price.
I also believe that one year license should be about $30-50 for such countries without any support (we love to found solutions ourselfs and have our own Russian community ) but with download access to all updates of the vBulletin during that time
The problem is $85 is too much for both of us, so most Russian people just unable to buy the license and using pirated versions.

What would stop other people from claiming that they live in said countries, and getting the discount?

[MissKalunji]

What would stop other people from claiming that they live in said countries, and getting the discount?

I think you should ask for adress and verify....

either the credit card or paypal should have the proper adress.....

no?

[Wayne Luke]

Most credit cards in Russia actually do not support Address Verification. All credit cards that do support AVS go through such a service already.

The fact of the matter is a large number of fraudulent transactions come from Russia and certain Southeast Asia countries. These transactions make doing business in these countries a lot more costly for us and really make it unfeasible to offer regional prices on the software. It should also be noted that our costs do not become lower due to exchange rates of other countries. They are fixed and the pricing relates these costs to become profitable as a whole. To lower prices in some regions, we will have to raise them in others.

[rsx]

They even bittorrent the free software solutions like phpBB, etc .. regardless of price there are always 11 year olds.

We have no intention to lower our prices at all as far as I know, as we have already priced our products very competative.

Piracy is bad, I recommend against it. Our anti piracy team is active and doing many many many cases per day and have a very high success rate.
For discussions about piracy and anti piracy you're free to open a dialog on vBulletin's anti piracy company's web site piratereports.com

I agree.
I had a very hard time saving up for this lisence, and many people kept suggesting to me to get a pirated version or to use one at least until I can save enough for one, but I always replied negatively because I really appreciate the work that has been done and the developement you guys put into this software every day. I could never.

Pirating IS stealing - Don't do it.