vBulletin vs. IPB

[ManagerJosh]

I am Equal between both providers. It just depends on what Bells and tools you want on a forum and what you will use it for

Vbulletin and IPB are just as good as each other.

And by the way, I could care-less on what so called "Multi Million" Dollar company uses it. We all have our own oppinions

I accually made this thread: http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showt...55#post1436455

Its a poll for IPB and VB but there was some Up's and down's.

I Have an IPB just useing there server but i think there support forums suck. BEcuase they wont even let you post in "Pre-Sales Questions" And if you email them they wont respond(Atleast with my expierences).

Please use a spell check. Some of the typos are simply horrible. I'd also like to see what would happen if such a thread appeared on the IPB Company Forums.

[Mazinger]

I'd also like to see what would happen if such a thread appeared on the IPB Company Forums.

This most likely would lead someone to ban.

I have an IP.Board (Invision Power Board), currently and I was curious what would be the benifits to switching over to vBulliten.

There are no true benefits from switching from IPB to vBulletin and that is my honest opinion.
If you have 2.3.1 of IPB then stick with it.

[Comtech]

I'd also like to see what would happen if such a thread appeared on the IPB Company Forums.

Good idea, I may try and see. Just for the hell of it.

[ManagerJosh]

Good idea, I may try and see. Just for the hell of it.

Do let us know the outcome

[c0bra]

Do let us know the outcome

Threads generally disappear fairly rapidly when vBulletin is part of the conversation. For a company that is supposedly killing Jelsoft in terms of innovation and functionality, I'm surprised they have been so quick to kill any discussion of the competition. While their competition here is happy to allow conversations and comparisons of the two products. I think that speaks volumes for which company believes most strongly in the quality of their product.

For what it's worth.
I looked at Invision Power Board in the summer. I too thought I was tired of the lack of innovation of vBulletin. I was suckered in by the promise of a unified login across multiple Invision Boards - something vBulletin has failed to deliver on in 3+ years. It's the thing I've really craved since 3.0. I paid for the IPB community pack that included the forums, the blogs, the photo gallery. And I went live with it for about 2 months - before dumping it and running right back to vBulletin.

I hated the control panel. I couldn't get to grips with it. I missed the plugins and power of vBulletin templates for sheer ease of customization. The CSS tools in the vBulletin admincp. When I upgraded my IPB, I lost all my customizations. At that point I killed the installation and reverted back to vBulletin. I wont be looking at IPB again.

It's true I've been using vBulletin since 2.x and maybe I've grown too accustomed to the vBulletin way to find making any kind of switch easy.

But I cannot see anything about the IPB product that is very compelling beyond unified logins when you run multiple forums. When you compare IPB sites to vBulletin installation, there's far more customization going on the vBulletin sites. Which kind of backs up what I discovered when I tried to customize our IPB install. The code is a horrible mess to work with and eventually I just gave up and stuck with the standard look.

If Jelsoft could just come up with a way to allow users across multiple vBulletin installations to have one login - one set of profile data - I'd be very very happy. I'd purchase a lot more owned licenses. But it doesn't seem like this is ever going to arrive on the Jelsoft radar. And after years of waiting, Invision finally stepped up and now took the lead in this area.

Oh yeah. In case you didn't get it already. I want Jelsoft to finally step up and offer the same kind of converge system that Invision has developed.

[ManagerJosh]

Oh yeah. In case you didn't get it already. I want Jelsoft to finally step up and offer the same kind of converge system that Invision has developed.

Join the club. I've been one of the biggest advocates for such an addon.

[Comtech]

Do let us know the outcome

I posted a thread asking for the personal opinions of users at IPSBeyond.com, I stated my opinion and gave vBulletin the respect it deserves while also saying it needed a new makeover.

Within the hour, I was contacted and asked to not post such and the topic itself was deleted. So much for asking questions - even as a paid member.

I "might" return to vbulletin within the next few days, while keeping my IPB license. At least freedom of speech has never been an issue here.

[andrewtr89]

vBulletin owns IPB in the support department. I just really want to thank Andy, Steven, Marco, Kerry-Anne, and co for their help with issues I have had with my forums over the past months.

Always take the times to help, especially when it gets into the dark jungle that is SQL Queries. You guys really make vBulletin what it is, and for that I thank you all. No plans on switching platforms any time soon.

[Andy Huang]

I posted a thread asking for the personal opinions of users at IPSBeyond.com, I stated my opinion and gave vBulletin the respect it deserves while also saying it needed a new makeover.

Within the hour, I was contacted and asked to not post such and the topic itself was deleted. So much for asking questions - even as a paid member.

I "might" return to vbulletin within the next few days, while keeping my IPB license. At least freedom of speech has never been an issue here.

Looking forward for you to join us again at any time

vBulletin owns IPB in the support department. I just really want to thank Andy, Steven, Marco, Kerry-Anne, and co for their help with issues I have had with my forums over the past months.

Always take the times to help, especially when it gets into the dark jungle that is SQL Queries. You guys really make vBulletin what it is, and for that I thank you all. No plans on switching platforms any time soon.

Thank you for the kind comments; it's these comments that keeps us going

[StrongMotive]

vBulletin owns IPB in the support department. I just really want to thank Andy, Steven, Marco, Kerry-Anne, and co for their help with issues I have had with my forums over the past months.

Always take the times to help, especially when it gets into the dark jungle that is SQL Queries. You guys really make vBulletin what it is, and for that I thank you all. No plans on switching platforms any time soon.

I don't plan to change either

[ManagerJosh]

I posted a thread asking for the personal opinions of users at IPSBeyond.com, I stated my opinion and gave vBulletin the respect it deserves while also saying it needed a new makeover.

Within the hour, I was contacted and asked to not post such and the topic itself was deleted. So much for asking questions - even as a paid member.

I "might" return to vbulletin within the next few days, while keeping my IPB license. At least freedom of speech has never been an issue here.

Sorry to hear that happened.

[GHOwner]

This thread is not for debates.
It was for answering questions and he made his mind up to purchase a license.

But you are indeed debating, are you not?

To put it simple, vBulletin has a more professional look than IPB. Maybe it is the old style of forums, but the back end and overal product quality is something I pick instead of IPB.

If you want something different, get IPB. If you want something with the feel and power of a message board, use vBulletin.

(I personally hate the IPB User Profiles, to be honest)

[Comtech]

No, I was not debating and this thread has taken on a life of its own. Plus the text you quoted was from several months ago - keep up with the discussion please. I don't mean that in any disrespectful manner.

I like the IPB profiles and the AdminCP because they created something that stands out among the crowd of current forum software. I also like the IPB administrative cp; I find it better organized when compared to vbulletin's AdminCP. I hope to see something "similar and yet, unique" coming from vBulletin by 4.0.

That will change in the near future from what I have been reading.

Nobody will deny that vBulletin offers the most bang for the buck, even if you forget vbulletin.org. The foundation of vBulletin is more powerful. vBulletin in my experience loads faster.

I am all for looks and will keep my IPB license...but, vBulletin has proven itself to me one again after using IPB for a while. I can skin IPB just fine. But the load issue is ridiculous. Any idea as to why IPB loads slowly when compared to vBulletin?


...Was it just me, or did vBulletin go offline for a few minutes?

[jer2eydevil88]

I am going to add my two cents here because I have had experience with both softwares since 2002.

In 2002
IPB was free and had experienced growth hand over fist with each new free release. Suddenly they pulled the plug on this distribution system leaving all users of IPB with an upgrade path of pay or switch. Lots of people paid because they had loved using the software. I was one of those people, I ran a large forum at the time and I wasn't about to switch.

I renewed my license for a second year on the same forum until I had finally had enough with their anti-customer actions. This is when they started killing off hacks they didn't approve of. They actually tried to force sites to remove hacks they didn't find particularly useful to their customers. See the Hide Hack, which came along before a download system was built to force guests to register to download something you were hosting.

Today
Earlier this year I started a new company called ZigZap Technologies that is geared toward both highly technical users and novices alike. We host forums for an expanding number of open source projects along with providing technical support for (clueless) Windows users.

I reviewed both IPB and Vbulletin for my site finding that neither company offered a demo I could download and try out on my own server. I had to make my decision based off their promotional material and playing with a couple control panels.

I was happy to find that the control panel for Vbulletin has stayed pretty much the same while the Invision Power Board control panel has gotten bloated and unusable.

To test usability of the different software systems I asked several different novice computer users to create an account and post a couple topics. Much to my surprise they almost entirely agreed that VBulletin was an easier system to get acquainted with. That sealed the deal for me, I liked that the control system had remained the same and now my users were telling me it was easier.

[LuckyMe]

I can skin IPB just fine. But the load issue is ridiculous. Any idea as to why IPB loads slowly when compared to vBulletin?

I never bothered to look into it, but I heard it was due to the massive amount of javascript that IPB uses. I read somewhere once that idolforums.com had huge issues with this after an "upgrade" a while back. I don't remember where I read about it honestly. It was probably on the customer forums and got deleted like everything else, but they were pretty upset about it at the time.