Is it REALLY worth it?

[MrAlex]

Well,
I have enough $$$ to buy a leased licence,
So, is it worth buying it?
Or Should I get the full blown licence?
Im €40 away from being able to afford the full lisence,
Whats worth it?
Or should I keep it towards a new laptop for my birthday?
ANY help is appreciated!
Thanks!

[whitetigergrowl]

I would buy the full blown one for many reasons. It's cheaper in the long run for one. But I like the flexibility it gives me by having an owned one.

[---MAD---]

Depends what you mean by "worth it". If you are a dedicated forum admin and dedicated in running a community and putting the time and effort it requires, then yes, vBulletin makes your life easier with flexiable settings and being able to customize just about anything with plugins.

If you mean by making money back, then no. Don't expect to be making hundreds of dollars so soon. It can take months, years or even longer depending how well your community is driven.

vBulletin as a product is excellent and worth every penny but the product itself won't make your community successful if you don't put the time and energy a community requires from you.

[MrAlex]

I never said I wanted to make money
Anyway,
IP. Board 2.3 is MUCH cheaper,
about 40 euros cheaper,
and I'll have some money left over too!
So,
I think I'll go with IP. Board.

[Onimua]

I never said I wanted to make money
Anyway,
IP. Board 2.3 is MUCH cheaper,
about 40 euros cheaper,
and I'll have some money left over too!
So,
I think I'll go with IP. Board.

You only get 6 months of upgrades and support from them though verses a year's worth of upgrades from vBulletin and unlimited support past license expiration.

[Andy Huang]

Worth it? It depends on what ground you determine whether or not something is worth the money.

If you are just in need for a forum script, there are plenty of "cheaper" solutions available. Heck, some of our biggest competitors offer forum scripts for free (hint: SMF, phpBB, etc.)! So if your regard of "worth it" is money vs having a forum, then it is probably not worth it, at all. Because you can get a forum for free, then why pay?

On the other hand, if you are serious about starting a discussion board, do not want to have to deal with security issues, do not want to have to worry about overhead in developing features for your forum, and just want to focus on building content, and have users come in to join you -- which ultimately leads to time and money being saved, and perhaps even being earned -- then it is definetly worth the money. vBulletin is known for its great set of feature, great support, great code hacking community, and great security... and that's not an advertisement catch phrase we use, that's a fact countless customers can attest to

So, yeah... please define "worth it" and I'm sure many of us here can tell you whether or not it is worth it for your case

[WildEye]

...do not want to have to deal with security issues, do not want to have to worry about overhead in developing features for your forum, and just want to focus on building content

This a bit of a simplification isn't it? vBulletins security fixes doesn't install themselves. Some times (such as the last one from 3.6.9 to 3.6.10) give alot of grief for heavily updated boards.

vBulletin support is excellent, don't get me wrong. The users still need to implement the fixes when they come (luckily not that often )

[Andy Huang]

True that it was a bit simplified; but in comparison with other softwares, vBulletin had track history of being a lot lesser valunable than any other scripts. As such, in general, it does mean end-users don't need to deal with as much secuity issues compared to other scripts

[ishansoni1]

For my money, vBulletin is worth every penny!

[kruzzen]

I use MyBB mainly and said I'd never pay for a forum software. I am even currently developing my own software. But I bought a vBulletin lastnight and I got to say, it was worth it.

Wow, I have never seen so many features before!

[uberjon]

I never said I wanted to make money
Anyway,
IP. Board 2.3 is MUCH cheaper,
about 40 euros cheaper,
and I'll have some money left over too!
So,
I think I'll go with IP. Board.

if your mind has what it takes to understand all the complex feature rich settings in the vbulletin ACP. go with vbulletin. the past few days have been great for me so far. takes getting used to the ACP. (from IPB 2.3.4) as IPB's acp is very simple.. not as many options.. so far i am liking VB though...

also, vbulletin seems to "respond" slightly faster. as well as IPB's source files range around 10MB more than vbulletins.....

[whitetigergrowl]

if your mind has what it takes to understand all the complex feature rich settings in the vbulletin ACP. go with vbulletin. the past few days have been great for me so far. takes getting used to the ACP. (from IPB 2.3.4) as IPB's acp is very simple.. not as many options.. so far i am liking VB though...

also, vbulletin seems to "respond" slightly faster. as well as IPB's source files range around 10MB more than vbulletins.....

IPB also has more features than VB generally that VB users need plug-ins to achieve. I have also noticed IPB is generaly better at backups than VB is. When I converted from VB to IPB and back...I noticed all of my backups were much...almost twice as small by using IPB. Yet all of the necessary info was there. As for responding slightly faster, that could also be a server setup. Look using google. More people claim IPB runs faster in general and use less resources than VB. Some even have joked that VB is benchmarking software for the server. lol Both with IPB and VB default out of the box. So that 'respond' slightly faster statement would be more limited to a person on person basis for many reasons.

For many it's a toss up.

Just go with what you prefer. Both are good forum software. I prefer IPB's admin features and layout over VB's on many levels as I have found VB to be missing many things that can only be achieved through plug-ins that are default in IPB. But VB does have its strong points like better support.

Like I said...just go with what you feel works best for you and your members. Not like you will get much more than 1 sides arguments here or on the IPB forums. lol