Moving from Forumotion to vBulletin questions.

[Jenn~]

I have a couple of questions I am hoping someone who has experience with vBulletin can help me with. I currently have a forum with Forumotion but I am wanting to switch from there to vBulletin because the overall experience with Forumotion hasn't been good and I think the community would be better on vBulletin. However, I am not that educated on forums and forum providers and all of that. I am going to purchase a month to month license because I have no idea if the switch will even work out for me. I have no idea if the members on my forum will join the new forum, if they will want to start over from scratch or what will happen so I don't want to buy a yearly license. So this is where my questions come in.

1. If I buy a monthly license and my new forum takes off pretty well, can I upgrade to a yearly license at any time without having to start a whole new forum again?
2. I have no idea how much bandwidth a forum would need. I see that a month to month license offers 25 GB of bandwidth. Would that be enough to cover my forum for a month and if not, is there an option to purchase additional bandwidth for the remainder of the month? How does that work if bandwidth runs out? My current forum is very small. We have 276 registered users with about 50 logging in daily. We have roughly 16,000 posts and I opened up the forum on March 13, 2013. So would anyone know if 25 GB would cover something like that?
3. Once I purchase a license how do I go about setting up the actual forum? And does vBulletin actually host it? Meaning is vBulletin the only company I will have to deal with? Because I know with some of the other forums like Phpbb you have to use a site like Host Gator and they host your Phpbb forum for you. From what I've read about vBulletin it seems as though they take care of everything and I was wondering if that was correct?

Any information would be greatly appreciated and again, I really am not that forum literate so if something I am saying is off, please explain it to me.

Thank you in advance.

[BirdOPrey5]

1. Yes
2. The 25 Gig/Month will be plenty for a small forum or a forum just starting out. If it looks like you'll go over bandwidth we'll contact you. Not something you need worry about now.
3. vBCloud doesn't require purchase of a license. The monthly (or annual) vBCloud fee includes the license and the hosting, it is all you need other than an optional custom domain name.

vBulletin will install and maintain the software for a vBCloud forum. You will get an email with an Administrator username and password, you will log into a blank forum and can set it up how you like.

[Jenn~]

Thank you. I do have a few additional questions though. You said something about an optional domain name? That doesn't come with the purchase? How would people get to my forum if it has no domain or do you just assign me one? And is it true that I can't customize my forum without having to pay for options to do it because that is what someone told me? Also, before purchasing, how do I know if my computer will even download vBulletin software?

Thanks, again.

[beishe8]

You said something about an optional domain name? That doesn't come with the purchase?

No, you have to buy it.

How would people get to my forum if it has no domain or do you just assign me one?

http://vb.com/myforum instead of mydomain.com/myforum

[BirdOPrey5]

Thank you. I do have a few additional questions though. You said something about an optional domain name? That doesn't come with the purchase? How would people get to my forum if it has no domain or do you just assign me one? And is it true that I can't customize my forum without having to pay for options to do it because that is what someone told me? Also, before purchasing, how do I know if my computer will even download vBulletin software?

Thanks, again.

If you don't buy your own domain name you can get a sub-domain of vbulletin.net.

Example: http://sedona.vbulletin.net

You could pick something else, besides sedona, as long as it isn't already taken.

You can absolutely customize your forum (how it looks) by using any of the several built in themes and/or editing the style variables or css that controls the look of the forum. No additional purchase necessary.