Vbulletin, Pricing and bang for the buck

[timekeeper]

Do you think vBulletin is worth the expense and money for a license? Prices are taken from the Official vbulletin.com site:

Leased Licenses:
1+ $85 Each
3+ $79 Each
etc etc...

Owned Licenses
1+ $160 Each
3+ $148 Each
etc etc...

Compared to free boards such as Invision Power Board, and/or PHPBB, do you think the features, and power in vb is worth the money, then say against Invision or PhpBB?

[Ted S]

I constantly see people asking this question and every time the same answers are given (it makes me wonder how forum admins or soon to be forum admins can forget the search button like a normal user). The answer (to me) is simple, vbulletin is more than worth the price for the flexibility, the power, the templating, the user community and most of all the support. Just a few months ago my forum had a nasty crash and one of the db tables corrupted completely, I sent off a support ticket at something like 3am pacific time and at 5am I had a phone call from a developer accross the world telling me the forum was fixed (although I couldn't understand a word he said). What good is a free forum if your site goes down? My community is a community first but it is also a business that has expenses and income, I am not going to run my business on something that doesn't stack up...

[Floris]

I believe IPB will be costing $200 from version 2.x new license policy on. But - don't quote me on it just yet.

[Estaban]

I would pay that kind of money if I ever wanted to run a forum. But sinds I know that nobody would ever visit - post Im not planning to run a forum at this moment. But its a great piece of software and thats why

[DarknessDivine]

I believe it's well worth it...heck I think it's infopop or something that costs like 600.00

[Floris]

I think the discounts for additional licenses can be a bit lower. But .. with the restrictions that they can't be resold. (transferred to another party) Unfortunatly that happens, so I think giving a bit of a discount on bulk is a good compromise.

I think the owned license can start at $200, but I wouldn't mind paying $299 per license. (but then I would offer the leased license a bit cheaper , say $75, not bulk, and a bit different).

I would offer the owned license as resell option too. So sites can buy them bulk (100 licenses for $100 each) and resell them.

[Daniel P]

Like Nii already said, vBulletin is a great piece of software. And you have to keep that in mind when looking at the license prices.