Forum Software Reviews

I installed vBulletin for two clients and both clients hate it. We have been waiting for a response to a support issue for over a month. vBulletin initially responded to our support ticket with a question. We answered the question. Two weeks later we had to ping them again. They responded, asking the same question they asked the first time! We answered it again, and now another couple of weeks has gone by with no response.

I am looking for a replacement product for both clients.

vBulletin went down the toilet when Internet brands took over, they insulted the people that built up vBulletin to what it was in 2007 and insulted the developers that made what they have today.

vBulletin 4 is a complete pile of crap compared to vBulletin 3, Internet brands has made it worse than any free forum software, I'm sticking with vBulletin 3.

I'm not planning to upgrade to vBulletin 4 after the bad things I've heard. And you have to pay full price to upgrade...
@Andros 1337: You know what you are? A UBB.threads fanboy. Get lost with posting everywhere that UBB.threads is great, since it isn't. A forum without a plugins system is fail.

I used SMF for years. Overall, I was very happy with SMF. I started with version 1, and ended with version 2.0 RC4.

The people that develop and support it are nice and helpful. - But - There are some reasons I switched to Vbulletin 4.0 a week ago.

Here is my experience, and thoughts, and then review of Vbulletin in my first week:

• SMF and Vbulletin are the only two I would consider
• SMF is nice, support people are good, when available, because it is free, and support is volunteers, you could be waiting several days
• SMF lacks a lot of standard VBulletin features
• SMF does have a lot of mods, but the mods are not monitored by SMF developers, so you are at your own risk, and because of this, many mods, cause problems with other mods, or cause problems with core SMF features. Many times the mod developer doesn't support his product, or does not care to respond, because most are free
• VBulletin tests and checks all approved mods, even though you still can run into problems, at least they have "authorized mods" and you are not left with as much risk. For example, I came across one mod on SMF's mod list, and installed it, then found out, it was nothing more then a way for the MOd writer to SEO his own site, and a way to offer a back door for him into your site. I alerted SMF, and after they checked it, they removed it from their mod list
• Vbulletin does charge you, but it includes a lot of features that SMF has to use 5-10 different mods to duplicate, like sitemap, advertising, side panels, CMS, etc just to name a few.
• VBulletin support gets back to my within hours, not days or weeks
• The support for Vbulletin authorized mods is awesome
• Vbulletin is the #1 forum software used on most huge Forums, commercially or free
• Vbulletin is clean, easy to use, and so common, users like it and know how to use it
• I use Vbulletin just as it comes, with no MODS AT ALL!!!! It has all the features I want, and I don't have lots of aggravation with trying to sort out mod conflicts for basic features and options
• SMF is easy to install, but when you have to upgrade, you lose all your mods, and have to reinstall them all, and hope for no conflicts or corruptions. On my SMF forum, I had like 25 mods, just to come close to what VBulletin offers. If you ran into a mod that you didn't like, most times it would not CLEANLY uninstall cause of other mods, and you had to go in and manually edit all the files and hope you got it right

Overall, in my first week of Vbulletin, I am very happy. Install was easy. Setup, I will admit, is way different then SMF and there is a learning curve. I set it up as a test forum, got all the settings to where I needed them to be, experimented, and learned, then switched it to live and disabled my current site.

I HIGHLY Recommend VBulletin. If you can't afford to do Vbulletin, then I HIGHLY recommend SMF.

As far as these other guys on here that recommend UBB.threads, try it, I do not agree, and it is a bad move. As Far as IP.Boards, they have a nice forum, but are crooks. They charge you the most money for all the features to make what VBulletin is already, and then want $105.00 every 6 months to support it!!!! Stay away from them. The cost is not worth what they offer.

I wouldn't recommend this software to anyone specially after 'ib' bought it. it has been around 20 months (more than a year and half) since vb4 released and it still buggy with over 1200 confirmed bug/over 2800 bug in total. the company that owns vb doesn't have a clue how to develop a bugfree software or how communicate with its customers. they are fllwing what it called agile develpment which proved its failure. not to mention the the price of this software which is not fair and vb doesn't worth that much of money in its current stat. keeping moving this way i'll give it two years to be in the bottom list of paid forum software. i also think in a year or two there will be a free forum that is much better than vb. vb bosses do not listen to their customers and they don't care about what they want and they only want to get money as soon as possible as much as possible and let customers go to hell, even if they say they're not, it is that way.
my guess vb is in the end of its life
sad

What is up with all the negative comments?! I've been using vb for years and love it.

vBulletin is actually quite awesome.

Pros:

• I own multiple websites on the VB CMS suite and I would trade them for nothing. I also purchased the mobile suite's for my sites and have 1000's of downloads between android and iPhone. Anyone trying to knock vB is ignorant. PERIOD. There are a million plugins available for vB and its not even close. The Top Message Boards around the world use VB. Just check the bigboard.com

  As for the Anonymous guys whom are probably employees of one of the other platforms your only hurting yourselves with that envy!

Pros:

• The forums work although not without latent problems
• I can't think of any others

Cons:

• More bugs than in all of South America. CMS is worst thing if I have ever seen.
• Company dresses up this pig to looks decent. Don't believe the "name." The company that created the software was bought by a new company
• Most addons not compatible.

Summary:
The company that used to create this software is no longer in business. All the developers left and now the new company looks like it is hiring cheap labor in all different countries to create this big piece of junk. They promise they will fix this and that and new features and they never arrive. Everything has a price tag. The addons that are supposed to work are not supported. Worst investment ever. If you want better alternatives, I have found invisionboard and xenforo to be much better than this total garbage. The CMS is terrible. It doesn't look very good and using it is worse. It is almost impossible to get it to work properly and there are so many bugs. It is why most vbulletin sites don't use it at all.

Save your money. Don't ever buy from this company again. They took my money and now want to sell me another version of more junk without fixing what they sold. Since i bought there are hundreds of bad reviews of vBulletin and the new company that bought them, Internet Brands. They are all true. All of these people can't be wrong. My mistake, not again.

Pros: I tried phpbb3, MyBB, kunena, Ipboard, and some others. Vbulletin is the best I've used

Cons: The price