vBulletin 4 MADNESS

They haven't really raised prices for me, in a way they've cut them. However I've got to pay money out four months before it's due, and I'm having to scramble around begging for donations to enable me to do it, which is not good.

Basically, the new pricing scheme is not at all bad, but it's been rather badly announced and implemented. A few minor tweaks and extra concessions here and there and it would have looked much better. As it stands, the company seems to be imploding on their own forums. It doesn't look good.

Me? My mind is *almost* made up, I shall probably be going with the pre sale offer.

 

I just renewed my license in September, so I'm shelling out back-to-back. I haven't even decided if I want to even pay for the vB 4 Suite or just stick with 3.8.

 

I have little choice as I'm on a leased license - if I don't take advantage of this offer it'll be $250 come February 2010, and that would entail switching to a free solution, my site cannot sustain that sort of cost.

 

As it was hinted in the leaked documents from InternetBrand/vB, I am not surprised at all about the price hike. You would think however that they'd at least warn their users to upgrade asap to save a bit of money before yesterday when they automatically whacked on that extra money for the upgrade.

There are some people who hate vBulletin, some who love it. I like to think of myself as a middle man there. I own a vB board with a bunch of time and money into it, so just moving to another system isn't really feasable, especially considering how well i'm doing w/SERPs. However, I am not a vB blind-supporter either.

I find some of the things they're doing now wrong. I would like to try 4.0 before buying it, so that is what I'll do. After trying and administrating a IPB 3.0 board it might just come down to me starting all new forums with IPB if vBulletin doesn't get their act together.

Honestly, all of this comes down to the company itself. InternetBrands often makes very big changes without involving the community at all. Yet they call themselves "community experts". Granted, in most businesses you can't let the clients run the show, it'd be nice to at least fill them in on things before they happen.

vBulletin and IPB are still (in my opinion) the best options, even before seeing vBulletin 4.0. Therefore I will shell out the money to one of them, this whole course of action however, will determine which one of them I do shell it out to.

 

This is really madness. So many threads about it, and prices. They want to lower the prices too!

 

To be fair - they did. Ray mentioned several times, and I spent a lot of time quoting him (to inform the uninformed), that users with active licenses would be offered discounts for the vB 4 license costs, whatever they came out to be.

Here's an announcement from August:

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1775741

Post from June:

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1747686&postcount=8

 

I completely understand raising prices to stay profitable, and the price increase shouldn't affect too many people too harshly anyways. I'm more worried about whether this upgrade is worth the increase in money compared to other options.

Just like a switch yesterday, prices went up if you have an outdated license. I would've figured maybe a "renewal warning" or some sort. Not only would that generate quite a bit of income quickly for them, it would've left them in a bit better standing with the community.

 

By album gallery I meant that people can upload their own pictures and have an album of their own, last time I knew that was a gallery, and if you read correctly I said that there is a plugin [one example being photopost] which actually expands such feature.

 

I read your post, thanks.

I was merely pointing out that one could surmise from your post that the gallery plugin actually expands the features of the profile album, but they don't. The gallery plugins (whether photopost, vBPicGallery or any other gallery) are separate from, and their features far surpass, those of the profile album.

 

I've put together a handy FAQ here: vBulletin Owners: Handy FAQs - Invision Power Services

I logged into our ticket system this morning and there's pages of vB users with questions so I figured I'd compile the common ones into a single topic.

Please let me know if anything else needs clarification.

 

As I posted over in vb.com earlier today:

For me, even with a currently active license, I am still in the boat of if I want to continue to receive support and upgrades to the 3.X series, I either have to pony up $130 now, or almost $200 in a couple of months, as opposed to $40 to renew for another year...neither of those options work for me as to pay for either one means telling my kids Christmas is cancelled this year...I can't afford both...I am not a happy camper and have lost some trust in vB which I love and am just as entitled to my feelings as those who think every one should 'quit whining'...my humble 2 cents lol

Oh and I should edit to add...I am in Australia so all amounts for USD actually cost more for me...

 

>> "Due to the increased interest in our products from vBulletin users over the past few days"

 

Strange somebody said vb4 screens a photoshop screens
but lookie here..
vBulletin 4 Licensing Info released!

 

I wouldn't doubt the vb 4.0 screenshots are photoshoped, but you can make the CMS look like that

 

Crazy Times - Self inflicted. This is why you never take what anyone says or a employee for that matter as the truth. Quite funny to see that people are shocked by this. I seen this coming a long time ago in a galaxy far far away.

Poor blog license holder.

 

Thanks Matt, it looks good

BTW.. It was good chatting with you today, you know how to contact me if you ever have any questions, I'll be in touch

 

I feel your pain. And I'm not being a smartass. I am where you are. Being a single mom with a young son to support, there's no way I could afford this now. Nor in the foreseeable future. They have priced many people right out of a vB license. :uhh:

 

Yep, I get it now.

 

I'm not shocked at the new licensing scheme basics at all. I am shocked as to some of the details. The abrupt & short timing for 4.x presales, still in Alpha, no mention as to how long 4.x will be around, no real info as to when 4.x will come out, they are charging people now during the presale instead of when they download (I think), etc.

What is truly amazing is how Ray words his announcements.
"Due to an overwhelming response and interest in the pre-sale event for vBulletin 4.0 Publishing Suite, we've decided to extend an offer to those customers with inactive licenses."


I'm in no way trying to incite anything, but am doing much soul searching as to what to do. I have a forum that quite honestly could use the CMS/blog features but I'm not confident they would be implemented to meet our needs. The other social networking things don't, and the Albums are extremely awkward in 3.8 but they were much improved from prior versions.

In addition I've got a 2nd license/forum that gets zero traffic. Should I sell that this week? Upgrade one and try to see if 4.x suite features are useful for us then fall back to the other 3.8 license if not? A key issue for us is a competing site to ours who also uses vB and users feel more comfortable having a similar environment. Otherwise almost any script could be used, as long as it had the extremely important (to us) thread preview feature.


???

 

Like I've always said, and will continue to say (even when people tried to bash me) actions speak louder than words. Trusting someone is something that happens over months, even years so why do people trust someone that likes to post paragraphs of diluted words spanned over months?

Whether it's right or wrong is up for conjecture debate but that isn't the case here but what people should have read into from the start.

Staff leaving
Diluted announcements
Leaked information
Closed Beta
License changes

For christ sake, it doesn't take a rocket scientist.