Are you satisfied with vBulletin?

Are you satisfied with vBulletin and the direction that they are going in, why or why not?

 

Looks like they're making strides with the improvement of vBulletin 5 Connect. However I doubt if it's enough to impress me and sway me that way.

 

If we are speaking about VB5, it doesn't quite impress me so much atm.

As customers, we can only hope that there will be a good thriving forum market to choose from. With that said, I hope VB5 will improve.

 

They shouldn't make progress after they released the platform, it should be good before they ask for money

I loved VB3, it's the reason I started using premium scripts. VB4 wasn't on my liking and this new one doesn't impress me at all. We'll wait and see

 

Like most forums I think it's more about the features available and what you want it to do. For that reason I have licenses to most of the major ones to show clients the functions for each so they can make an informed decision on what to expect. They all have the good, the bad, and the ugly. Some more than others. While VB isn't at the top of the list since it released v4 it's maintained and it does seem to have a future.

With that said, and watching the bug tracker, I won't upgrade to v5 actively until it can go more that a few hours without something breaking.

 

I'm keeping an open mind and an eye on their progress. It certainly is different, whether that's bad or good remains to be seen. But if the demo is any indication, satisfied is too strong a word at the moment.
Looks like it will be progressing in phases, basic script now, calendar and CMS to come down the road, so I guessing we won't see a totality of a truly finished product until at least a year from now.

 

Which is pretty insane if you ask me.

I still don't understand this release thing they're trying here. It's like "Hey lets take away over 100 features, then say we've added 125".

But no one knows the 125 they've added?

 

Someone asked for a list of these 125 new features sometime ago and I don't believe anyone has produced such a list. Wasn't it the same way when vB 4 came out? Didn't it take them a while before they had a comparison chart out for everyone to see?

 

I honestly don't remember. The last thing I remember doing with IB was submitting tickets to have all my licenses transferred after the disaster that was vB4 gold.

 

vBulletin 5 is a very long way from being anything of value. Given that vBulletin has a long history of releasing barely done software with many promises that never get fulfilled, there isn't any reason to buy VB5 until you are 100% certain that it will work for you AS IS. The truth is that I can't even tell what direction they are going in any more. I take a look at the latest product and I'm not sure what I'm looking at. At first glance it appears to be a forum that is much worse than even vB 4. It's not as if VB 5 provides anything revolutionary either. It seems as though they razed it to the ground and, after a year, don't have much to show. I don't even have to go into the scary business issues there and the lack of any explanation of privacy and data usage from add on products.

Will it be worth something in 6 months to a year? Hard to say but doubtful. There is a CMS that is still not on the horizon, loads of features missing from VB 5 and I watch software like Invision Power Board continue to go light years beyond VB 5. I have no idea why anyone would buy VB5 given the price and choices. And then there is myBB. That software has become more than good enough for most forums. The next version promises to be even better and also can be linked with other CMSes. The fact that it's free makes me wonder why I'd purchase forum software unless it's a comprehensive solution like IPB.

 

I was a huge fan of vBulletin 3, never looked at other forum software for years when using vB3. vBulletin 4 came along and hated it, never liked it since, not even after testing a few times. It's not the same forum software anymore for me, Internet Brands don't really know what they're doing and put "quality last" over making money. That's the big difference really, vBulletin isn't the "vBulletin" we once knew, it's just a brand name Internet Brands kept going.

 

I personally like vB 4 better than vB 3, but thats just me, but vB 5 seems to be a train wreck atm.

 

I don't plan on upgrading to VB5 anytime soon. That's all I have to say..

 

vBulletin5 doesn't actually seem all that bad playing with the front end on their live support forum.

My only problems are it feels "heavy" when comparing to XenForo and IPB among others.

 

I expected to have my license before judging Vbulletin