Buying vBulletin 6 months before major upgrade?

Well, I had something going through my mind about the recent license change and how vBulletin is handling new orders. Does anyone know how would it go if you purchase vBulletin say... 5 months before the release of vB5. You are going to have almost to pay the full price in just 5 months of buying the software in order to upgrade. Or are they actually for real going to give a serious or pro-rated discount (I doubt it, since they can't officially know when it will be ready) to customers who recently bought vB4 and want to go up to vB5 when it is available?

Am I making sense? :ohi:

Note: This thread is not about discussion of what you like or you don't like. Simply to find an answer to a price question.

 

An interesting question but one I'm afraid we will not know the answer to until the vB 5.0 presale announcement.

 

I can already tell you that IMO they will charge full price for vB4 up until maybe a small presale for vB5.

Honestly, I don't look for them to make it to vB5 :devil:

Edit: I'm basing this off how they handled the vB3 -> vB4 for people who even bought one week prior to the presale.

 

I am pretty interested in this question as I personally am a fan of the vB software AND the giant amount of people on their community + spanish translations quality (and community). BUT, I am now in the giant boat in whether I should purchase or not with all this current trouble and uncertainty of future payments and what not.

 

I'm hoping they do the right thing and prorate large discounts for people who just bought the license within a few months before the release of a new version. How are we to know when development is going to end? Logically the 3 series should have went to 3.9 then to 4.0. Is 4 going to 4.9 or will they release version 5 after 4.5, 4.6, or wait until 4.8, or do the logical thing and go to 4.9? :waiting: We're all just as lost as you are.

The bottom line is there are a lot of questions up in the air about how upgrades will be handled after vB 4 and all anyone can do is speculate until the time comes.

I will say this, I totally disagree with the whole 'pre-release' sales from 4 onward. It amounts to know but marketing fluff and a quick money grab. Give your current customers the discount so long as they have an active license for the previous version no matter what. Not everyone has a few hundred dollars just sitting around for when vB decides to push a new version. Just my humble opinion of course.

 

I'm trying to get an answer to this, because I am interested in buying vB4, but I'm not going to go through some cheap marketing route to steal my money half-way next year. I want facts, and after I read them, I'll make my purchase, otherwise, I'll have to go for another solution.

 

Lucas, I'm on my way out after unsubscribing but it looks like some of the people here are answering your questions well. Here's a really good answer for you and glad to make this my final post, hoping it helps someone.

1. Unless an employee of vBulletin tells you ironclad in writing of a policy, anything and everything you read at vBulletin.com or elsewhere is a crock. In fact, they stoke the rumor mill in their own forums and most of their members buy into "intentions" paraded around by employees - do not buy into this BS. Don't even believe posts by volunteers - employees ONLY and not what they THINK the terms will be, only a representation of what the terms ARE.

2. Given, as some smart people said above, that Internet Brands sold software knowing of their own policy change, one has to be a complete idiot to think that this group of people can ever be trusted to their word without a contract or written representation. Look at the thread entitled "BBB" in it. IB screwed their own customers (forcing them to upgrade or not be able to update their software to latest versions) believing that they had no contractual obligation to do so. Just making sure you appreciate post #1 and realize don't take liberties with any assumptions.

3. What most people didn't understand is that vBulletin 5 is just a number. It can be applied to anything and at any time. They can decide to add in a whole new template and make some minor changes in 2010 and call it vBulletin 5. So what will an upgrade get you? IB will keep playing the game it did with vBulletin 3. Have a presale, you won't be able to see vBulletin 5 when it goes on and promised to be the cheapest price ever, etc. Don't waste your time. Nobody even knows what the price of vBulletin 4 will be in a month.

4. Tons of people are going to be selling vBulletin licenses. You can get one used on the open market. I know I'm going to be selling the ones I'm not using. If you want to take a gamble, get a license used and get what you want - if it's vBulletin 3, make sure you get all the maintenance releases to 3.8.3 since it looks like they aren't doing anything further with it. You'll be good as gold to go and don't waste your time with fluffware - vBulletin 4 isn't going to be solid in any respect where developers can really properly create themes and hacks for many months and by that time you can bet that many of the original contributors will stop caring.

Best of luck.

 

r u people serious??? vB4 isnt even done and your talking about 5!?!

give it a rest already....

 

I see nothing wrong with the discussion that is going on here. Let's try not to derail the threads.

 

sorry brother...i thought we were trying to steer away from that discussion..

 

Unfortunately, so far at least, it seems like there is no concrete answer to your question.

I pointed out this exact same issue some time ago and asked the same question as you're asking. Quite frankly, your question really points out a major flaw in vBulletin's new pricing policy - at least a flaw from a customer's point of view.

Unfortunately, I don't think IB really looks at things from their customer's point of view much anymore. It seems like most of the decisions they now make, are short term, short sighted, knee jerk, bottom line driven snap decisions aimed at raising at much revenue as possible. Sorry to be so cynical, but since IB took over, that's just the way it has been.

So the reality is that you'll have to make your decision mostly based on just trusting IB to be fair in the future.

And if you're feeling anything like many others out there, I'm sure your trust level of IB is probably pretty weak at this point.

 

We're just talking about what could be. No one knows what will as IB has been purposely tight lipped. I've read from the devs around the next that 4 could be current for a year or two, we don't know and cannot take that as a guarantee because it was not an 'official announcement'

Speaking for myself, I'm not bashing IB just informing others of what may happen.

 

I have made a thread at vBulletin pre-sales forum, hoping to get an answer from IB or something. I see that they certainly haven't said anything as no on knows. I'll let you guys know if anything is said, I hope we can get an answer, this just can't keep going.

 

I can guarantee if you purchase vb4 24 hours before the vb5 licensing comes into play you'll be paying full price for it.

The question is will vbulletin solutions give you a date when the new licensing for vb5 comes into play, definitely not. that kind of information would financial cripple them because people would hold off untill vb5.

They did this with the new licensing. They allowed customers to purchase vb3 and the blogs when it would become useless so you can expect no mercy. They could have given a date when the vb4 licensing came into play but they withheld such information and watered that fisco down with a pre-sales time limit.


Always remember, they now have a annual christmas party to finance.

 

Well they have been answering the question, but just not directly.

So unless they step up and answer your question directly, I think what they'll say is something cryptic, along the lines of....

We are estimating vBulletin 5.0 will be in development for approximately 18-24 months depending on how things go.

Then, I can just see this announcement coming sometime next year.....

Due to the overwhelming response and overwhelming requests for us to release version 5.0 we are going to do so earlier then we officially thought. We are only able to do so, due to the massive financial investment we've made in expanding our development team.

We are therefore offering all members with an active license the opportunity to purchase vBulletin 5.0 for a limited time of 72 hours for the unbelieveable low price of $795.00. After the initial sale period the price will be $995.00. :rofl:

 

Eeeerm. I thought they're phasing in the rest of VB4.x first. It's taken years to go from 2 to 3 and 3 to 4 so I don't think they'll take us from 4 to 5 yet will they? And definately not 6 anytime soon.

I'm hoping people start encouraging me to upgrade to 4 soon, but it's not looking promising. It could screw up my whole forum setup, SEO, search rankings and member activity and all sorts.

So I've opted to use 4 (when it's stable) on new forums to test it out etc. Though I don't think I'd upgrade my 4's to 5's. Only upgrade my 4.0 to 4.1 and so-on.

 

So it's up to us to buy it and decide if they will actually honor us as customers or not anymore.

 

Or its see who is all left to use it....

 

You don't think? New company, new management, new goals and priorities. This is now a public company running vBulletin. Their top priority is money.

It's also a new development team with a faster pace (so they say), so there is no reason they couldn't, and no reason they wouldn't want to have 5.x out in little more than a year.

 

Anyone think they'll be able to make their estimated release date of Q4 2009?

Seems the bugs are really mounting by the day.