Quick Question on VB license....

Legally speaking... if you purchased the cheaper one.. i think its the "leased" . . does it expire after a year and shut down..or do you just lose your upgrade privlages?


EDIT:

n/m . . i looked on vb.com and found it.

 

It is a common misconception that the lease is cheaper. It isn't. If you let your leased license expire, you must delete the software from your server. Over time, the leased license is a lot more expensive than an owned license.

Let's look at one customer who has had a leased license for 6 years now. They originally purchased it at $85.00 (US) and had 5 subsequent renewals. Three of those renewals were for $85.00 each and the last two, after the price increase, were $100.00 each. In total they have paid $540.00 over the life of their license.

Another customer has been running his site under the owned license for the same amount of time. He purchased the original license at $160.00. The renewals at that time were $30/year. So he had 3 renewals of $30.00. For the last two years he renewed promptly and received the discount so had two more renewals at $40.00 each. His total cost over time was $330.

 

yeaa...when i bought my vb i didnt read it thru... oh well.. you live and you learn...

lemme ask you this... when i go to renew in a few months...i can go from leased to bought correct?

 

You can. It will cost the full price of the owned license though.

 

thats ok..as long as I dont lose the forum/info i've built over the last year...thats whats important..

 

From a business perspective, it actually is cheaper, which is one of the reasons I am so frustrated at the info that may/may not prove to be true.

A leased license requires a yearly payment, which, if you're using the thing for business purposes (which most vB forums are), is a tax writeoff. Compare writing off $90 to writing off $40. The difference may be small for one forum, but it adds up quite quickly.


An owned license runs $200 (or, possibly $300+ for the suite, depending on their pricing), as a one time payment. With the removal of the yearly renewals, this actually adds value to the leased license structure, because the business isn't putting that money into software.

This is one of the major reasons I have always used leased products where available. Well, that, and the ability to always know what's what and where. Yes, over time, it adds up to more, but that just means that I can write off more @ the end of the year, and I get more back at the end of the year, as a business owner.

 

I guess. Being able to write off an expense on your taxes doesn't make it less of an expense. I would say most of our business customers purchase the owned license. The cost isn't a concern for them, especially when they already budgeted a lot more for the licensing fees. Even many small business owners budget $500-$1000 for the licensing costs. Many large corporations initially expect to pay $10-20 thousand for vBulletin.

The leased license is predominantly purchased by hobbyists or people new to the forum industry.

 

A leased license still isn't cheaper after 2-3 years no matter how you look at it. If your forum is alive for the sole purpose to serve 1-2 years then it maybe slightly cheaper, but after that, even with tax write offs, it becomes less cost effective. Especially if you consider the fact that you may not even need to renew your license every year since some sites/customers there hasn't be any major features added since 3.5 release.

 

Of course there have been major features added. Just because you don't want to admit they're decent features, or they exist doesn't mean they haven't been added.


As far as the "cheaper" issue, of course it is going to cost more money up front, but if you look at the bigger picture, it returns more, so it actually is cheaper. Rather than actually paying that amount in taxes, you get it back.

 

Name 4.

Since 3.5 we got:

User Albums : Total joke. Ask anyone who actually makes use of those things, that they are missing the basic functions of any type of "album" setup.

Thread Tags: was already available as a modification, but even so, how many sites do you see actually use this feature in any sort of meaningful way.

Thread Prefixes: Again, if this is a "major" feature than I'm George Bush.

Social Groups: Go ask the community how they feel about this massive fail boat launching.

Okay, so maybe I should have rephrased my statement "There hasn't been any useful features added since 3.5"

 

Again, your personal opinion, which, is good for you, but it doesn't make it truth. The features added since 3.5 have built a lot of communities, and encouraged a lot of individuals to reinvest time and effort into vB sites.

 

They do need improvements, but they're still a decent feature for the most part, and I have seen a lot of forums make good use of them. At least, I've seen a lot of members use the albums heavily, so they're doing something right.

True. Of course, the AdminAddict mod that adds them automatically would make them a heck of a lot more useful if default.

They're used on a lot of forums I visit. The support forums use them. My site uses them. AdminAddict uses them. And they're quite useful for categorising topics another way.

Your opinion. Someone around here, I think Wayne Luke said he'd use them instead of normal forums if setting up a new site in some subject areas, and I've seen them get a decent amount of use.

As for other features, you are forgetting:

Friends List
User Customisable Styles for profiles and blogs
Possibly other things, I can barely remember what each branch had differently, whether 3, 3.5, 3.6, 3.7 or 3.8.

 

I believe friends lists were there before 3.5? IIRC they were introduced in 3, but maybe earlier.

Since 3.5 though, we've seen the additions (blogs, etc). I don't think those were in the system before that, though, my mind may be playing tricks on me there.

prefixes are a gem. I've used them on multiple occasions to clean up forums that previously had massive subforums (such as sub for each product by a manufacturer), moving things into a manufacturer -> prefix setup. It makes things much easier to deal with. Yeah, it took a while to get the users used to the new way of things, but still.

 

I think I meant public friends list with differences between friends and contacts were a 3.7 feature. I think the add ons were 3.7 additions though.

 

this went off topic real quick.. :-(