Should I upgrade to vB 4 - or not?

The "pre-sale" period ends, as we know, in a few days. So I have to decide what to do quite soon.

I purchased my license in March of this year. At the time my sister objected that the $180 I paid was "a lot of money," and I remember saying with confidence, "But it's a lifetime license." At that time I had no reason to think that it wasn't. Sure there was the $40 annual renewal fee, but I considered that quite modest and reasonable. In short, I was very happy with my purchase and felt I'd probably gotten a great deal. Certainly, I had no reason to think otherwise.

Then came the debacle of earlier this month. And I do mean debacle.

It offends me deeply that some people have been ripped off so royally by IB. And ripped off is the only reasonable description.

As for myself, I expected to pay $40 in March 2010, and another $40 in March 2011. Instead it's only October 2009 and already I'm called upon to pay $130. What will I get for that unexpected, and unbudgeted, amount? No one really knows. What I've seen so far has not impressed me.

At the time I purchased my license, I think there was no question but that vBulletin was the leading forum software. It not only had a good reputation itself, but it had an entire universe of developers independently adding to the utility and value of its product.

I do consider how vBulletin has handled itself during the last three months to be truly dishonest and reprehensible. (Again, I do not direct any of my remarks toward Wayne and Steve, who I believe have truly been the customers' friends in every possible way. My words are directed against the policy makers.)

They have handled the recent changes both incompetently and corruptly. They had months in which to make a decent plan, and they swore up and down that they couldn't make any announcements about the future because they were working so hard to come up with one. Then they trotted one out that looked like it had been invented by someone with a hangover who was in a hurry to get to the bathroom.

So, what should I do? should I shell out $130 to a company that three weeks ago was still accepting money for a product that it knew would soon be obsolete? that is now charging some existing customers far more than new customers? that has taken months to come up with the rather pathetic looking new style we see now at vB.com?

One plan that has occurred to me is to stick with 3.8.4 until vB 5 comes out. That will give me time to observe vBulletin's direction for the future. Question: is there any real downside to that???

 

Personally, no.

 

Ryan, may I ask what you plan to do with your forum??

 

Nothing. I plan to open my forum with 3.8.
Just need to upgrade my license *sigh*

 

Depends on if you could use the new features of the suite I suppose. I can, assuming they are somewhat functional, so I upgraded one of the 2 I have. I'm trying hard to figure out what to do with the other one. I've got a couple of ideas but need to decide today.

If you just need the forums my hunch would be that there will be ways to keeping it functional until v5 comes out.

 

I know I will stick with vB. 3.8x for a while. Though I think it's best to pay now, instead of later, it might be more expensive.

 

Here's my thoughts:

If you know you like the product (4.0) , and will eventually want it - either now or later:
Then you might as well upgrade now, to either the Publishing Suite or the Forum Classic, depending on what you want/need, and take advantage of the Pre-Sale discount.

If determining the direction of IB/vB is more important than saving some money to possibly regret the purchase, then I'd just wait. Your license expires in March, and by that time, 4.0 will be released (I presume). You will be able to use the Forum Classic without charge, so you will have a chance to try it out.

It depends. If saving a few bucks is a big deal, then yes there is a downside - you don't get the pre-sale discount.
If money isn't that big of an issue, and investing in a product that you know is going in the direction you like, then this isn't a bad idea.



My personal plans:
Forum #1: really needs 4.0; it's probably going to be expected by the members, and it could really use the CMS. So I'm making the 4.0 Suite upgrade for that one.

Forum #2 really could use the Suite - blogs and the CMS. I've always wanted the blog add-on for it, but have been waiting for 4.0. The CMS is even better and can replace my WordPress homepage. But I'm not going to upgrade, because I'm just way too concerned about IB's direction. If things were going as smoothly as they were when it was the real Jelsoft that we all know and love, I'd definitely make the upgrade. But, it's their loss. I'm not sure if they even realize or care that they are losing the faith and trust of dedicated customers.

Forum #3: It's too new, and doesn't really need the suite. 3.8 works very well for it, so no upgrade there.

So all-in-all, that's one of three to be upgraded to the suite. It would be two if IB wasn't screwing things up. Royally, if I may add.

 

It costs nothing to upgrade to the forum only, and $130 to upgrade to the suite.
At the expiration date of your license you'll have to pay the full price to renew, which is what? $195 if you want the forum only.

Altho I don't feel that the pricing is fair either, there doesn't seem to be anything that we can do about it, so take your pick. $130 now, or $195 later.

 

I will say that v3.8 is stable and works well. They may not be able to say the same about whatever version v4 will be out in March 2010. In addition some really great enhancements might be out in June 2010.

If I had any plans to use v4 in public I would definitely would upgrade to the suite asap.

 

3.8 works very well, I think i'll be keeping 3.8 on the cards for a good while for my last remaining site. I just know if I even thought about upgrading my license the chances of me exploding would increase by a factor of 10.

 

Just curious, are there any stats on vB sales over the years?
The reason I ask is I wonder if they are seeing fewer new sales, and instead are hoping to better profit from existing customers (and I wonder how well it will work).

 

You should go with your gut feeling. If you feel you will need this product and it will fulfil your needs then you should go for it and take the leap. If not, and you feel that the company is taking you for a ride in the backseat of a battered skoda then I would say hold out untill you have exhausted all other options and alternatives.

Bare in mind, alot of people want someone to say yes you should purchase which will give comfort, it won't. Your now stepping towards blind faith and you are basically hopeing that the product will fill your expectations and no words can give you that level of comfort. Actions on the other hand speak louder than anyone's jargon and failed promises.

Go with your gut feeling. vbulletin solutions is not jelsoft anymore and you should never forget that.

Regarding stats, I don't think statistical data on sales will help you here though I'm sure the best people to ask for such data (which I doubt they'll release) are the staff at vbulletin.com

 

Keara put aside your feelings and make an objective decision. Objectively, what do you really want to do ... to avoid spending $130 or even $195, is it worth it to migrate to another software?

Really the dollars aren't that big, unless you have multiple licenses. Fussing over $40 isn't worth it, it's 4-5 lunches at the deli. I believe the pricing is fair enough. It's the screw they gave to people who just renewed or purchased, and incredibly bad timing. In principal - yeah they * up. Don't forgive them, they don't deserve it. But given what I as a forum owner actually want to do with my software, I'll have to look past it and satisfy me, even if it is rewarding them when I would rather not.

You can be right or you can be happy.

Personally I'm going to suck up the pre-sale and be happy with my own forum & software, and just maintain a bad attitude toward vb executive management. That's my strategy. :p

 

3Phase,

Yes, I agree that the most important factor is what we think will be best for our own forums. Even focusing on that, however, the decision is not so simple. I very much dislike the new default style. The header is imo downright ugly. The pages are way too pale, have very little contrast, and very little character. Surely none of this bodes well for the future?

The only reason I would upgrade, really, is to "rescue" my initial investment of $180. And the real question for me is whether I am throwing good money after bad.

When I spend money on something, I should have kind of a good feeling about it. I don't have any good feelings about giving IB more of my money. It's logical to upgrade, but it just gives me no joy.

 

If the style is what worries you, it's nothing a simple CSS can't change.

 

Another private forum with insider knowledge says new sales are excellent. Sales to existing customers are holding up well.

I see that as a sign the market perceives a good product. All the noise is indication of a customer relations problem. Not a product problem.

New customers see a good product. Existing customers think they don't have many choices. They may or may not like the product, but they are locked into the software, right now.

For the average existing customer it's hard to see the difference between product v customer relations problems - it all looks like the same problem. The complaints, fusses, gripes overflow into many areas - they've developed attitude. They don't helpfully report bugs, they snidely report bugs.

New customers see that existing customers have issues, but they don't believe those issues affect them. Not yet, anyway.

That's a hallmark of a customer rels problem by a business that has an attractive product.

 

Absolutely. The style they are showing in their alpha/beta should not be a decision factor.

vb 4 is said to be offering great improvements in easily customizing the styles. This is pure word of mouth, I have not personally seen it.


Keara, vb 4 is likely to be a very good product, imo, although I personally would wait till after some bug fixes are released to upgrade the forum.

It is definitely better to be happy about how you spend money, but hopefully you have been happy about what you've spent on vb before you heard about the pre-sale. You may have to cling to that unless you think it is worth it to dump vb as your forum software.

Good luck whatever you do!

 

What worries me is whether I should give (more) money to a company that thinks that is an acceptable, or even an attractive, style. Not a good sign, imo.

 

:S Thing is, no matter how unactractive the style is, in a matter of time some one CAN release another style, most forums are made so you can add your own touch, if the forum already looks good, we designers who design for forum softwares can be put out of job.

*holds sign saying: "A good looking software took my job away"*

 

We are dropping all the copies of 3.8.x that we have that have expired maintenance. The cost to upgrade is preposterous.

With regard to the current copies, we are looking at moving several sites to Invision Power Board since this whole fiasco forced us to look at them. As much as I hated to admit it, they not only seem to have a better handle on things but they also have a real product we can develop for the next 6 months. vBulletin's product may be much better by next July or August but do I really care? There isn't much of a difference between the two now and the key difference WAS the hacks, which are now a thing of the past. So what is vBulletin really giving me over IPB? Honestly, I don't like some of the direction in the structure and think it may not even be equal to what we have for quite a long time.

Will we upgrade the current forums? Maybe. We might do it and sell them off or use them for extra sites or sell them as sites we are developing and dumping. Thanks to the high price, we can always go back to vBulletin whenever they actually have a finished product to show.

With regard to moving forums, there are some major strong points of IPB that I won't list here and have always thought so. Since vB will require me to have all my URLs rewritten and reindexed from Google, I'm guessing we might as well go through the pain now. From what I understand, I'm not sure either (or maybe both) will be able to have a proper 301 redirect for every link. What do you do with 300,000+ links in search engines? Get it over with.