vBulletin 4 - What's the deal with this!?

[sburns1992]

Hey people,
I have only just recently bought a vBulletin licence, and there is now news on the vBulletin 4 release. Does this mean I am going to have to pay more money to get vB 4? I really hope not :)
Thanks.

[Lynne]

Users who have a currently active license may download vb4 for free. You may want to read the faq - http://www.vbulletin.com/index.php?do=faq

[ludachris]

Users who have a currently active license may download vb4 for free. You may want to read the faq - http://www.vbulletin.com/index.php?do=faq
I just received an email from vb telling me that since I'm a "preferred customer with an active license" that I can get the discount price of $130 for the suite. That's a hefty upgrade price tag, having already purchased owned licenses for vb and vb blog.

[Black Tiger]

Users who have a currently active license may download vb4 for free.
Lynne, as much as I respect you, please inform the people in FULL and not only for the "nice" half of the deal.

The upgrade to vb4 (forum only version) is for free for active licenses only. Next to that... when the license expires, you will have to pay the one time fee of $195 to get the rest of the vb4 upgrades.

So people better buy the suite before 30 octover for 130 dollar (only active licenses) or stop supporting this pricing crap at all.

[TNCclubman]

Lynne, as much as I respect you, please inform the people in FULL and not only for the "nice" half of the deal.

The upgrade to vb4 (forum only version) is for free for active licenses only. Next to that... when the license expires, you will have to pay the one time fee of $195 to get the rest of the vb4 upgrades.

So people better buy the suite before 30 octover for 130 dollar (only active licenses) or stop supporting this pricing crap at all.

not true, you get the vB4 for the life of the 4 series.

only pay if you go up to vB5 when that comes out.

[Black Tiger]

not true, you get the vB4 for the life of the 4 series.
Please read the information email decently before you are going to inform people incorrect.
It IS TRUE!!!

From the information email:
You have the option to keep your current active license until it expires (according to the 12 month term and conditions). For the remainder of your active license, you will continue to receive support and have access to forum software updates, including vBulletin 4.0 Forums. Once your license expires you will only be able to access the 4 Series software updates by switching to the new one-time owned license. For more information, visit the vBulletin FAQ.

So you pay when your license expires and you pay again when v5 is coming out.

Only good deal is the 130 dollar option for the Suite, when you buy that, you already have bought the new license and you are safe until v5.

--------------- Added 1255486619 at 1255486619 ---------------

Little correction. Upgrade fee after expiration is 175 dollars if Wayne Luke is correct.

Furthermore there is some good news that a "forum only" offer is coming up in a couple of days. Let's wait and see if that is any better.
So don't spend the 130 dollar too soon.

[Paul M]

Lynne, as much as I respect you, please inform the people in FULL and not only for the "nice" half of the deal.
Its is not the job of vbulletin.org staff to inform you about vb4 licencing, Lynne answered a question, and provided a link to the correct source of information.

[GoTTi]

visit http://vbirc.com/chat/

its a officail page for the vb chat. join us in there so we can discuss this garbage.

if you use mIRC, goto

Server: irc.vbirc.org
Port: 6667
Channel: #chat

we are in there. otherwise click that link above and approve the java script to load and you should join the channel

[SlimSoldier]

whats that chance that the mods and addons for 3.8 will work on 4.x?

this is the deciding factor if I buy now or latter after mods come out

[HMBeaty]

whats that chance that the mods and addons for 3.8 will work on 4.x?

this is the deciding factor if I buy now or latter after mods come out

See here (http://www.vbulletin.com/index.php?do=faq#faq-17)

[Brandon Sheley]

I have a feeling there are going to be a lot of vbulletin 4.0 threads popping up here from now on :)
btw I like the screenshots :)
http://www.vbulletin.com/index.php?do=screenshots

[HMBeaty]

Me too, I just pre-ordered the suite

[Brandon Sheley]

Me too, I just pre-ordered the suite

ooooOoo
I'm holding out, thinking about just dropping the vb blog :down:

[mhackl]

$130 one time upgrade seems reasonable to me. It looks like a significant upgrade. Quality development deserves a quality reward.

--------------- Added 1255498498 at 1255498498 ---------------

I'm willing to go ahead and pre-order, but I've yet to see when it'll be available.

[Skyrider]

Truth being told, I'm confused. In the FAQ it says:

As a current owned license holder, I get access to Forum 4.0. Once my current license expires, can I continue to get upgrades on the 4 series?

No. You will have to purchase an upgrade license in order to have access to any further maintenance, security or minor point releases on the 4 series.

Just find it a bit unfair you only receive a life-time free updates when you buy a major release (this would be 4.0) but not when you paid a lot of money on the previous versions. I would say if you are a current holder of a license, you would be able to get life time free updates for 4.0 as well but not for 5.0 later on.

I also noticed you can no longer "upgrade" your current license (for another year of updates for xxx of dollars) and you are forced to pay the full price of the forums?

Support by email & online support ticket system, for one year. Cost is $80.00
And you also have to pay for online ticket support if you want to gain aditional support? I thought this was included when you pay for a license, regardless which one. :-\... Sorry, but I find this getting very expensive. Money doesn't grow on trees you know. I already paid a lot for this software, and truth being told I'm angered to see these price changes.

Yes, I know. Developing this forum takes up a lot of time and money for those who work on it. I understand. But if you look around the internet, you see tons of people making free software and they only gain donation money. VB already gets enough money from their customers and I find it being unfair you are being forced to buy the full VB 4.0 price if you wish to receive more upgrades if your license expires. Do tell me if I'm wrong, but my license expires in 4 months, this means I can't upgrade anymore and I have to pay for a full new license in order to receive life-time upgrades for vb 4.0. Seriously, do you think i have the money for that?

EDIT
You can upgrade to the suite. At this time you can't upgrade to the forum only, that will be possible after the pre-sale offer has ended.
Apparently, that solved a few things.

EDIT 2:
If you have an owned license then the upgrade price to a vBulletin 4.0 Forum license will be $175
Forget it. I already paid a lot of money on VB 2 years ago which cost almost as much as This "upgrade" will be + a yearly upgrade I made next year of 40 dollars. Now I have to pay the full price to upgrade? Sorry, but I don't think so. Money doesn't grow on trees. This is screwing over your customers.

[Sworm]

I just received an email from vb telling me that since I'm a "preferred customer with an active license" that I can get the discount price of $130 for the suite. That's a hefty upgrade price tag, having already purchased owned licenses for vb and vb blog.

Yes but the license will end when your license will expiry....?????

[Skyrider]

Yes but the license will end when your license will expiry....?????
Your owned license will never expire.

[MrEyes]

Meh, I am going to pitch in here....

Since VB4 was originally announced I intended to upgrade to the full publishing suite once I could see it working with my own eyes and more "bleeding edge" administrators had put it through it's paces. At the end of the day, other than the odd screenshot, the elephant in the room is that nobody outside the closed circle of developers/testers has seen VB4 in action. As administrator of a number of large sites, IMHO it is extremely sensible to wait until others have seen and used VB4.

However, the current "loyal customer" discounts only apply until the end of this month, and it is extremely unlikely that VB4 will be released before then. So in essence we are being asked to buy into what is, from my customer perspective, vapourware.

Now I have a choice to make:


Cross my fingers and hope that VB4 will be what I hope it will be, invest in the vapourware and save $120.
Wait until it is released and lose the saving if VB4 is as good as they say it is, or save $250+ by not buying it at all if VB4 turns out to be a damp squib.


Choices, choices

[cosy]

the only problem is for ppl that got vblog money spend for nothing
who got vblog should have a discount

[Markos]

Your owned license will never expire.

i don't understand i own a Owned licence and it says Expiry Date Aug 25th '10

where does it tell u what type of licence u own cos i cant see it anywhere

[ludachris]

the only problem is for ppl that got vblog money spend for nothing
who got vblog should have a discount
That's my biggest gripe. I've paid for owned licenses for both vb and vb blog (a few of them actually since I own several sites) and will now have to pay almost as much for an upgrade for each of my sites as I did for the owned licenses. That's extremely expensive. And as MrEyes said above, I have 2 weeks to make the purchase or I'll have to pay almost double the cost of my original owned license fees - wow.

vBulletin was already the most expensive forum software on the market. I'm really not sure these price hikes are a good idea. The quality of the new product better be that much better than the existing product or else there is no justification for it other than greed on the part of the new ownership.

I think maybe there's a conflict of interest with the new ownership - they happen to own over a hundred vb-powered websites that cover several different markets. Seems to me they're on track to make websites that compete with their network pay a lot more money to run the same software they run, essentially, driving down competition and giving themselves an advantage (assuming of course, that vb4 is that much better than other scripts on the market). Smart I suppose.

--------------- Added 1255532889 at 1255532889 ---------------

Its is not the job of vbulletin.org staff to inform you about vb4 licencing, Lynne answered a question, and provided a link to the correct source of information.
Thing is, the correct source of information she linked to differs from the email I received yesterday.
As a preferred customer with an active license, we are excited to offer the vBulletin Publishing Suite at a pre-sale discount price of only $130 (over 50% off regular price). This is a truly limited one-time special offer giving you $120 off the upgrade price but will expire on Friday October 30, 2009.
Seems I will have to pay $130 for an upgrade being that I own a vb and vb blog license.

[Dan!]

This vbulletin 4.0 is looking to be a hefty bill on my bank account.

I personally dont see why they are doing a new billing system, the old one is fine and good for first time buyers (getting leased etc).

I have the full license, but im debating if I should upgrade to this 4.0 or not, it looks kinda dodgy if you ask me.

And us vBulletin skin coders are going to loose our buisness, as by the looks of the screenshots - the standard skin is already editted to a big degree, then users can just copy the skin and do whatever with it alot easier
Taking us out of buisness really..

AND
the fact that all the styles will not work on this vb 4.0, thats alot of skin editting and remaking to do.

[mp3u]

My big worry is that most of the mods from 3.8x won't work in vB4. There is no serious detail on what will be included yet. So if vB4 ends up being light on features then you will have to wait until these are rewritten by vB.org coders and tested before being able to provide certain features that members may have come to seriously rely on.
It seems really unfair to have such a tight window to take advantage of the new price given that there is no demo. Seriously, how can anyone be expected to buy something without seeing it? I've been waiting for vB4 since I got my board up and running but now I simply don't know what to do... Maybe buy it then wait a few months before making the change over so that there are proven mods, bugs fixed and styles etc available...

[TNCclubman]

I dont think any of the current mods out there will work on vB4. No one even knows which coders are going to stick around to work on vB4 yet. vB4 is going to have just the features listed, it may be a long time before any mods are written for it. Apparently its a complete overhaul so no styles or mods work on it. None.

[Lynne]

I dont think any of the current mods out there will work on vB4. No one even knows which coders are going to stick around to work on vB4 yet. vB4 is going to have just the features listed, it may be a long time before any mods are written for it. Apparently its a complete overhaul so no styles or mods work on it. None.
Actually, the code is just fine (in most cases). I've found that if you just eval the templates using the new method and then modify the templates to use the new syntax, your modification will work just fine.

[kall]

vBulletin was already the most expensive forum software on the market.
That's not actually true. I can't find it now, but there is at least one that runs into the thousands of dollars for a license.

[ludachris]

That's not actually true. I can't find it now, but there is at least one that runs into the thousands of dollars for a license.
There probably are a few options more expensive, but in terms of widely used forum scripts, vbulletin is at the top.