vBulletin 5 is awful - DO NOT BUY!

[growlabz]

I was a heavy vBulletin 3 user, so when my church wanted a new forum I naturally suggested they use vBulletin instead of Discourse or Xenforo, however after I purchased it and installed it I was immediately hit with error after error when installing and configuring the site, with lots of obvious stupid errors and mistakes (such as the default path to images and smilies being wrong, and the example was worded incorrectly) that should have been caught by the developers.

I contacted vBulletin right away and told them about the errors, and requested a refund. They told me that once the software has been downloaded that there are no refunds. This is ridiculous -how am I supposed to know that the software is unusable and buggy until I download and install it?

vBulletin obviously has no interest in standing behind their products or to provide support, and that is why they do not allow any refunds.

In order to download the software I needed to provide the domain URL where I would be using the software, so they can obviously tell that I am not using their buggy software on that site, I ended up buying xenforo afterall. In order to install that software on another domain I would need to enter the domain of that software and download a new package, since they hardcode security measures in to the software to make sure that people dont randomly install it on unauthorized sites, so I dont understand why they cant authorize a refund.

[TheLastSuperman]

Have you asked for assistance on the main vBulletin.com forums? There are forum areas where members and staff will be more than willing to help with the errors encountered, but you must be willing to share the errors and await reply.

It sounds like you may have tried installing this and perhaps configured it wrong during initial installation which can cause errors, there could also be issues with your hosting... or rather.. not issues but perquisites not met such as a specific PHP or MySQL version, there is a lot here we don't know - including all the errors and why you became so frustrated. Many factors, but one that I do like to see which is you liking something that you purchased (Xenforo) so I hope you didn't run into any issues installing it and things went smoother.

Consider using your vBulletin license for something else! You may find it useful for another type of site, I see your username which is interesting to say the least, perhaps a forum of another subject? So think outside the box and don't let your money go to waste, also were you aware you can install vBulletin 4 under that same vB5 license? You can :cool: so also consider that as you shouldn't have as many issues installing it, if all requirements are met beforehand.

All-in-all, again, just glad you have something usable!

[In Omnibus]

There is absolutely no way to make software compatible with every server and web hosting configuration out of the box. vBulletin 5 works perfectly well out of the box for the majority of its users the majority of the time.

For everyone else there is ticket support, forum support, the manuals, video guides, etc.

If you can point to the specific discussions in the support forum where you were told no one would help you it might make your post credible, however, those posts do not exist.

You personally had issues so you have applied a false analogy that the software works for no one.

That's not how logic works.