I own both an IPB and VB license. After purchasing IPB there is no built in mod system. Also the modding community is well quite undeveloped and unique design is what brings a forum to life.

I see many, and I mean MANY VB hacks here on VB.org that are unsupported as well. Or claim they are supported but you are lucky to ever get a response. No matter what the problems are. Lots of potentially good plug-ins fall by the wayside here because of it. Or how severe they are. Anytime you add a hack or plug-in to a forum you are opening the doors for hackers. VB, PHPBB, IPB or anyone else.

IPB does seem to be more advanced when it comes to social networking + the ajax profiles look great!

My VB profiles don't even have a friends list never mind those neat ajax tabs :(

No matter if something is better than vBulletin, because what I love is vBulletin and it is enough for what I need.

Having used phpbb for some time and hacking it to get it to the same abilities of off the shelf vb I had to install something like 90+ mods and it still isn't 100%. I'm glad to say that I love the simplicity of vb and I hope that it continues.

I can't speak too much about IPB but it doesn't seem any different aside from the much smaller development community.

I also looked at the big boards that are being run both by corporates and small business and I'm impressed to see that most of them use vbulletin.

I've been running vbulletin since version 2.0.3 and its come a long way. I feel that vb 3.6 has the best permissions, templating and hook systems on the marketing making the development and use of add-ons a breeze.

That being said, while I appreciate the simplicity of the backend from an admin perspective, I find the front end is quickly falling behind the times. Users want more more than just a forum and as admins we want to give it to them. The modding community on vb.org is great but the nature of the modifications have become so complex that they are no longer quick hacks to accomplish something innovative but rather they are complete products in their own right which require time and resources to support and develop. For the hobbyist, I am sure that is fine but for the non-hobbyist that appreciates the time and energy and complexity of the applications, we are willing to pay for the work so long as its professionally developed and supported. Its why vbseo, vbadvanced, and a few others are thriving and we would love to see Jelsoft roll out additional products which will meet the growing demand of its user base.

There's way less edits to do on vBulletin than IPB when installing mods, and also IPB is more exploitable.

I'll be using IPB for next project. Nothing against vB, IBP just looks like it'd do the job better. Just like MyBB is doing a good job on another project.

I think it just depends what you want out of the software, they all have there pros and there cons.

Anyone seen phpBB3? It's pretty!

First vB, next phpBB (For the FREE is one of the best) and then ikonboard, probably in never I will use IP.Board.

Vbulletin is the best forum software on the net & although its paid for, you can virtually do anything with it within your coding abilities (or others). Vbulletin is not just a forum, with mods you can make it your whole website & using the other competitors out there instead, is so much harder and costly than vB!