From memory, I started with vB around the time of v3 coming out. That was over 4 years ago. Your license would have expired 1 year in, and you wouldn't be eligible for any 4.x upgrades from that point.

Not that we can use past experience to predict future vB-related happenings any more.

what happens to those who already have the blog product? we loose it if we dont upgrade to the suite?

Good luck.... I'm willing to pay $ 5.00 Bucks for your license....
I think you're gonna find them for free in Craigslist pretty soon.
Who will pay for the license of a product that has reach its end of life??

Exactly!!
I sure hope so...
Thats what happened to TriBox with PIAF...
And needless to say, communities are great... But UNFORGIVEN...

why have the only released a price for the suite and not the "forum only" i want to know

Who's to say that in a year from now they won't "change" their pricing policy again and start charging for updates? The problem I've got is trust. For the people that paid for a "lifetime" license turns out to be a lie. Myself, I'm leasing a license, so $130 isn't as bad. But I paid for a blog that will be useless. Think I need to check out my options. "Once bitten, twice shy."

I find this interesting;

They can't even be arsed to get a substantial amount of screenies up for us to look at let alone a demo. I know not many people are happy about the timescale of this 'presale event' but they know what they're doing. My first reaction to the email is crap I better get buying it and I nearly went through with it but then I thought, they know a lot of people will be thinking this and rush to buy it and save a lot of money compared to the full price, then after the three weeks is up they'll give us the demo or more screenies and then we'll realise how crap the new version is but be stuck with it.

Sod Vbulletin, I'm off I think.

Someone correct me if I am wrong but this vB 4.0 is not the complete rewrite is it?

It's still going to be sometime until the whole base code for 3.x series is rewritten?

No, its not a complete rewrite.

Llandy,
vBulletin 4 is still only in alpha stage, at present, so even if you decide to buy the suite at discount price before the 30th, you will probably not get vBulletin4 for months.
This is the problem...
The new owners of vBulletin are asking us to buy something that is not even released and has no release date.

Thats like going into a shop to buy a television, paying for it and then the shop saying "we will deliver it some time in the future but we cant tell you when"

vbadvanced is a portal, vb suite contains a CMS. There is a (big) difference. I don't know how good the CMS will be, or the suite... but if its good, IF, then paying $130 now is a great deal, believe me. The problem is.. we just don't know if it's worth paying for. They should have a demo, screenshots are not enough to make a pre-sale IMO.

Like I said, I base it on something someone else posted, and I would be happy if it were wrong. I didn't bookmark the post but the premise went like this:

I currently have an owned license for 3.8. I won't have to pay a yearly fee anymore if I don't upgrade to 4.0. However, if I'm not paying a yearly fee, then technically once my current one runs out, I'm not going to be a "current" license holder, and only current license holders are allowed into vB-only areas such as vB.org.

So, IB is removing the requirement to pay $40 once a year for 3.8 (and under), but by not having to pay $40 once a year I won't be on the list of those who are allowed into vb.org - or into the support area of vb.com.

Yeah, once my current license expires.... mybb here I come!

i didnt get what you are talking about. its 235$ for a CMS pre-sale account, but you say its 130$... i tryed to purchase it, but its stil 235$... i hope you got the point

This is pretty expensive and I think because of prices people are going to go to IPB. But let's wait and see!

The price for upgrading from active license ($130) and getting the new CMS, not having to pay the yearly fee for 4.0 is a good deal IMO. Can't find a better deal out there unless it's free.

The expensive part is of course when you do not own that active license... they should have warned customers more clearly before removing the old (cheaper) upgrade option. So I would say this is mostly not ideal communication.

235$ for me is too much, In th Czech I can earn about 1.2k usd per month and have to pay 1/5 to renew vbb.

How said, I see MyBB looks so good :)

As I don't own my own forum and i simply renew my license to code addons for vbulletin, making me buy a completely new license is absurd and i will no longer be coding addons.
Can anyone say 'Goodbye vbulletin community'?

I don't need to see screen shots or a demo, it takes little imagination what it will look like (bad with your default templates ;)) and what it will do. I'm very happy with vBulletin Forums and I trust the v4 and the CMS will be a decent quality product as well. But really, are you expecting me to buy it without having a realistic estimate on the release date? Is it going to be released this year? A 'month' would be nice to know... November after the presales period is over? Or December? early/late? Or do you really expect us to buy something that is going to be released in 2010?

'Force' would almost fit better than 'expect', because it's either pay up $130 now for the full suite or pay at least $175 (for the forums alone) within the next 12 months (when v3.8 license expires). So even if you don't want to the CMS, this deal is for many the cheapest way to get the forums to v4.0 unless your v3.8 is fairly new. At first it seems the upgrade to the forums alone will be free, but that's the product upgrade, it doesn't effect the duration of your current license.

So basically those who stick to 3.8 won't have to pay anything, but those who take this socalled free upgrade will be forced to buy 4.0 or move to another product (as moving back to the 3.8 obviously won't be an option...) once their 3.8 license expires (which costs $45 more than upgrading to the full suite costs now) and those who know for certain they want vb4.0 forums should take this deal now. Let's say my v3.8 expires in 4 months. Why pay $175 then to upgrade the forums if for $45 less I can get the full suite. But isn't 'that' exactly the stain on this who announcement/deal...

I'm sure all this negativity isn't what you hoped for but I really think a lot of it could have been prevented by a. providing a lot more screen shots (come on, how can you not have time to post more of those, make time,delay this pre-sales announcement 10 minutes.., almost makes me think there's nothing else in such a final stage it's safe to post ss of) and b. posting a release date (-estimate). The latter would have made all the difference (between being a great deal and a weird feeling in my stomach.)

Yeah, but I sorta have to make a couple of choices, since I currently just have a leased version of vB.

A: Purchase the 4.0 suite with the discount
B: Wait it out and eventually have to pay 295$ for a owned license

I'm sorta stuck on option A, if i wanna save the most money on it, but then again i do not know what I'm spending my money on..

Honestly, i think vB.com has gone about this in a really bad way or I'm just missing something obvious.

--------------- Added [DATE]1255563791[/DATE] at [TIME]1255563791[/TIME] ---------------

Seems a lot of coders and designers are saying the same. In the end of the day, the community will suffer and so will vB.

Wow. You people never cease to amaze me. The BEST forum solution out their and you are surprised the company is going to make a buck???

The way I look at it, it is a ONE TIME fee of $195 for the life cycle of 4.0! (all upgrades uptill 5.0 are included) Now they say the 5.0 upgrade is going to come 12 to 18 months so lets break that down on a month pricing structure from high to low. Let's say they upgrade to 5.0 in 12 months that mean the software will cost $16.25/month but if it takes 18 months the software will cost about $10.80/month. It could take them longer to get to 5.0 which means the month break down is going to be even cheaper!

If those fee CRIPPLE you financially, then yes, maybe it is time to move to phpbb.com or ipb.com or whatever floats your boat. The 4.0 upgrade is going to be a better code base and actually save me some $$$ on the plugins that I have to purchase for 3.X (vbseo for example)

Calling 4.0 the next coming of Vista is just retarded. The only thing I am going to call foul on is vBulletin asking for money before we see a finished product. The discount should be extended at least a week or 2 after they convert the vbulletin.com forums to 4.0

Is there anything anywhere that said my lifetime license would expire at a certain version if I didn't keep paying the support fee, even when I don't need support? I don't recall seeing that part anywhere.

i have to agree... the draw to vbulletin was never because of blog and other stuff in this vbulletin suite.

most people like vbulletin because of the third party mods, large forum owner community for exchange of ideas... and of course Vbulletin's support & updates (somewhat)

besides, the offer doesnt seem enticing enough for existing users to re-subscribe and they are forcing us to take up the offer in 2 weeks.

granted, the new vbulletin suite looks promising and a 1 time payment to ensure security updates for the entire 4.0 suite. however, how can vbulletin license holders be sure that the new software is really so good that third party modifications cannot rival? we already have vbadvanced which is quite a simple free-add on to use and article forums as a free third party mod. the keyword here is "free" if you havent noticed. this huge upgrade fee is something serious to ponder over.

prefer the old pricing and hope vbulletin will reconsider all that we've mentioned...

yet in the end you will be paying MUCH more we normally pay.
Its not the fact that its a completely different way to pay for vbulletin thats pushing people away, its the fact that its probably going to double the cost of maintaining a license.

exactly!!!

btw, i was checking in the site, yeah my OWNED board license is expired BUT, my vbulletin blog license is active

Nice, and I just bought a new skin for my 3.8. site.

:erm:

I'm going to remain calm and wait and see whats happen but it doesnt smells good here. Oh and btw ..I'm with vbulletin because of the mod's that people release here for free.

In times were even the biggest companies are lowering down their prices Jelfson and vBulletin does exactly the opposite, mmmm, flash news: in case you haven't noticed the economy (globaly) is going down the drain, how dare you be so greedy?.

Ok, looks like i'll be switching to IPB or even phpBB.
I'm not going to let them rip me off like that!

I've always appreciated the professionalism of this company, but the way they are marketing vB 4.0 is just a shame.

I am guessing that they are in financial trouble, to basically blackmail people into buying something that is not complete and has no release date (not even a guess) suggests a rush to bring in capital. I would be careful paying the upgrade tbh as what will you get if they go bust in the next few months? There are several other platforms which you can convert your VB forum. I think it will show very soon whether this is a dash for capital or just plain greed as once they realize a very large portion of people can't afford such a massive hike in fees they will need to change something or pretty soon there will be a domain holding page where vb.com was.
People saying it is not much of an increase should look at the maths. I have an owned license paid something like $180 for the software and $45 a year or whatever to keep updates means on the old structure for 4 years you would have paid $315 or $6.00 a month (decreasing the longer you own it). On the new structure That would be $285 and most likely $235 a year updates which is $990 or $20.65 a month in other words they have more than TREBLED the monthly fees. Nice work if you can find it.

Project tools as an open source project on vbulletin.org very well i'm lost $50 thank you vbulletin

Welcome ipb :rolleyes:

And you won't get a response from vb here. You will only get a response from them on their official website - vbulletin.com

I'll repeat what I've said in a couple of other threads about vBulletin pricing/licensing - "Questions regarding pricing and licensing should be asked over on vbulletin.com. vbulletin.org has nothing to do with the business side of vbulletin."

I think someone inside did the math.

triple the price, lose half the customers, still come out with more of a profit.

no demo, no release date... a big joke I think :down:

don't send them more money
problem solved :up:

yes i agree :D

VB is making a big push to get customers to update to version 4. There's no option to renew to keep version 3.8.x updated. Customers with expired licenses can not renew to get important updates, like the 3.8.4 upgrade for compatibility with PHP 5.3.0. Some sites (hmmm, which could those be?) are so customized that the admins do not want to upgrade because it would take tons of work to make the plugins and templates compatible with VB4. So now those sites can not get updates for 3.8.x unless they upgrade to VB4, which they won't use and would have to pay $190 now or $250 in 2 weeks. Even allowing $60 renewals for 3.8.x only upgrades without the free VB4 Forum would be acceptable, but VB doesn't allow it! Isn't this a breach of contract? Did VB not say that they provide support for the most recent version and the prior version? Not letting users renew for the prior version is not really great support.... Anyone here a lawyer?

Users are right to be concerned about VB4 considering the big changes in developers and management that VB has had. Asking users to pay $130 (or $190 if expired) in 2 weeks without any demo and just 6 screenshots is ridiculous. This presale event was announced too early and without much thought.

VB took 5+ years to go from VB 3.0 to 3.8, but with the new license of free upgrades for 4.x, I really, seriously doubt that they'll take that long to convert to VB5 - and you're fooling yourself if you think otherwise. I'd say in 2 yrs, you'll see VB5 - that's still a 2X fee increase compared to annual renewals ($250 license vs. 2 x $60 renewal). I guess this is their way to fund the company and avoid the interest rate hikes that banks imposed on business loans due to the economic downturn.

Its worse.. If you also have the blog (or PT) addons that you paid for along with your owned lic, you are totally ignored and treated just like a leased or expired lic holder.. you pay the same full (or discounted if, IF your members access is still active) price as anyone else.

the whole upgrade to vB4 or nothing is really wrong. we paid for OWNED licenses for a reason and now, that reason has been pulled without any warnings.

Not a happy customer.

I just looked at the features list of VB4 at VB.com. They claim to have a "Single Permission System" (exact quote) - LOL, now I know not to trust them. Yeah right, "Single Permission System" - let's see, you have permissions in VB Options, permissions in Usergroups, permissions in Forums, permissions in Blogs, and now you're gonna have permissions in Articles and permissions for CMS. Yep, that's "Single Permission System" for ya! I really, seriously doubt they'll clean up their permissions system with just 1 update. LOL LOL

i dunno.. i think your the only one worrying about that right now xD

Aha i agree :erm:

I shall not be upgrading, me being a student i cant afford $130 before next year when my license runs out.

0 well i guess ill be running v.8.4 for ever :D

As much as I don't like what they have done, I'll most likely shell out the $130. I have a leased license, so paying $130 now instead of $180 or $185 (That would have been the amount under the old pricing structure come June for a owned license.) for new license come june ain't that bad. And from what I'm reading at vbulletin.com, Invision has problems too, like the modifications are much more supported over here. You have to admit, vb has some fantastic coders.