It's more the people that make vBulletin what it is. Aside from a few authors here, everyone one else is more than helpful with just about anything that has to do with vBulletin. If it can be dreamed up, it can usually be coded to work with vb. If you look at most other bulletin board software out there, it doesn't even come close to having all of the possibilities that you have with vb. Just take a look at the Attachment viewer, for instance. A simple idea that turned out to be one of the greatest hacks I have ever seen. And there are a hundred more that I could mention that make owning vBulletin the only way to go.

If it wasn't for the people, like Firefly and Lesane and Scott (PPN) and yes, even you too, Logician :) and everyone else here at vb.org and over at vb.com, vBulletin would be just another board as far as I am concerned. Just my 3.75 cents worth (inflation, you know). :)

[QUOTE]Originally posted by FireFly
And people forget that vBulletin's price isn't that high, compared to UBB and co. Of course there are free boards, but they will never provide the same quality when it comes to support, let alone the product itself.

The TCO for vB is simply lower than anything from Infopop and MUCH lower than any free solution imo.

yeh it sorta is expensive.......i live in Australia and cause of the currency here it would cost us $320...........so it sorta is expensive but it is good ;)

[QUOTE]Originally posted by pattox2k1
yeh it sorta is expensive.......i live in Australia and cause of the currency here it would cost us $320...........so it sorta is expensive but it is good ;)

Well, I just turned 16 3 days ago, and if it wasn't for my grandparents giving me $100, I wouldn't have vBulletin.
I spend most of my money on monthly hosting fees, so saving up was always a hard option.

I've used alot of other boards (phpbb, ikonboard, invision board, yabb, several others) and I thought they were really nice. Then I got a job as webmaster for a site that had vB. I saw the admin panel and loved it.

vBulletin is amazing software. They have every right to charge more then they do.

I'm sure you've noticed, looking on the posts about other forums, that they suck and are crap compared to vB. And alot more expensive.

I'm going to be paying for another year of every year for member access until vB is gone. And I don't think that will be anytime soon.

I went from WWWBoard (ecch!) to Discus (ecch!) to vBulletin. In the past, the bulletin boards didn't generate much traffic. A few months after installing vBulletin, the boards now generate about half the traffic on my site. Folks like posting images, playing around with avatars, and helping to moderate.

The only hitch -- no conversion utility for Discus. Last August and September, I cut and pasted about 2,000 messages from Discus to vBulletin; another member transferred about 600 more. Not fun.

If you think its expensive dont bother coming here again, go and download PHP bb. You only get what you pay for in this life.

Matthew