Announcing the Presale Event for vBulletin 4.0 Suite and Important License Changes
 

We hope your community is enjoying the flexibility and power of vBulletin?. As always, our goal is to offer a great product at a great price, and we are dedicated to helping you build and grow successful online communities.

Over the last 12 months, we have been building vBulletin 4.0 to be the most powerful forum and social publishing software. Today, we are proud to introduce the new vBulletin 4.0 Publishing Suite product that includes the power of the vBulletin 4.0 Forums with a seamlessly integrated content management system (CMS) and blogging platform.

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.

Learn more about vBulletin Publishing Suite features and pricing on our new website: http://www.vbulletin.com/

Beginning today, we are introducing new a license structure. vBulletin is changing to a one-time owned license fee for each major point release. That means no more annual renewal fees. Once you purchase a major point version, you?ll receive maintenance, security and minor point releases for the life of 4.x.

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.

Over the last 10 years, our products have offered an exceptional value and we look forward to bringing you the best and keeping you as a loyal customer. Our team is expanding in number and expertise in order to develop more innovative features and to deliver them faster. We are investing in exciting development areas such as new products and services for 'Big Boards' and mobile applications and look forward to helping you grow your community.

Sincerely,

The vBulletin Team


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What a joke, lol. So we have to buy every single version, $130 everytime they upgrade? Those who have had their license expiring soon are screwed?

My license has just expired last week... (although I still have the 2 months to renew at the lowest price - $40, I believe)...

Will I be eligible for this upgrade?

$130 bucks on a product you havent even seen yet. basically you have to pony up $130 bucks in the next 2 weeks otherwise its going to cost you $250 to upgrade.

I thought it would be free to all existing license holders. I dont mind paying the yearly price but double per year pushes out the boat

active customers gets it for free?
if yes, I had the chance to renew my license for the next 60 days after the license expires,
and i had more than 10 days to renew. can I still renew for 40$?

This is BS...you guys are throwing away your company. Not only did the release take 2 years to come out(and it's still a long time away), but now we have this so you can fatten your wallets!

I was thinking about going to IPB before...now I am 100% going.

I'm out!

Hold up.....The upgrade to the 4.0 is free for those that have a license and need to upgrade. The $130 is if you want to upgrade to the Suite, which is the blog, articles and such.

The actual 4.0 vbulltin will be free to upgrade for those with a current license.

So, if you own a current license, you can upgrade to the 4.0 for free and run the 4.0 till whenever. If you lease your license, you can run 4.0 for free until your lease is out. Then, you'd need to buy a license for $195 for the vBulletin 4.0. If you don't own any license, it's the $195 for 4.0.

I think I will upgrade and then just run 4.0 until 5.0 comes out eventually.

This has Windows Vista written all over it.

lol someone make a new forums software

All of this is just really lame, but it would have gone over better if vBulletin would have allowed the special upgrade price to be in effect for all license holders up to the point of their annual renewal.

All of my license renewals are in June. (I set money aside just for that purpose every year)

I certainly wasn't budgeting for several hundreds of dollars in purchases within the next few weeks.

This is an awful way to treat loyal customers.

What a shambles this is...

My license has expired, but I received the email offering me a discounted license for $130 as I have an active license. Problem number one - they think I've got an active license when I haven't.

I logged in to the old members area and selected 'renew', which took me to the new members area. Problem number two. The new members area isn't linked to the old one. Not a major problem - just log in again.

But as my browser remembers the password I don't know what it is, so I clicked on the "forgot password" link. Problem number three. The forgot password link goes to a 404 page.

Eventually I worked out the real url to get my password reset, and logged in to the new members area.

Problem number four. The price showing for a new license is $235. The price to renew my existing license is $250. No mention of the $130 I was offered by email, but they want more to renew my existing license than they do to buy a new one.

All I wanted to do was look at the options, and there were four problems I encountered along the way. If this is the level of competence we can expect from them from now on I don't want to imagine how buggy the new version will be, I'll stick with what I've got.

Jeff, problem number 6.... they are asking us to pay for something that none of us have seen. There isn't even a semi-functional demo anywhere.

I'm guessing this isn't gonna fly very well.

Its just BS Period.

My biggest problem is (I am going to use the forum so I have no problem with that) but, the suite... I haven't even seen it in action and I am expected to fork over $130.00 on blind faith?

Worse, there's no time with which to come to a decision. We're talking about October 30th, so we have 23 days to pay up or pay more later. That's totally unfair and unreasonable.

Three or four months may be reasonable; this is not. vBulletin needs to play fair with its customers.

And I haven't even started talking about the draconian style upgrade process. There's no conversion or translation system. Just start from scratch. Did anyone think that maybe this isn't such an easy thing to do? And why can't there by some sort of style upgrade to the new system? Don't tell me it can't be done? Just do it.

Peace,
Gene

I have 3 active licences, 2 with blogs... I need to pay $390 in next 2 weeks or $750 later to get the Publishing Suite in all sites... are you joking? It's much money in a little period of time!

Give us same more time upgrade with this pre-sale discount or we can't buy this Publishing Suite to all communities (just one!).

Lovely :rolleyes:

I run a MINI site for MINI enthusiasts, and on Friday (16th) I head off on a two week charity rally through Italy - not returning until the first week November.

So I have 48 hours to discuss with my fellow mods whether or not to try and save our (non for profit) community forum money by investing blindly in forum software we haven't seen, or do we risk being overtaken by our competitors and wait till November?

Lovely position to put us in, thanks.

Jon

Newbs care more about money than their customers.

I've just noticed this:

Bulk Pricing:

0-2 $235
3-5 $235
6-10 $235
11-24 $235
25-49 $232
50 or more $220

So people who buy 3-5 get a discount of.... $0, as do people who buy 6-10 and 11-24. People who buy 25-49 get a $3 discount. That's a massive saving of just over 1%, what a generous offer :rolleyes:


I'm beginning to think this is all some kind of joke. It's not April 1st is it?

I think alot of people have not read this part properly.

So you dont have to pay again untill 5.x.
I might be wrong but im pretty sure that is what it clearly states.


But yeh. they should be giving more time for the pre sale offer.

agree this is a complete BS 250 usd for existing customer... arent they greedy for more money ...im selling my license and going with iipb for christ sake

That's what it says . . but when will they release 5? Next year, the year after? It's not really possible to evaluate long-term cost anymore, and I have a sneaking suspicion that's just the way they want it.

Yup, and I am guessing that major upgrades will come much more frequently now that they can charge big bucks for them.

I think what Jelsoft doesn't realize is... their software isn't exactly cheap. It's almost like buying Illustrator or Photoshop.

I love vBulletin but is it really worth this much? I have three forums to maintain, and this is becoming extremely expensive.

I'll take a wild stab at this. VB 5.x will come out 12-14 months from when VB4 is launched to make sure everyone's license is expired, and VB5 will require buying another "new license".

Remember, they won't be getting revenue from people who need to upgrade to the latest version anymore since upgrades for 4 will be "free" to license holders.


That being said, I would probably buy the suite at half price if I could actually see it or at least see screenshots of it.

I run two non profit sites, the only way I'll be able to pay for the new version is if I ask my forum members to contribute, and they won't do that without seeing a working site first.

So I don't think I'll tell them there's a new version, the existing one works fine.

I own 4 forums - and want a demo before you make me dump 4x w.e. price there is for this.

The people want a demo.

This is just as bad as my windows vista.

where can we buy stock in vB? lol

I've been a VB user since 2002. The 30 bux a year was reasonable. I'll continue to pay that for the updates but not a cent more, nevermind $130.00 for something I can't even see... Not only will I not be shelling out $130.00, after Oct 30, it goes up to $250.

My users don't use the Blogs. There are so many better FREE blogs out there right now, why bother with VB's? Ok, so now you get a VBulletin CMS... VBAdvanced is a pretty nice CMS and it's FREEEEEEEEEEEE.

I guess the end is near. I won't be continuing my yearly subscription for anything more than what I've been paying, especially not with this economy (US).

I was actually thinking that...

Jelsoft has been doing this with vB 3...

I bet now they're going to do this...

I am obviously exaggerating that a little, but I 100% think they'll make the release cycle quicker... And a quick cycle results in us all needing to fork out more money.

Do you really want to invest in corporate financial suicide? How about you buy my car instead. You haven't seen it, you haven't driven it, and it'll probably need fixing just after the warranty runs out. You pay me first and I'll just send it over when I'm good and ready. :D :D

If you dont want the suite, dont buy it, simple

this is just an offer to buy it at a discount

If your license is current the upgrade to vB 4.0 will be free (forum only)

what about us poor shmucks who bought the blog system already we get screwed over doubly now? gj jelsoft, sucks to be me for supporting jelsoft and buying 3 licenses.

i'm in the same situation, and as a non profit site, it was an extra effort when i moved from phpbb to vbulletin, later i paid for the blogs, now if i see this worth, i MAY make another effort to pay the $130 offer that i received in the mail, but i just see the $235 option, then why was worth to originally pay for the owned license and the blogs?

Yes, but when your support agreement expires, isn't it true that you no longer get free updates of 4.x versions unless you buy a full license?

What's the skinny on this?

Peace,
Gene

Prchased 4.0 Publishing Suite

And if the license isn't current the upgrade will be $250. Yesterday it would have been $40 or $60.


In the past people with an owned license had to pay a relatively small fee to renew the license and get the latest version. They have changed this without giving us any advance notice. Most companies in this situation would have contacted people whose license had expired and encouraged them to renew before the new prices came into effect.


They've obviously not thought this through - or if they have, they don't care that they're going to lose a lot of customers.

That's how I understand it.

Basically, if you own a forum and blog license, you are compelled to buy into vb4 because there are no more license renewals.

One way or another, they are screwing over existing license owners who bought OWNED licenses.

ofcourse they thought of it. doing it this way, they dont loose the new renewal fees because of the renewed licenses that poured in, now they will be getting a full value purchase from everyone that is expired....