vB 5 or XenForo?
 

This post is meant for getting ideas only.

I currently have vB 4.2.3 for a client's site I manage. The site is not mobile friendly at the moment. So there are 3 options we are considering now.

1. Make 4.2.3 mobile friendly somehow (maybe new theme and stuff).
2. Upgrade to vB 5 to make it mobile friendly and a revamped look.
3. Move to XenFor to make it mobile friendly and a revamped look.

What do you guys would suggest?

If mobile friendliness is a priority then vBulletin 5 should satisfy the client. If the current forum of the client uses a lot of plugins that are a must-have then it might be a better option to look for mobile friendly themes.

I don't have any experience with XenForo and I doubt you're getting much support for XenForo on a vBulletin modifications forum.

Thanks for your input!
Mobile friendliness and a beautiful looking forum is what we're after. After checking out a few XF forums, XF qualifies for both of these for us. But I haven't really come across vB 5 forums to see how different it is from vB 4. Is there a demo available for vB 5 or maybe name a few sites running vB 5?

The official vBulletin forum runs on vBulletin 5: http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/

Thanks!
What are the plugins like for vB 5? I've been able to find a plugin for nearly everything I wanted to do. For example, MarkFL's Additional Thread Tools is a very useful plugin for me (Super sticky option) and this particular plugin doesn't support vB 5.

I will not comment on third party software in a vB forum, but I would not touch vB5 with gloves and a 20 ft pole.

VB5 is much better and stable now

I mostly develop vB5 mods. One of the advantages of vB5 plugin system over vB4 is a Module or Widget plugin can be created and added in Sitebuilder in the frontend where Admins can drag and drop that module onto any page. Sitebuilder is a new feature in vB5 which older versions don't have.

You can request a trial demo at https://www.vbulletin.com/en/vb5-trial/

This is thing I did for our marketing forum and it worked really great.
I would recommend using this way.

In other words, it depends on you, if you feel XF or vB is better then you can go with your choice.

The support is same as vB but if using XF, you need to pay extra for yearly fee for updates and addons for Xenforo are pretty expensive while free addons on Xenforo are not really effective to use.

Do you have a large number of mobile users, who absolutely cannot use the site ?

(I'm wondering why you are so worried about "mobile friendlyness" that you think you need to upgrade).

Dont do it just to buy into hype.

I think what Dave was saying was the OP will not get any XF support here because this is a vBulletin forum.

I will wait for the answer from the OP but I would share a part as my forum is getting traffic from mobile devices

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/external/2017/01/1.jpg

With this amount we also should consider to have a better vB style which runs as well on desktop, mobile or tablet.

Of course but though using vB or xF, then it has same support on each community.

XF is nice and XF2 is coming "soon" and is even better. XF are showing it off on their forums.

But the reason I went with vbulletin, beyond the fact my favourite forums have always used it, is that I posted a series of questions to different software companies' pre-sales forums a few days ago. Vbulletin answered, the others didn't...

If they can't be bothered to even answer basic questions, I can't be bothered to hand over my hard earned dosh. Plus, the obvious fact that if something goes wrong, how will their support be?

I made my decision based on that....what you do is up to you. Now, I just need someone to code me some XF like mods.:D

I can't help but think this was a typo, but maybe you do like vb5 on mobile.. I don't and I don't think my customers would agree that it's satisfactory.

Check out https://www.vbulletin.com/forum/ on your phone, then check out https://xenforo.com/community/

It's a night and day comparison to me, vbulletin 5 may actually work on mobile finally but they are still years behind the standards.
I'd really really think hard about suggesting vb5 as a mobile friendly choice over the competition