I was just wondering.

The answer is simple. It's not. :)

"Expensive" is a term that is relative to your budget. ;)

vB is far from expensive when you consider the number of people working on (developing and supporting) vBulletin.

Compare to other packages (UBB, UBBThreads etc) and you'll see that its the cheapest (and best) forum out there :)

apart from the free ones ;)

Yah...I guess it is relative to my budget... :P How much does those other boards cost? I mean I know VBB IS the best ;)

Well:

UBB is $199, and members area access renewals are $99/year (compared to $30/year for vB)

UBBThreads is $229, and members area access renewals are $125/yr

OpenTopic costs an absolute fortune (depending on the size of your board). Fees range from $299/month to $4999/month.

As you can see, vB is clearly the cheapest. It's the best as well ;)

Whoa.... :P Why do Bulletin Boards cost so much?

The only other board i maybe would prefer to vBulletin is WebCrossing (www.webcrossing.com). It's a very mighty product ... with his own database and so on. Great magazines like in Germany "Der Spiegel" and "Die Zeit" has them. I think the "New York Times" also.

But ... if you want to setup the software on your server you have to be an engineer (me and friends of mine tried a few times to install the demo ... but no way) and ...

They begin with $ 995,-

Yeah. It's the ... beginning. For someone with 5.000 pageviews in a month. Thats ... absolutely nothing.

But ... of course ... it's all a question of money ... you also can buy an unlimited licence.

For only ... $ 64.995 ... halleluya and hosiana, this piece of software has to be written by the lord himself. I hope.

For someone like me ... only $ 2.995 ... because until now we don't get more then 20k pageviews.

But ... of course it's only for the software. If you want support also ... just $ 395,- ... for the smallest version. If you buy the largest version ($ 64.000,-) you have to add $ 12.995,- for support and updates.

And ... in fact i know only one thing WebCrossing handles in a smarter way then vBulletin does ... it's the tracking of new and unread messages.

And i know at least 10 reasons to buy vBulletin instead of it.

One of the reasons ... is the low price.