[msimplay]

Just try for urself
i did a thourough test of the major Bulletin Boards
eg Yabb, ikonboard, invision board, phpbb and of course Vbulletin

If u chek them out feature for feature u'll see Vbulletin comes out on top
Although they have hacks, Vbulletin comes with most features that u would want as standard
I personally installed only two hacks, A welcome panel and Vbarcade

chek yabb its the one that has least features altho easy to use, and has good Support, it just can;t compete with what can be done with Vb
eg the hacks i installed on it eg Usercp, Alert on Pms, add smilies, and Add attachments are standard on Vb, Also its in pearl Slower then php, The standard version has no Database support

now lets see Ikonboard good board But again no user cp and the Support is abysmal no Attachments, am sure it has hacks but who wants the hassle, another Problem i had was the install
it created Some files that belonged to no one so i had to get in contact with my Hosting Provider to get rid of those Files cuz i wasn't allowed to delete them i had no permissions.
The Boards in perl Can become slow

So that would leave Invision board as the closest competitor
well lets match them up, They think that its an upgrade to Vbulletin, i don;t think so, if u chek the features standard ones
Firstly it has no file attach, and as for the support i couldn;t even find that, i didn;t find any hacks database like Vborg
and some of the standard features like adding smilies is just Slightly Better on Vb , and the user Cp is definitly is

So the Final Note Altho those other boards Are Excellent in their own right i really think the Choice is clear Vbulletin is the best, the support is excellent, with the continual development, and u don't really need to improve upon it , but the changes u can add are major things like Portalisation and cosmetics and Virtual arcade, I think its clear why those are free and this has a Minor fee, but as they say u Get what u pay for