Curious Question about vBulletin and Activity

[cheat-master30]

Did your forum's activity rate go up since switching to vBulletin from other forum software? Because I have noticed personally that many forums powered by free software like phpBB, SMF and XMB seem to have less real, active (non bot) members and less posts than those powered by vBulletin and possibly Invision Power Board.

I was wondering this because I checked the forums of numerous sites with are using free software and found that the activity was often lower than those using vBulletin or the like, and even lower if the board was remotely hosted. Is this a general trend?

That and my own personal site activity went up by nearly 10 times after switching from Invisionfree to vBulletin.

[Shelley_c]

Funny you should mention invisionfree. I had a resource site which did extremely well, within 6 months I had 5,000 registrations and a very active community(tutorialzone.net it was formerly known) you may have known about the site. Judging from the statistics, my invisionfree forum gained faster growth than my own vbulletin forum.

I don't expect that it's down to software but rather content and a little work with luck thrown in.

[cheat-master30]

That's very odd. Any background information on the site? Because I have often see other effects with other forums and websites, and I'd like to figure out why that may happen.

Of course, starting on a free host and moving paid I guess can be suicidal; you often end up losing the whole forum data from the time you were freely hosted and some members don't follow along to your new forum.

I also remember something that will sound extremely elitist from one member; something about them being more persuaded to join because it's powered by vBulletin. Never the less, anyone else got any thoughts on any of this?

P.S. Yes, content is king. I just want to know whether there is even a minor effect.