Vbulletin Price Increase FYI

[Jeremy]

To renew a "leased license" to the new VB4 is now $195. Not sure what it costs purchase a new one.

Pretty ridiculous price increase from the $45 it used to be. Times must be tight at Jelsoft.

[MJ]

Darn, I need one right now too.

[Michael Martinez]

Hm. I bought a lifetime license or whatever but there is some sort of annual fee associated with upgrades. I guess I'll have to look into that.

Thanks for the heads up.

[Knup]

Thanks for the FYI Jeremy. That does suck. I only have one VB at least.

[Marcelo]

I think it's not Jelsoft anymore, main authors of the product have left the company. They are making a major upgrade on vbulletin, and I hope it is good enough to make up for the ridiculously higher price.

[Randy Ray]

vBulletin is owned by Demand Media now, unless I'm mistaken. Interesting company.

[Graham]

Damn... thats a bit of a jump! I think I am due for a renewal also

[neverstop]

vBulletin is owned by Internet Brands (INET), they own a bunch of large forums (mostly automotive, lifestyle, that sorta thing).

Price increase is now for a lifetime licence iirc (ie no annual renewal fee).

The new 4.0 vB forums ($195) have few new features for the end user, but the template engine has been rewritten entirely, and it is all now css driven rather than table based which is obv a good thing.

They also have vB publiishing suite ($285) which includes the forums and the vb blog which I think is half decent, does the job and of course integrates perfectly with vB. The suite also includes their new CMS which on the surface seems to kinda suck TBH.

I am a long time vb fanboy and the price increase is pretty lame considering the lack of new features. The devs are promising to release early and often point releases with new features (4.1, 4.2 etc) and I really hope they stay true to that word as this major version release was very disappointing (to the vB community at large). The CMS was supposed to blow people out of the water but I really dont have a need for it as I prefer a different CMS that I am way more familiar with and is just plain better by the looks of it. That said it is very early and no addon "widgets" have been released yet so it may yet prove to be worth the money. I will have to pay for it anyway since I want the blog addon and now they come bundled together.

vBulletin is fantastic software and probably worth the price considering how powerful it is. The amount of free addons at vbulletin.org and other sites is unparalleled, and changing ships mid-stream just seems to be more trouble than its worth.

[Randy Ray]

My bad. I always get Internet Brands and Demand Media confused. (Similar business models.)

[neverstop]

One other thing worth noting is 4.0 now comes with "SEO friendly" URLS, but by the looks of it vbSEO is a far better option.