IPB vs vBulletin vs XenForo

[1Word]

Well I'm just interested in your personal oppinions and general discussion.

vBulletin - It was the best for me, but no more.
IPB - Currently the best for me.
XenForo - Will be the best for me.

Also what did vBulletin do wrong with v4.x ? I hear everyone complaining but I see only imporvements, it's only me ?

Thanks

[MentaL]

Once the plugins get exported to XenForo that will be the daddy.

[4O4]

What did vbulletin do wrong with 4.x? Here's your answer (from another site)

We use vBulletin 4 for our forum software. And we’re going to be honest, it sucks. So you’re probably wondering why we are sticking with it? The answer is simple: There’s simply no competitor at the moment. But what about IPB? Yes, we acknowledge IPB offers a great product but the community support behind it is currently no where near vBulletins in terms of modifications and third party support. Most of the times when it comes to modifications and third party support with web applications such as forums the community is definitely the biggest driver.

So what are our gripes with vBulletin 4? Well, first of all we believe the default design sucks. We’re not specifically talking about the colours we’re talking about the layout of objects. There’s no consistency. Not only this but the design is full of errors and shows signs of being coded by an amateur. We can’t say that it was coded by an amateur for certain however mainly due to the fact that we realize and accept the complications of getting a theme to work correctly with vBulletins flawed StyleVars system. Rather than go on and on all day about specific reasons of why we dislike the current product we’ve compiled a list of things that we believe will concern most webmasters.

1. • The styling system is simply not easy to use. We’ve spent months designing out OTAU forums and are still faced with issues.
2. • StyleVars are partially complete. A lot of values for design colours for instance are still hard coded.
3. • There’s no use of CSS sprites. I can’t really comment on if this is good or bad, but it seems the future.
4. • The CMS has upwards of 200 MySQL queries on pages. Thank god we use WordPress.
5. • The “Gold” release was made with over 2,000 active and known bugs. It was simply to please the accounting staff.

5 main reasons why you shouldn’t purchase vBulletin. Do we hate vBulletin? No, we do not. We have used and used their previous products (such as the 3.x branch) without any major issues. We simply wish vBulletin would pull their act together, and fast. This doesn’t seem likely though. Internet Brands are a money hungry company that focuses on their accounting department rather than their marketing department, the result of this being they care more about money than their customer satisfaction.

Our prediction is there will be a vBulletin competitor and market leader in the next 18 months, whether this is IPB or not is yet to be seen.

As for the forum software of my choice, These are my choices:
IPB 3.x (Stable and cozy), vBulletin 3.x, (Very easy to customize/mod)..

[jMerliN]

The funny thing about choosing from crap, crap, and more crap is that you will always end up with crap.

[4O4]

The funny thing about choosing from crap, crap, and more crap is that you will always end up with crap.

Well, the chosen Poll options are way better than PunBB, ShitBB.

I do respect MyBB though.

Here's nice comparison page (;

Comparison of Internet forum software (PHP) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[.hackz]

There's so much wrong with vB 4.x. To be completely honest, you will not notice any problems if you are a regular user.

IPB is a great piece of software, but I don't see it as universal. It takes time to get used to; in my opinion it's an acquired taste.

Like Mental said, Xenforo will be badass once they release a 'gold' version and standard mods that everyone uses on vB get rolled out.

[Arcelor]

IPB anyday. The only reason people don't use it because of the lack of hooks and plug-ins from other sites.

[Mike]

vBulletin messed up when they upped their pricing to like $500 fucking dollars for software that works the exact same as MyBB and PhpBB. When they first released, their software was so messed up still (and they had released it for sale), they had so many bugs and glitches.

(I know it's not $500, but it's close)

[Aaron]

vBulletin messed up when they upped their pricing to like $500 fucking dollars for software that works the exact same as MyBB and PhpBB. When they first released, their software was so messed up still (and they had released it for sale), they had so many bugs and glitches.

(I know it's not $500, but it's close)

It's not close, and they jacked up the price because they thought their product was worth it, but little did they know it isn't.

vBulletin 4.x.x lacks many things, most of them have been pointed out in the above posts, but the skin is just ugly, it's not as cozy and you cannot customize it AS easily, and it's just merely a piece of shit. Aside from the software itself, the vB staff are also dumbasses, that don't know anything. And they're beginning to become cash whores, charging you for every little thing.

IMO, IPB is the best. They have better support staff, a better, more stable forum software, and not to mention it is easy to customize. New versions of IPB aren't released with a million and one bugs, just so the staff can feel accomplished.

To me, XenForo, isn't worth the money. Maybe in the future it may be, but it's in the newest development stages and work still needs to be done and improvements need to be made. The default layout is ugly as shit, but the functions behind it are pretty nice. Although, it is a lot like vBulletin, which I absolutely dislike.

But, I would chose IPB over all of them. XenForo would be second, vBulletin third.

[Dell Honne]

vBulletin for it's styles

IPB for it's coolness

XF for it's features

[Mike]

It's not close, and they jacked up the price because they thought their product was worth it, but little did they know it isn't.

vBulletin 4.x.x lacks many things, most of them have been pointed out in the above posts, but the skin is just ugly, it's not as cozy and you cannot customize it AS easily, and it's just merely a piece of shit. Aside from the software itself, the vB staff are also dumbasses, that don't know anything. And they're beginning to become cash whores, charging you for every little thing.

IMO, IPB is the best. They have better support staff, a better, more stable forum software, and not to mention it is easy to customize. New versions of IPB aren't released with a million and one bugs, just so the staff can feel accomplished.

To me, XenForo, isn't worth the money. Maybe in the future it may be, but it's in the newest development stages and work still needs to be done and improvements need to be made. The default layout is ugly as shit, but the functions behind it are pretty nice. Although, it is a lot like vBulletin, which I absolutely dislike.

But, I would chose IPB over all of them. XenForo would be second, vBulletin third.

It's kind of funny that we both feel this way. Considering we were both huge vBulletin fans around 2 years ago. They really did mess up.

I agree that XenForo is over priced. I think that currently, MyBB is the best software out there.

[Aaron]

Yeah, my biggest regret is paying for vB 4.x.x when I could have gotten the IPB, which is better in so many ways.

[1Word]

I have IPB and the current mods for it are very low in number, IPB itself not providing everything you may want, thats a downside, also some of the mods you can find, are payed mostly. Other than that it's not as easy to use as I remember vBulletin 2 years ago (I haven't used it since then, no ideea what changed).

Thanks

[Samus.]

I've only experienced vBulletin and some free forum software..
vBulletin might be hard sometimes to config, but it has loads off stuff. I do miss some stuff in the vB 4.X though.

[pixelpro321]

I voted Vbulletin, i'e used vbulletin for atleast 2 years, i love it! Xenforo isn't bad either, really love that :).