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vBulletin - What the hell!?

R

Richard

CRM Consultant
Premium Member
Well, here it is.

A little rant.

Has anyone brought a lifetime license in the last 12 months? or renewed their lifetime license recently?

Well, when your lifetime license expires, to get further updates, your have to pay $200+ USD to renew ;)

BUT, thats not the thick of it - When v4.0 is released, anyone with an active lifetime license WILL be able to use it, but when your lifetime license expires, your have to uninstall/downgrade back to 3.x, as your expired lifetime does not over the 4.0 tree of releases :(

Well, it's a kick in the ----ing nuts to be honest. A waste of my lifetime license.

PS:

On the good side, there new licenscing will mean it's a one off payment for around 3-5 years, on the bad side, they say their "preorder" is upto 50% off, and if $190 is 50% off, i'm not paying that... ---- them.
 
Oh - a little update.

Their "Renewal"/"License" fee AFTER this sale, is .......

If you wait until your license expires, a new license costs $285.
Click to expand...

So Basically - Your lifetime license means jack - if you want to use 4.0, you have to pay the same as a brand new client.
 
That's one reason I never use VB. They say "Lifetime" but it is only borrowed really. Their prices for a forum script are savage. Go with MyBB. You get basically the same features, just about as secure and for free.
 
I've never understood paying a subscription fee for software. I don't pay subscription fees for any other software that doesn't provide some other type of material benefit - paying a subscription fee for backup software makes sense, for example, because I have the material benefit of being able to restore my data later, if necessary. There's no material benefit in continuing to pay for software after you've already paid for it. Operating systems, office suites, browsers - none of these charge subscriptions. Why does forum software? It's ridiculous.
 
The problem is - They vBulletin developer "Ray Morgan" has already said that v5 will be released 12-18 months after v4

So In essence, they are saying, that instead of paying $40/year for updates, your going to be paying anywhere from $130 to $195 per year for updates. Thats just insane

$40 -> $130 (minimum)

:S how can they justify that?
 
Actually yeah - I'd like to hear Peo's view's on this. Will you be upgrading to v4, or will you be sticking with v3?
 
sander k said:
This is only for version 4 I hope?
I got an owned license of 3.8.4.
Click to expand...

Yes, but your license WILL expire before the final version of 3.8 is released, meaning, if you want the latest version of 3.8, or even the latest security updates in a years time, you will have to pay the $175 to upgrade to v4 (even if you don't want v4 :()
 
I actually like this pricing scheme, because I believe that once you install a software, you need to use it until it either becomes obsolete, in case of which you will go straight to the newest system, or it becomes a legacy system, which is enough justification not to upgrade. In the meantime the only sort of upgrading done should be security patches and hotfixes.

Which is actually why I dislike companies that stop support for their older versions once they release a new one. It is just not conventional, I mean on a small to medium scale system it shouldn't be too much of a hassle to upgrade, but when you have a customized system running, can't upgrade whenever the developers decide to declare a milestone.
 
Judge Fudge said:
I actually like this pricing scheme, because I believe that once you install a software, you need to use it until it either becomes obsolete, in case of which you will go straight to the newest system, or it becomes a legacy system, which is enough justification not to upgrade. In the meantime the only sort of upgrading done should be security patches and hotfixes.

Which is actually why I dislike companies that stop support for their older versions once they release a new one. It is just not conventional, I mean on a small to medium scale system it shouldn't be too much of a hassle to upgrade, but when you have a customized system running, can't upgrade whenever the developers decide to declare a milestone.
Click to expand...

So you like the $60/year to $130/year price hike?
 
If I have understood this correctly, the change is so that you no longer pay a yearly fee, but you pay for every full version milestone of the software. So if you buy 4.0 you can use that version indefinitely.

Personally, if I was to buy this software, I would continue using 4.0 until vBulletin announce that the specified version is obsolete and will no longer be supported.

As I said before I dislike companies that do not support older versions as new ones come out. So if vBulletin was to stop supporting 4.0 when 5.0 came out, I would not deal with them to begin with. Also I would not upgrade to 5.0 when it comes out unless it is absolutely required and vital to the operations at hand.
 
Judge Fudge said:
If I have understood this correctly, the change is so that you no longer pay a yearly fee, but you pay for every full version milestone of the software. So if you buy 4.0 you can use that version indefinitely.

Personally, if I was to buy this software, I would continue using 4.0 until vBulletin announce that the specified version is obsolete and will no longer be supported.

As I said before I dislike companies that do not support older versions as new ones come out. So if vBulletin was to stop supporting 4.0 when 5.0 came out, I would not deal with them to begin with. Also I would not upgrade to 5.0 when it comes out unless it is absolutely required and vital to the operations at hand.
Click to expand...

That is what they are doing. They will stop releasing updates for v4 around 6 months after the release of v5, they estimate anywhere between 18 months and 3 years for the release of v5, but will ONLY offer the discount ($195) for people that upgrade to v5 BEFORE it's released.

So if you do as you want, you would end up paying more.

That $130/year works out to the renewal fee upto v5. it's the amount you will have to pay divided by 1.5 for the 18 month renewal discount.
 
tl;dr if you don't like the move, vote with your feet and wallet and don't buy it. pretty simple.
 
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