vBulletin vs IPB vs PHPBB vs SMF vs WBB

[Spiral]

Due to the heavily discussed license change, a question which I have is: Is vBulletin still worth it? I choosed vb many years ago and in the past there actually where no alternatives (for me) to vb. Now, that I have to pay several hundred dollars, just to renew my licenses, I start thinking over. It is impossible for me, not to spend a lot of money for my forums. Either I buy the expensive new license here or I buy a completely new forum software somewhere else. Therefore I would like to start a discussion here about the pro's and con's for either keeping vb:

Pro:
+ No conversion of my forum
+ No need to learn a new system
+ Probably cheaper at the moment

Con:
- I have two licenses afterwards (old vb and new software)
- probably cheaper in the long time

What do you think about that? What pro's and con's do you see?

I used the last days to keep a look around. The license change actually has a massive effect also on other forum companies. Over at IPB for example the demo suddenly was overrun and you had to wait to get a demo account. At Woltlab they actually offer a special discount since 16th if you switch from vb to wbb. But are these forums really an alternative to vBulletin?

IP.Board
I tested IPB yesterday. It looks good in the frontend, but confusing in the backend. It costs $150 once for the forum and $50 per year renewal. This is cheaper than the actuall vb license. Things like blog, gallery or cms are available, but cost extra (including extra renewal fees).

phpBB
It's open source software and therefore completely free of charge. However switching to it takes time and therefore it costs you something. An advantage is the large community which provides hundreds of addons.

SMF
Also free and without extra costs. It has a community, but it is smaller than the phpBB community. There are a few addons available, but also not as much as for other systems. Finally the sotware misses a lot of features like a warning system or groups.

WBB
With the latest release 3.1 it has become a real alternative. Many new features have been included. It is pretty cheap, $140 for the first buy and $40 for the yearly renewal. However there are only a few big boards which are using this software.

Did I forget something? UBB? punBB? Discuz? What do you think about these alternatives? Is it worth it to switch or is vB still the best forum software in the world?

[Togemon]

Jumping ship and changing your forum software is easily said and done for smaller boards while larger boards are more prone to conversion problems and upsetting the user base. Granted, changing to VB4 will be a big change as well... we just don't know just how difficult until we get to test it.

Each and every forum software package has its pros and cons. They are all equal in their own right. If someone was preaching that VB was the best in the world, that's fine. It's for each user to decide what is best for their boards or sites.

For us:

IPB - Feels clunky and slow. We just didn't like it in our tests.
phpBB - Open source or not, do I even need to address this? We did not like the admin control at all. We also found out that it does not handle large sites as easily as VB does.
UBB - Bad, bad memories... (From the InfoPop days.)
SMF - Never used, did not like layout and user controls.
WBB - Never used.

VB has been stable for 10 years, regardless of what people say now, the product itself has been good. If VB4 is a total wipe, we'd stick to VB3.8 and patch it ourselves if need be until we can determine what the next best thing is.

[bluearrow]

VB is the best forum script no doubt but I don't it worth the price anymore. I was thinking about move to VB from SMF but not anymore.

[bimo]

I've tried out most forum software and I prefer phpBB 3 as the best free choice. But Vanilla is also very good for a simple lightweight forum.

If you want to pay for some forum software I would recommend VBulletin or IP.Board. They are both as good as each other and have massive communities.