My forum is the lifeblood of my business and I picked VB5 - Don't know if I was wrong. I bought VB5 looked like a slick finished product, got expensive hosting, got it professionally installed. I spent a lot of money generating content, driving traffic and then in one instance my forum collapses. I panic - I kept my VB5 stock, did not change a thing, except for follow all instructions for updates. Now, I have to buy support packages to fix my problems. If you are not a technical person, and you expect VB5 to be an investment, it's not. It's a liability. It's better to use an older version of VB or another solution. VB5 needs another year of bug fixes or everyone needs to anti-up and start a class action. I work for a major auto company that has released cars that fell under class action. It just takes one motivated pissed off person who knows a lawyer or a pissed off VB customer that happens to be a lawyer - maybe it will bring down and bankrupt the company, and give rise to a better solution.

Everything Is Broken Everything is broken and made worse with each new "upgrade". They've purged the most helpful moderating tools and don't seem to be interested in fixing anything. Too bad, because it worked great until about three years ago.

Once upon a time... ...and as some have already mentioned, vBulletin WAS a good company! I've owned very version of their software since v2. I have been considering purchasing vBulletin 5 Connect to host a new interactive website I intend to launch. Today, before acting on that thought, I did a quick Google search to get an idea of what other vBulletin customers have to say about their newest release. I was disturbed, to say the least, to have found this thread. I've feared for some time now; probably since IB purchased the brand, that vB was going downhill. After reading the reviews here and at a couple of other sites, my suspicion seems to be confirmed. I would contribute more to the conversation, however, those things would only reiterate many of the points already made. I also own multiple prior releases of vBulletin software, which I plan to use until they discontinue support. Meanwhile, perhaps something will happen to make them "see the light" so to speak. I gave vBulletin 3 stars, based only on past performance. Perhaps I am an eternal optimist, but I believe they still have a chance to make a comeback. I am curious to know if others have found good alternatives to vBulletin, and, if so, what they are?

A really nice bit of software A really nice bit of software after using ipb for nearly 2 years and wanted a change is has all the same features, I like the way the smiles are place at the bottom and you don't have to scroll through a mass of smiles to get to the ones you like. If you want to set up PayPal for subscriptions its very easy to set up unlike ipb were you have to use the developers version what I was unable to ever set up. This is defiantly one of the best forum scripts I have ever used.

Great! This forum software was just absolutely brilliant for my new company. It provided everything I wanted even more!