Buyer beware OK, let’s begin. I have been a fan of vb for a while and admittedly used their v3 and v4 suite pirated. Fast forward to a few months ago and I tried to purchase with everything including branding free and mobile using my discover card. It failed. After having my enterprise advocate call them to confirm the issue, but it failed even with PayPal I tried vbulletin 5 as a pirated version and it was a smoldering dumpster fire. I am autistic and therefore ABSOLUTELY REQUIRE CONSIDTRNCY else I have a meltdown and vb5 truly is not consistent for me, for my end users, for my staff, for no one

Wasnt the best, but now its amazing When vbulletin5 first released in like 2012.. it was TERRIBLE Full of bugs, and extremely slow However 10 years later, the product is SOOOO much better, most bugs are gone, and its alot more stable and smoother, its probably the best forum software I have used, and I would urge others to use it, they have done alot to turnaround the buggy product, and now its probably the most polished software out there. Support is amazing, and the software is amazing. Thanks to the vb5 team!

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.

Poorly Written Software Causes Many Many Duplicate Content Issues VBulletin basically does the job of a forum software, but leaves issue undetected at first, that should be revealed before purchasing. Most of the issue cannot be seen by the general public, as they are hidden in the password protected user area. None of their software will validate via the W3, which to me, clearly means that the programmers are not concerned with testing their software to make sure it is written to standards and does not contain basic underlying errors. Much much worse, is that the forum produces page after page of duplicate content, because every page can be addressed in many ways. Your Google webmaster tools account will very shortly be filled with duplicate Title tags and Duplicate Descriptions and there is literally nothing you can do about it. VBulletin's response was to create a new version 5, instead of fixing the issues with version 4 first. To their credit, they do seem to be continuing to work on V4. The support team seems to be working hard to try and help, but they do not appear to be supported by the programmers, so any issue that has any type of complexity to it, will not be solved. At least that has been my experience. If VBulletin were cheap software, I would not complain to much, but it is quit expensive, so you would think it would be very well written as such. Unfortunately it is programmed more like cheap software, with obvious and seriously written flaws. I cannot recommend VBulletin, nor can I advise against it, since I cannot recommend any other software that might be better, although I would think there would be. Should you decide to purchase, be aware of the duplicate content issues, that you will face. I would run any of there forum pages through the W3 validator, so you can get a feel for the quality or lack there of, also.

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.