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

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.

Was the best until 2009, but then the developers left and it's been rubbish since We are still using vBulletin 3.8 having been a vBulletin customer since 2001. It used to be the market leading software with good reason, but in 2009 the original development team left (all but one) and the replacement coding and management team has been very poor. What was needed in 2009 was a complete rewrite. However vBulletin 4 was vBulletin 3 with code 'updates', and vBulletin 5 connect is vBulletin 4 with code 'updates'. It took years before vBulletin 4 was considered a reasonable forum solution, and vBulletin 5 is truly terrible. Way too many queries and css definitions. Full of bugs just like vB4 was on release. We're migrating away from vBulletin as soon as possible, having seen that vBulletin 5 is not a viable product. In summary. vBulletin used to be the best. Now it's terrible. AVOID.

There is no better for forums There is no better for forums, would like something even better but alas

Bug ridden piece of software that will … Bug ridden piece of software that will drive you nuts trying to get it to work. Never get the mobile app add-on as it simply doesn't work at all. I've wasted so much time and energy on this software, a real regret.