vBulletin 4.0 is going to cost even more? (vBulletin Leaked)

**Rocket 442** · 05-13-2009, 04:53 PM

I'm not upset at all about the price increase if in fact they ditch the renewal fees. That is a fine trade-off in my books.

However, its the other crap that has me on edge with vB.

Steve Machol even sees how bad this is going to go down... I'm gonna have to get some popcorn and watch from a distance as it happens

**briansol** · 05-13-2009, 04:57 PM

im pretty sure you're going to have to pay for 4.0 REGARDLESS of your current status.

**Rocket 442** · 05-13-2009, 05:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by briansol

im pretty sure you're going to have to pay for 4.0 REGARDLESS of your current status.

If that is the case, I hope IB stock drops to pennies

**acers** · 05-13-2009, 06:50 PM

Couple of points.
I don't think paying a small amount for a lifetime of license without renewal is that bad a thing. Especially if we are doing away with the renewal costs.
Paying a nominal fee for upgrade to 4.0 is also probably not that unexpected. A major version upgrade is charged by all software vendors. As long as its reasonable, it won't matter.

On the other hand having no beta and extensive testing for this big a version change(especially with a coding rewrite) is a bit of a shock. How many customers would want to upgrade(Especially if they run big boards) to a package that might have serious bugs.

**KevinL** · 05-13-2009, 06:59 PM

It's like pushing Vista out the door

**Brandon Sheley** · 05-13-2009, 07:18 PM

It looks like Invasion power boards has seen the screenshots
Am I allowed to post leaked vBulletin information? - Invision Power Services

**PaiNx** · 05-13-2009, 07:46 PM

Well, I hope that somehthing good is figured out for existing users, as I just renewed my current license a month ago. Other than that, I will just stick with my current installation and not upgrade for quite some time.

I could be over exaggerating this whole thing.....

**dstruct2k** · 05-13-2009, 07:49 PM

Let me put this into perspective:

vB 4 will cost more for everyone.
There will be an associated cost with going from vB3 to vB4 (even if you just purchased a licence).
The lack of a proper beta phase means people will spend the first few months trying to work around bugs that should've been caught in development.

And, the biggest issue which I think everyone's overlooked....

Quote:

Originally Posted by Steve Machol

...if you purchase a licence while vB4 is the main branch, you will have access to all future vB 4.x Releases at no cost. However upgrading to vB5 will cost extra when it's avaliable (no upgrade pricing determined yet.)

Who's to say when "vB5" will be released? And how are we to know it won't just be what "vB 4.2" should be? There's been a lot of changes that went into vB3 (social groups, for one) that would have been enough to say "this is a new, major version". (luckily for us, they didn't)

Who's to say that we'll be so lucky in the future?

I definitely see a similarity to Windows here - vB4 being buggy Vista, and vB5 possibly going the route of Windows 7. (A smaller upgrade than even XP SP2, yet its own release which previous licences are no good for.)

I was already considering selling my licence and moving to a more effective solution for my community, and I think this information has solidified my decision.

**Cerberus** · 05-13-2009, 08:05 PM

Yeah, this kind of sucks. The older license owners should at least get to be grandfathered into this at no cost or something. They are going to turn loyal vbulletin license holders away with this one.

**The Cadet** · 05-13-2009, 08:09 PM

The thing that really pisses me off is the ticket system. What's next, PPV vbulletin.org?

Ehsan · 05-13-2009, 08:15 PM

hmmm thats interesting and shocking news.....i have just had 2 of my owned licenses expired few days ago....shall i renew them and hope that i will get free VB4 as my licenses would be active.....or shall i wait and pay the VB4 upgrade fee ? what would be the best thing to do ?

**BamaStangGuy** · 05-13-2009, 08:33 PM

More vBulletin Insider Info

**Brandon Sheley** · 05-13-2009, 08:39 PM

Thanks for all the comments everyone
Feel free to come in chat in Floris's Chat room
Chat Live on irc.vbirc.com in #chat
I've been in and out of it all afternoon

**Soliloquy** · 05-13-2009, 09:38 PM

I'm not terribly surprised or upset (yet) about paying for each upgrade; the real question is, how much? In the long run it might turn out to be a better deal than paying renewal fees.

It's good they're talking about switching to a model-view-controller format, though I also wouldn't want to upgrade to that without thorough testing first.

Cutting people off from support after 30 days just seems mean-spirited to me. I think you can expect a big influx of new users if that happens, Brandon. (Welcome, vB.com refugees!)

kilcher · 05-13-2009, 09:38 PM

Interesting stuff. The new pricing sucks. We bought a vBulletin license under the pretense we'd be able to renew access to upgrades and support for a nominal charge. I'm surprised they can just take that away.

And charging $xxx for 4.0 is fine because you get a whole series of upgrades. But what about the people who buy 4.8? Are they expected to pay $xxx 2 months later when 5.0 comes out? They're receiving less value for the same money.

Ultimately this may cause people to put off purchasing new licenses until a new version comes out. Probably not a good thing for IB.

I just hope vB4 knocks my socks off. If so I won't mind so much. If not then I'll have to consider other options for any future licenses I purchase.

**Sadik** · 05-13-2009, 09:44 PM

well imho this "leak" is a deliberate and very intelligent ploy by Jelsoft to prepare customers for the tsunami of changes...

**chuckrobbie** · 05-13-2009, 10:10 PM

Living in South Africa where we earn only 5-10% of USA and EU salaries makes it really difficult for us to pay these prices!

Guess I will have to live with VB3.8 for the rest of my life

or heaven forbid having to use one of the free forums out there!

I hope VB4 has an ability to block countries from registering or to limit registrations to a local email suffix only as I currently have 100+ new registrations daily from China and Russia who are simply porn, viagra and rolex watch spammers!! (I am a noob and maybe this exists but I just cant find it) This in my view will make any price worth its weight in gold.

**Sadik** · 05-13-2009, 10:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by chuckrobbie

Living in South Africa where we earn only 5-10% of USA and EU salaries makes it really difficult for us to pay these prices!

Guess I will have to live with VB3.8 for the rest of my life

or heaven forbid having to use one of the free forums out there!

I hope VB4 has an ability to block countries from registering or to limit registrations to a local email suffix only as I currently have 100+ new registrations daily from China and Russia who are simply porn, viagra and rolex watch spammers!! (I am a noob and maybe this exists but I just cant find it) This in my view will make any price worth its weight in gold.

Hi chuck

Maybe off-topic but use this simple hack to remove all your spam registrations

NoSpam! for vBulletin 3.7 - vBulletin.org Forum

I am using it with my VB 3.8 forum and works like a charm. I have disabled the captcha image completely and use only this hack. It has removed my spam registrations 100%.

**sinucello** · 05-13-2009, 11:07 PM

Hi,

coming from the open source world, I strongly dislike that the community is no longer involved in the development. It´s good that the "a slight case of overbombing" aka "suite" stuff gets seperated from the forum while the forum will still profit from the MVC overhault.

That will either make it easier to marry the forum with other software or make it easier to transfer the forum to another software.

With a lot of good CMS available I don`t think I`ll ever use the VB CMS but I understand that it is an interesting option for people that don`t have enough knowledge to customise an (OpenSource) CMS or don`t have the money to pay service providers to do it for them.

As for the prices: support gets more expensive, product gets more expensive. As long as the product gets better, that`s OK for me but it shouldn`t take too long before things like single sign on, utf-8 and support for performant searches like lucene are there.

all the best,
Sacha

Ehsan · 05-14-2009, 12:22 AM

not really .... its just another upgrade and after that upgrade they want people to pay separately for each other upgrade rather than paying a specific fee for all future upgrades till one year !

**juster** · 05-14-2009, 12:25 AM

I said earlier in an topic about vBulletin that I was not so charmed about 4.0 like others were. Sure, it will work fine, but what scared me most is the way they seem to look at phpbb for sertain gadgets, while it use to be the other way round.

I also disliked the way they constantly came with upgrades. Sure, for their money income that is a good idea, but it is/was freakin irritating how often they came with yet another update.

And now this, what will be next? I am very curious about the new price. I do think it is in the good for us, but than again, the initial price must be paid first and if that is too high, lots of customers will go to the other party.

But what about selling? If you have an older license it is harder to sell because their probaly will be more money involved to renew to be in the new 4.0 series. I am not sure of this ofcourse, but if you renew now, you logicaly have acces to the latest versions and that will be too if 4.0 releases.

But wait and see when we finaly get a chance to see it irl and maybe we turn around and say 'he, what were we complaining about'...

**valdet** · 05-14-2009, 02:54 AM

The most irritating part is charging additional money for support.

Expect that soon after vB4.x lauch, they will announce that support for vB 3.x series is discontinued.

No beta release is also shocking as I believe there will be tons of bugs reported after Gold release by ordinary users like us.

**noppid** · 05-14-2009, 04:49 AM

I've always said, having your eggs in one basket is not a good idea.

So, what other platforms have ya'll been working with that could replace vBulletin? There are a few really good options that I have been introduced to by my clients.

**smacklan** · 05-14-2009, 05:06 AM

Whats wrong with staying with the 3 series? Personally I don't see too many negatives in all this. If there is something better out there, the market will adjust, if not this will all die down in a few months lol

**ohiosweetheart** · 05-14-2009, 05:24 AM

There are only 2 big negatives in this for me:

1 - no public beta. I can't imagine the backlash they'll recieve, if it hasn't started already, from coders and designers not having a chance to beta test vB 4. With the big changes that have been touted by Kier and others in the form of layout, the templating system, etc, I can just see everyone scrambling after gold release to update mods and styles. It won't be pretty.

2- this is the big one for me. They're separating vBulletin 4 into 2 packages. package 1 is vB 4 only. The second package is the vB 4 "suite". This will include vB4, the new cms, the blog, project tools, etc. They will all be sold in one big pack. For $285 if the screenies are accurate.

Now, I wanted the cms. I do not want the blog, or the PT, only the cms. But if it's not to be sold as a separate add-on just as the blog and PT were, I would be forced to purchase the entire package just to get vB4 and the cms. THAT, to me, is rotten. Sell them in the package, fine. But they should also be sold ala carte. No mention was made of that.

ALso, we don't know yet how much it's going to cost us to upgrade from vb3 to vb 4. You can bet it's going to cost something if the folks at IB remain true to form.

**Caddyman** · 05-14-2009, 06:01 AM

my only concern really is the initial payment to upgrade from vb3 to vb4. everything else i see as either not my problem or something just not to get all upset about.

that is me though, there are many like Peggy and other customers (1000's out there) that this new info presents lots of concerns for.

**rsdworker** · 05-14-2009, 06:08 AM

true - i am conern about that because i wanted a blog or projects or CMS its would be high priced because i already have forum license which can be added with it

**Mike54** · 05-14-2009, 06:10 AM

I suspect they will see what a blunder it is to not offer the add-on scripts ala carte.

I'm actually not too fussed about using their CMS. I've used vBa for years and it does what I need at no cost.

I want to see what the charge is going to be to upgrade from 3.X to 4.X. Then I will decide how loud I want to howl. Particularly since I have a 3.8.2 owned license that is one week old today.

So noppid, what sort of options are you looking at? It neer hurts to be prepared.

**2dub** · 05-14-2009, 07:25 AM

This is going to be interesting.

I have a few concerns myself. I am using 3.7.X my license expired before 3.8.X came out and I've been reluctant to renew because everything is working fine and I just figured I'd wait for 4.0, then renew.

Right now I don't know whether to consider myself lucky or foolish for not upgrading.

Also the fact that there will be limited support? I'm concerned.

That said I do like the idea of paying for a version and getting all the upgrades for that version with one license, then paying a upgrade fee when you want to move to the next version. But I do hope they make some sort of concession to those of you who have recently paid your renewal fee.

**ohiosweetheart** · 05-14-2009, 08:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 2dub

This is going to be interesting.

I have a few concerns myself. I am using 3.7.X my license expired before 3.8.X came out and I've been reluctant to renew because everything is working fine and I just figured I'd wait for 4.0, then renew.

Right now I don't know whether to consider myself lucky or foolish for not upgrading.

Also the fact that there will be limited support? I'm concerned.

That said I do like the idea of paying for a version and getting all the upgrades for that version with one license, then paying a upgrade fee when you want to move to the next version. But I do hope they make some sort of concession to those of you who have recently paid your renewal fee.

I'd upgrade now.

Limited support as in ticket support. The official support forum will still be free. Altho to be honest, I get most of my support at either vBFAQ, here, or from noppid. The few times that I do ask for something at .com, Steve and Wayne are always very helpful to me. I have rarely used the ticket system and only when they advised me to.