vBulletin 4 license pricing has been announced, reading the inital reactions there is lot of disappointment with the announcement. Pre-sale license for a product which hasnt been released even in beta or demo and little confusion over situation of current license owners. Seems like the marketing team is promoting this new product as somewhat of a superhero, it expects people to line up and pre-order which will probably be a big marketing blunder. Im expecting the pre-sale deadline to be extended but for now IPB 3 > VB4 when it comes to licensing.
Here’s a simple breakdown for the VB4 License and features.
- Leased License will not longer be available with VB4, there is only OWNED License.
- VB4 Publishing Suite consists of vBulletin 4, Blog and CMS.
- No renewal price to access updates and patches per year, Now a license is valid for one period cycle i.e If you have a vb4 license you get all the updates for it till it reached vb5, once it reaches vb5, you need to buy new license.
If you have an existing OWNED vBulletin License
- You get a FREE upgrade to vb4
- If you need to upgrade to vb4 Suite pay $130 (Presale price) or $250 (Price after presale)
- When your license expires you CAN use the vB4 software but you will NOT get updates,patches etc. You have to buy License upgrade for updates of vB4 Series.
If you have an existing LEASED vBulletin License
- You get a FREE vB4 upgrade.
- Once your Leased license expires, You cannot run vB4 software and you have to remove vB4. You need to buy upgrade license to vb4 Suite pay $130 (Presale price) or $250 (Price after presale).
If you have an existing LEASED vBulletin License which has expired in last 12 Months
- You get the vB4 Publishing Suite ( Forum+Blog+CMS ) for $190
If you have an existing LEASED vBulletin License which expired more than 12 months ago.
- You get the vB4 Publishing Suite ( Forum+Blog+CMS ) for $210
If you DONT have any vBulletin License and you are a NEW customer
- You can buy new vB4 License for $195 or complete vB Suite for $235
vBulletin has taken an ambitious marketing approach, banking on falling fanbase and trying to compete with IPB. I personally believe the pre-sale event is a NO-SHOW , everyone will be skeptical about buying a product which isnt even available for demo. Looking at screenshots the forum itself doesnt not look visually appealing especially the postbit part looked very pale. The vBulletin homepage revamp looks rather a cheap rip-off of Mozilla website. Launch vB4 Suite with Blog and CMS. Any vB user will tell you if they are already using CMS it most probably is vBAdvanced and they are quite happy with it. vB Blog well, i don’t know perhaps its part of the new bandwagon of social networking but its not a ground-breaking addon. vB4 suite doesnt not have anything in it which would make me pre-order it.
With that said i do like the Licensing part, getting rid of lease and making the upgrades under series cycle and not yearly is a welcome addition. Earlier license renewal required once every year 60$ had to be paid to access updates now its changed to series cycle, in simple words the last vB3 cycle was almost 4 years. So if vB4 series cycle is 18-24mnths, i dont need to pay anything to access its updates. It is definitely a small positive if the vB4 cycle goes for 1-2 years, But if the vB5 software comes within an year, there goes the silver lining.
So far vB4 has disappointed a lot when it comes to license pricing, the hype and anxiety over vB4 seems to deliver bloated results. I havent used vB4 but i do not expect much from it, perhaps it has a better core and performance which cannot be seen through screenshots but vB4 seems to be below par till now as compared to IPB 3.
vBulletin 4 Official presale event announcement