Does vBulletin punish their existing customers ?

[wii]

Ok, I need the forum and CMS, I don't have the money right now to pay the 130 dollars for the discounted upgrade (I do have a valid current license), but if I wait (which I should anyway, because I can't see a demo), vBulletin will charge me 250 dollars for an upgrade, but "only" 235 dollars if I was a new customer ?

So, why do I have to pay 15 dollars extra for being a current "happy" customer ?

Come on guys, what are you thinking ? If I were the manager, I would call in a meeting right now with everyone, and get this fixed right now, there are so many problems with the new licenses, that doesn't make any sense, you will risk hurting the business in the long run, the longer you wait to fix this, the worse the problem will be...trust me.

[Flexo]

It will be lowered to 190$ for existing customers.

[DrDaxxy]

What are you talking about? If you wait until your license expires you'll pay the same price as a new customer, i.e. $235 while the discount lasts and $285/$250 after that.

[El Burro]

So you can pay $190 for something you'd already bought and paid for in full.

I can't believe that thousands of mugs are signing up and falling for this corporate con.

[DrDaxxy]

So you can pay $190 for something you'd already bought and paid for in full.

I can't believe that thousands of mugs are signing up and falling for this corporate con.

You didn't pay for vB4 or its suite. You paid for vB3.
Two different products.

[crichighlights]

You didn't pay for vB4 or its suite. You paid for vB3.
Two different products.

Earlier contract doesn't specify that we are buying vB3 or VB4. It was contract to get updates over every year with renewal done. They have simply removed renewable thus forcing either to upgrade by paying $$$ bucks or make the forum sticky with current holes.

[wii]

Well, I could also drop the CMS, and get vBulletin 4 for free, well...free at least until I have to renew the license, whatever that will cost next year ?

[crichighlights]

Well, I could also drop the CMS, and get vBulletin 4 for free, well...free at least until I have to renew the license, whatever that will cost next year ?

Don't expect to be fully operational. It will buggy as this is something new version. 4.5 will be stable version. So, if you are not taking discounted version, you are asking trouble in the future.

[wii]

What a mess....

I will until the last day to purchase the suite for 130 dollars, seems like the best deal afterall, but maybe they will decide to change before the end of this month, and a DEMO would be nice !!!!!

[Cashpath]

You were lied to when you bought an owned license

You were made to beleive that if you paid for that you could continue to get upgrades of Vbulletin FOREVER as long as you paid the yearly support fee..

That is what they said.. to get you to buy an owned license.. you bought it and now they are saying "we change our mind that no longer applies"


THIS.. is the problem... is that when the owned license was paid for.. it was paid for.. under the understanding (as worded) that we would always be able to get future upgrades just by renewing our support license each year.


But.. it's not going to change.. so now the decision is.. do we pay for 4.0.. continue to run what we have now.. or switch to something else??

Easy decision for the people who make a lot of $$ from their forums.. hard decision for someone like me.. where the ads don't even pay for the server.

[crichighlights]

What a mess....

I will until the last day to purchase the suite for 130 dollars, seems like the best deal afterall, but maybe they will decide to change before the end of this month, and a DEMO would be nice !!!!!

I have seen somewhere official response that don't expect demo before 30th oct. They will always release bit later otherwise what is use of pre-sale.

[Darth Gill]

After thinking about this for a couple days, here are my thoughts....

Nobody is being punished. Jelsoft is simply moving over to a new licensing system - it makes more sense - this is the way it is for almost all software products. You buy a license, and get free upgrades for the life of the product UNTIL a major revision occurs - in which case you can get an upgrade discount.

Nobody on this board owned a LIFETIME license to FUTURE MAJOR revisions of the software.

Being with vBulletin since Oct. 2001, I am not upset with the new licensing system. I was at first but sat down and thought about it, and it will probably be about the same cost for me over the long term. This yearly renewal thing was kind of silly if you ask me and I'd rather pay for a license and get unlimited updates for the life of the product and then be given an opportunity for an upgrade discount on the next major revision.

I also think the early upgrade discount is a great opportunity. I just paid $130 for what I think is going to be a great product. Going with Jelsoft's track record, I feel like I made a safe investment.

I recommend everyone to think LONG TERM. In the end, it will mean a lot less hassle (no need to worry about the yearly renewal fee). Plus we are FINALLY getting an INTEGRATED CMS system, and I'm very excited about that. I've been wanting this since 2001! Finally, as a webmaster I can stop worrying about integrating this add-on into my installation (I used vbadvanced Dynamics and CMPS - both very good products, but it's not a cohesive unit with the rest of the vbulletin system) - just one less step for me - the added convenience will save me a ton of time.

I am sad to hear that Project Tools is not going to be continued. It is a very useful product. I was using it for document collaboration.

I have a lot of work ahead of me to get my site ready for VB4. It will be a laborious transition, but I believe that once I get my stuff converted into the new CMS, I won't have as much work to do in the future.

[Blackbook]

You didn't pay for vB4 or its suite. You paid for vB3.
Two different products.

Actually, I paid for vb2 LIFETIME and I just paid $60 for unlimited updates.

The problem is, as vb4 and vb3's licenses are different, and they arn't allowing you to go on the vb4 license, even though they'll lease you the vb4 product, you're stuck with a merge of terms, and a limited time to 'try' the product before being treated like a new customer and told to pay in full again.

[speedway]

I am really struggling with a decision right now, I have a couple of products I purchased that are VB only and don't really want to throw them down the drain. However, my only option right now is to pay for a license to a product I have not seen or tried, something that I am not comfortable with.

If I did stay with vB I would want any fixes/upgrades for my 3 series forum but I missed out due to an sub 60 day support contract expiry.

As far as I can see, IB/Jelsoft could have offered renewals for the 3 series up to the the release of 4.0, allowing people like me to tick along with the 3 series until we were happy with the 4 series, at which time we would upgrade and they would discontinue 3 series support charges.

That didn't happen so now my decision is harder than someone who happened to have a valid contract, my bad maybe but this exact scenario has hit quite a few.