Xenforo vs. IPB

Hey everyone, I wanted some feedback on Xenforo forums and Inivison Power Board.

• Which one is better in the long run with price?
• Is Xenforo downloable after the twelve month period, and still useable? Or do you have to pay again to have an active download?
• Which forum software has a better administration system?

Thanks everyone.

 

I personally have not tried IPB, but I do own a Xenforo license. And currently use it as my forum software. Xenforo's administration system is amazing in my opinion, it is a technical and in depth administration system. Themes and plugins are easy to install. And Xenforo works off of a module system, and out of the box from what I've experience has next to none spam bot issue's. How ever the software in it's self will give you the finger with errors and can be a bitch to debug. It's also very hard to customize as anything you know about php, sql, and html is all different with Xenforo because of it's module system. The syntax still stands but it has it's own embedded functions etc. But above all that it has strong community support, and a large array of cool plugins and extensions. The huge problem I have with it, is I don't feel out of the box it's worth it's price tag because it lacks a huge amount of feature's. And the community created content is overly priced.

 

Yes, but you no longer receive XF updates (EG your license ran out when the latest XF was 1.4.4 means that when 1.4.5 comes out you won't be able to download it)

 

Same with IPB.

To be honest i get really annoyed when people found communities with pirated XF or IPB, because it feels like, dishonest somehow. Don't get me wrong, i'm no saint, but it doesn't feel right using it to found a community of which the intentions are honest and as a clean-slate, it's like, if you cut corners to get it, you're gonna cut corners to run it, kind of thing.


Having used XF and IPB extensively over the last few years, becoming familiar with both inside and out, i can say with confidence while i believe IPB and XF are significantly above all else, i believe XF is able to offer more and there appears to be more and has a lot more customization aspects.

IPB is good too, but i feel XF has something that IPB lacks, it's hard to explain. IPB feels a bit of a 'shell' and XF feels a bit more solid and more content/options. (Although XF is way trickier to learn).

Both are expensive, though.

Hope this helps.

 

Thanks Everyone!

 

SMF all the way!

 

PHPbb, all day.