IPS Prices to rise in January 2012

Also, what a company offers (In way of options) isn't always a good thing.

IPB offers many options, and many add-ons, but neither the core nor the add-ons are outstanding. The IPB core is bloated with features that go unused, and the way they've implemented many things (Profiles for example) feels sluggish which is counter-intuitive to what people want (They want snappy fast response time).

The add-ons aren't impressive in the slightest, and because they're 'official' I'm fairly sure there aren't any real alternatives to them.

And up until recently the design for IPB was a complete mess, and it is obvious they've taken some heavy inspiration from XenForo for the design. The excessive use of padding and margins in 3.1 wasted so much screen real estate, I just couldn't ever see a reason to like the default style.

Also many of the new features that came with 3.2 just do not have the care that XenForo has taken with implementing things (With the exception of the Notice system, which was fixed with the release of 1.1.1).

Because vbulletin, IPB and other php/mysql software doesn't scale when you have 100k users all online posting or searching at the same time. It would be a waste of money and dev resources to make it scale and if you did you'd have a stripped down ugly forum anyway.

1) The .01 increase was strictly for design purposes. If you can design using $25 instead of $24.99 its just easier. Forget any physiology. This is a professional software that needs a modern design which the .99 cents hindered.

2) Price hike? They have more employees, thus they need more money.

I don't particularly see the issue, food prices are rising, fuel prices are ridiculous, so everything's on the up. All this means to me is IPB has forced me to resort to bread and butter three times a day. The software (for me) is still pretty solid so an increase here and there is not going to cause sleepless nights.

Yep.

Best thing I ever did not selling that off. When ever I have to look something up on the forum and it is after the year I just pay the $30 ...if I don't need anything on the forum for years doesn't matter still can download new editions hehe

This is just stupid. The penny price hikes whatever no big deal. Adding on another 25 to the standard and making the business licenses 400, is just saying please don't buy our product. They still charge too much for renewals especially when you have the suite your paying a ton of money yearly to pay for software that you already own.

Honestly IPB has seemly always been pricey but this is just too much. This is not the time to increase prices. When you actually have a competitors that's got better buzz (XF). VB may be on life support but IPB needs to remember how to be competitive or they will get ignored.

The price increase would have gone over better if 3.2 had been more impressive perhaps.

More employees means they need to make more to pay those employees.

How many new hires have they had that it requires such a steep change in prices?

I've counted 3-6 new hires.

Edit: They also remove their conversion service a few months ago, so they are also having to get that back somehow.

Or people didn't use it? Or people went for cheaper offers by the community?

An increase from $150 to $175 is a huge increase for forum software, and the business license is just inconceivable. At a time when they've had to admit past mistakes and make up for them (SEO for example), the timing just comes off seeming as if they didn't think about it.

I'm just glad I'll be saving money in the long run and running better software for my community to utilize. After reviewing my books for end of the year taxes...I'm just happy to know that I'll be saving myself a lot of money and will have a better system for my users to utilize. Hell, with the money I'll be saving, I can buy at least 1 xF license a year

No people used it, they stopped it because they were getting to many of them which cut down on support from them.