I originally come from the phpBB and SMF area, so I used it to set up forums, yes - because it was free. I later moved these forums to vBulletin 3 and was happy with them for many years. Then with vBulletin 4 and the Theater um IB I switched to Xenforo very early on and have remained loyal to it so far. When the upgrade to Xenforo 2.x was due, I initially feared I would have a lot of work with it and lose many functions.
But I still waited, my Xenforo 1.5.x forums went well, no complaints from users - why rush something.
When Xenforo 2.2.x was released, the time seemed right for the upgrade. I had to switch from Xenforo 1.5.x with over 60 addons to Xenforo 2.2.x and I had great respect for this change.
What can I say, the upgrade was the easiest with such big changes that I've done myself since 2004. The easiest and the fastest.
Basically, we haven't lost any function, but have gained a lot in speed and easier operation. And contrary to my fears, I had to spend less on it than I thought before.
The only really bad experience I've had so far is with galleries and dictionaries. Switching from phpBB to vBulletin meant a lot of manual work, then from vBglossary to Xenforo again a lot of manual work. Since then I have been using my own kind of lexicon, based on normal contributions / articles, a handful of always available small add-ons and some style adjustments. Works and significantly less stress and since then hardly any work with it.
For the galleries, switching from phpBB to vBulletin was a painful experience, but we managed to handle it. But then the same experience when switching from vBulletin to Xenforo - again the addon developer simply stopped working and again we had to fight for our users' data. In the absence of an official Xenforo gallery at the time, we chose the sonnB XenGallery because it was simply better than Chris D's media gallery at the time. But then, when switching from Xenforo 1.x to 2.x, the shock again - the sonnB XenGallery won't make it to Xenforo 2.x, so again the drama and again a change, now to media gallery which in the meantime belongs to Xenforo .
I am also right when it is said that both the media gallery and the resource manager are wasting a lot of potential. Sometimes it seems as if these two addons are a necessary evil in the Xenforo program and not the flagship of the company.
At the moment I feel reasonably well positioned with Xenforo 2.2.x. But still I would like the software to develop more quickly, with enough foresight to be able to develop the software further instead of turning almost everything inside out, as when switching from XF1 to XF2 (felt, at the beginning), which at least initially baffled some developers also caused initial displeasure in the community.
enough talk about yesterday ...: D