Hard to know whether I should use Xenforo to start a new community

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I've been visiting the forums for a couple of months now, checking in to see what's happening in the Xenforo ecosystem because I'm not happy with how some of its competitors have really honed in on SaaS cloud hosting with insane markups. But it seems like there's no updates on the big XF upgrade that was originally announced two years ago. So do I trust a forum software that will probably close self-hosted options in the near future or trust a forum software that seems to be in bug-fix maintenance mode?

Does anyone know if we'll get more updates soon? Granted, I'm more used to WordPress community and the more rapid development pace of some of their plugins and themes, but it really makes me hesitate before I invest again in a license that is a couple hundred dollars (and money is tight these days). I also have a small fear of XF being bought out by private equity and we'll have another vBulletin situation.

This is not made to be argumentative or overly negative — if I am thinking it, other potential customers are too and it would be great to get some reassurances from the team that there are active long-term development plans that are being worked on. I just haven't come across anything like that lately.
 
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The pace can definitely feel slow compared to WordPress or SaaS platforms, but XF has always released updates when they’re fully ready rather than rushing them out. Self‑hosted isn’t going anywhere, and the team tends to focus on stability first. I’m sure more updates will land when they’re ready, the platform has been reliable for years, and 2.3 continues that trend.

Good luck! :)
 
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Noble™ said:
The pace can definitely feel slow compared to WordPress or SaaS platforms, but XF has always released updates when they’re fully ready rather than rushing them out. Self‑hosted isn’t going anywhere, and the team tends to focus on stability first. I’m sure more updates will land when they’re ready, the platform has been reliable for years, and 2.3 continues that trend.
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And I would add...

2.3 is still updated as needed. And staff still has a presence here in the forums. So no, it's not going away any time soon, and I doubt they would ever eliminate the self-hosted option, as many of us have custom configurations, especially those of us who host larger forums.

We've found most members don't really care if our boards get new features, at least in the boards I've administered over the decades. If members have a place to discuss topics with minimal interference from the user interface, they will participate.

2.4 will come around when it's ready. I'd gladly start with 2.3 and give myself time to grow the community and get participation up.
 
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