Honest opinion needed: IPB vs XenForo.

[The Dark Wizard]

I'm a IPB user and tried Xenforo a couple of times. Simple said, I did not feel at home using it. I heard a looooot of good things about Xenforo, but I felt more at home with IPB.

Xenforo may run faster and as forum and had many free add-ons. But for me that is not something point.

Free add-ons is good, but many times means, that a free add-on on the long run one day won't be longer updated. I have experienced that on Wordpress, free plugins usually do not live long. I prefer to go the "I pay for the pluging" road. Woothemes is a good example. They grow because the earn money, they can hire developers, support staff and all their themes and scripts get updated on regular basis.

It is true that IPB has many functions built in already and could also be that could make it run slower (although I never had any of those issues) but I know those functions and modules will be updated from time to time by IPB and I won't have to depend on some developer that today is active and tomorrow is gone.

I also find IPB very active in development and their support is pretty good. I'm sure XeroForo excells als a Forum or even as a lot of more things thanks to their add-ons. But considering all in all I find IPB a more rounded and complete product. Their next 4.0 versión seems promising and so as it looks, they are addressing many of the issues discussed in this thread.

That said, the possibility to start for just for $10 a month a complete Community solution with all IPB Moduls included (except the eCommerce Modul Nexus which is available on a pricier plan) and 24/7 unlimited support included, that's for me is an amazing price start point and a super simple way of starting a Community, perfect for users who do not want to deal with all the technical stuff, since you don't need to worry about hosting, installations, updates or whatever... and then you can decide to upgrade to a better plan when your community grows or move it to a dedicated server or whatever you want to do.

It is not only how good is a product, but also how you market it. I think Xeroforo marketing could be improved a lot, it that respect, IPB guys are miles away from Xero. Just compare the websites from both presenting their products and you can notice a huge difference. I must say I'm not even sure what is Xero capable of, since it is not clearly exposed in their website. It is like you have to find out your self, that's IMHO is a mistake. The user should not find out what a product can or can not it should be presented cristal clear.

Said that, bbPress is making its way in the community now that it is a real plugin and works with single sign on and BuddyPress 1.7 now in beta, works with any wordpress theme. There are many add-ons por bbPress and BuddyPress which make it a very powerful solution if you want a really flexible platform. Let's not forget Wordpress is by long, the most used web platform in the world and its free.

Let's face it, Xeroforo, IPB, Vanilla or VB do not have the power, the flexibility, the beauty and the immense user and developer user base of Wordpress by any means. I'm starting a new Community Project and I'm not quite sure if going now the WordPress+bbPress+BuddPress way or the IPB way...

xenForo or XenForo, not Xeroforo.

 

[Kim]

I spent 9 years in the IPB world, and I am thrilled to have moved to Xenforo 2 years ago.

IPB do have a lot of paid quality add on's - it's true, but that means a huge amount of work on upgrade time (which is ALL the time - they are upgrading every 5 minutes requiring huge amounts of work to maintain skins etc) and I found that they did not get used enough/were not easy enough/clever enough to use to be of much actual use anyway. And they are very expensive to keep current.

Things may have changed dramatically since I last used the products - but I doubt it myself

I hate Wordpress. Whilst it has some good point, I dislike using it immensely, and is NOT a forum solution, not quite sure why you bring it up.

End of the day it boils down to whatever works for your community - I had clients in the IPB world who would LOVE to move to xenforo, but they cannot, as the gallery/blogs or some other key component is essential to their site and is not replicable in Add ons here. Similarly I have clients who ditched IPB at the drop of a hat and have 7 or more Xenforo sites happily chugging along.

 

[Mario Rodriguez]

We

IPB do have a lot of paid quality add on's - it's true, but that means a huge amount of work on upgrade time (which is ALL the time - they are upgrading every 5 minutes requiring huge amounts of work to maintain skins etc) and I found that they did not get used enough/were not easy enough/clever enough to use to be of much actual use anyway. And they are very expensive to keep current.

This is very true and you are right. It is probably the worst part of IPB. Updates which are terrible to install. They have brought a couple updaters but they work so so...

The documentation is for many things non existent (a lot of complains about that as well)

Things may have changed dramatically since I last used the products - but I doubt it myself

They say they will change a lot of those things on the versión 4.0... let's see in some ways they have recognized there is a lot of caos in the way they do things.

I hate Wordpress. Whilst it has some good point, I dislike using it immensely, and is NOT a forum solution, not quite sure why you bring it up.

You hate Wordpress or you hate bbPress or all together? ... I work a lot with Wordpress... mmm.... I have seen pretty nice and decent forums in bbPress. Not everybody needs super profesional forums like Xen or IPB with trillions of users and messages in them.


By the way, there are a lot of things I like from Xen, I find the HTML emails from Xen really nice, much nicer and cooler than those from IPB

End of the day it boils down to whatever works for your community - I had clients in the IPB world who would LOVE to move to xenforo, but they cannot, as the gallery/blogs or some other key component is essential to their site and is not replicable in Add ons here. Similarly I have clients who ditched IPB at the drop of a hat and have 7 or more Xenforo sites happily chugging along.

Yes I have seen users moved both ways.

I moved from Wordpress to Expression Engine, then to Joomla, then back to Expression Engine, then back to Wordpress...

I may start something with Xen one of these days... I'm not a fan boy of anything... well... mmmm.... yes mmmm a bit of a Mac fan boy but that may change, who knows (but never back to windows )

 

[Alpha1]

I find it hard to compare a feature full suite like IPS with a pretty basic forum like XF.
Feature wise XF needs years of rapid development to come close to IPS. And while you may not want bloat, XF misses many basic features.
XF is much more modern, has much better SEO, is much more intuitive (this is a real problem with IPS IMHO), and is a better platform if you want to build upon it.
IPS has a steady track record of developing new releases. For XF we need to see what happens.
With IPS 4 being underway and XenForo announcing new releases, its hard to judge it now. Who knows if IPS 4 will be crap or pure Gold? Who knows if XF developers are going to pull a big fat rabbit out of their hat, after a year of silence?

In regard to vb5: I do not see how vb5 can be compared to any forum solution. Its simply not fit for purpose. The only thing it has is its name. But that will change. vbulletin is in shambles.

 

[Father Sebastiaan]

First of all with the VB vs. XF lawsuit over I am switching my forum to XF. We are moving from Vbulletin 4.2 because VB5 just sucks and doesnt have the spirit of XF...

Here is what XF needs from my perspective....
1. Galleries for images and videos (this is a MUST and the big limiting factor)
2. Events Calendar.
3. Blogs and CMS.
4. A good brandable iPhone and Android app (this is just obvious).

XF has the potential to be the best product on the market. I have used PHPFOX, Social Engine, VB, PHPBB, IPS, SimpleMachines.... owning licenses for all. I prefer XF over everything and even with the limits currently in place, but lets see what happens with the next editions of XF...

I am a happy customer so far.

All the best,
Seb

 

[ForestForTrees]

My advice in choosing forum software is to go with the one with the best tasting baked goods.
http://xenforo.com/community/threads/xencake-a-celebration.45518/
IPB doesn't stand a chance.

MMmmmm... Tasty.

(see my signature for why my organization chose XF over IPB)

 

[ZakRhyno]

I posted this elsewhere, might as well here:

View attachment 34309

Mmmmmmmm

 

[JonathanW]

Mmmmmmmm

View attachment 152020

That doesn't mean much. Just moved a community from IPB to XF and the community is amazed at how much faster it is. XF when properly configured is absolutely faster than IPB.

 

[ZakRhyno]

That doesn't mean much. Just moved a community from IPB to XF and the community is amazed at how much faster it is. XF when properly configured is absolutely faster than IPB.

Really a few ms is not a killer to a site IMHO, not were talking a lot than yes. But in terms between what the test show it more base on than features each one has that will grab the owner to which one than want to go with.

 

[Paul B]

The home page -- https://xenforo.com/ -- is not indicative of how the forum performs.

Although it uses the same basic framework, it's a custom developed page and unrelated to the forum.

Other factors will also affect the time to render a page, such as the server, network, etc.

You should base any decision primarily on whether the software has the features and functionality you need.

 

[ZakRhyno]

The home page -- https://xenforo.com/ -- is not indicative of how the forum performs.

Although it uses the same basic framework, it's a custom developed page and unrelated to the forum.

Other factors will also affect the time to render a page, such as the server, network, etc.

You should base any decision primarily on whether the software has the features and functionality you need.

Bingo! That what I said above.

 

[Dragapult]

In my honest opinion, I like IPB better.

 

[TPerry]

In my honest opinion, I like IPB better.

I personally hate how you have to use the little "indicator" to go to the newest message in IPS.