Initial and Ongoing costs for a medium size forum.

[LandyVlad]

I am potentially going to obtain an existing forum which runs the xenforo software.

I'm not familiar with Xenforo at all (my experience to date is all SMF) and yes yet I have no information from the admin of the existing forum.

I'm trying to get an idea of what initial and ongoing costs to maintain a Xenforo forum.
(not including domain and hosting costs)

1. What's the annual cost for the basic software?
2. Does that include anti-SPAM features or are they extra?
3. If extra - at what cost?
4. What are the options for integrating advertising on a forum.
   (Banner ads, Google ads, etc) - Locations, and costs of doing so?

Undoubtedly I'll have follow up questions but I'm just looking for an idea of what the costs MIGHT be (ballpark) for what I have in mind.

The member base of the forum in question is very large but the active user base is quite small, in case that makes any difference to pricing)

Thanks

 

[Forsaken]

Renewal prices are:

• XF : $55
• XFES : $10
• XFRM : $15
• XFMG : $15

There's some basic spam options, and you can get some free add-ons but I recommend getting Xon's Addon (https://xenforo.com/community/resources/signup-abuse-detection-and-blocking.6812/). So far this has caught most of the spam we get, but I also block the countries that we were getting the most spam from.

For ads this is what I use: https://www.siropu.com/products/ads-manager-2 I do not know what others are available, but Siropu has always had solid products.

Both add-ons have a yearly renewal ($30 for Xon, 20 Euro for Siropu).

 

[Paul B]

To clarify, add-ons aren't necessary for spam and advertising - both are built in and work perfectly well for the majority of sites.

The XF license purchase is a one off cost, with optional renewal costs listed as in the above post.

XF license costs aren't based on the amount of content or active visitors - it's the same price regardless of the site.

 

[deslocotoco]

To clarify, add-ons aren't necessary for spam and advertising - both are built in and work perfectly well for the majority of sites.

The XF license purchase is a one off cost, with optional renewal costs listed as in the above post.

XF license costs aren't based on the amount of content or active visitors - it's the same price regardless of the site.

I vouch that dear future medium-size Forum administrator.

I do have a medium-size Forum too, and my way to deal with the bills is save some money from AdSense (particularly speaking, in the last months the revenue is going up 50% before pandemic levels that almost dropped to almost nothing in my country) to pay the renew costs.

And Brogan, i cannot wait to see the hosting plans that XF will gonna offer in the future. Having a host administrated by XenForo staff itself will gonna rock the word. And please, consider the option to allow add-ons.