Price of licence + brand free???

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goxy63

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Ok licence is cheaper than your main competitor VB but still bit high if have in mind that Xenforo is new on market....

Brand removal by my opinion is way to expencive, even more than VB, 250$??? Even more than licence itself which is 140$!

Xenforo package with brand removal is 390$

VB suit with brand removal is 455$
VB forums with brand removal is $365:rolleyes:


More or less you are not cheaper as you are new fighting your way through.... do you have product that can stand shoulder to shoulder with VB, no you do not at the time

Is there bunch of modification as it is on vb.org, no there is not, you are new


Even if I do not want to migrate from vb I was thinking of xenforo as an option cause I can see that some of modification there will not be supported...those modifications will be here as far as I know...


Prices to high, c ya maybe "goodbye"


Cheers
 
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lemonadesoda said:
I think XenF is expensive - in fact, way overpriced- for a new board, no track record, no/limited addons, STILL BETA, and currently advertised as NOT FOR PRODUCTION.

However, I do also acknowledge that there are many people here who have established communities, understand the "hidden cost" of maintenance and vB, and HAVE FAITH in what XenF will become. They are ready to buy the product that XenF will become in mid-2011.

If XenF wants to build a massive following, then I suggest it starts selling XenF-lite that has a maximum of 1000 members. (Or maybe 250 or 500 whatever XenF thought appropriate after analysing the market/their business model). The lite product should have an easy upgrade path to the full product for larger communities.

I think that would be pretty convincing for anyone sitting on the fence. And the news would spread like wildfire. Heck, even I would get another license for fun. And great for "startups".

If the branding fee is nothing more than this "Forum software by XenForo™ ©2010 XenForo Ltd" then I have no problem with it. It is not intrusive at all.
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Just to reply to a few of your points above -

  1. The software may not have an established track record - yet, but its developers do. That's what matters to me, at this point.
  2. Most of us who have already purchased XenForo not only have faith in what it will become, but in what it is now.
  3. XF already has a massive following.
  4. News of XF already has spread like wildfire - has been spreading since this site opened.
:)
 
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All your points are valid. No challenge on those. Except perhaps the definition of the term massive.

But I think the discussion raised by the OP is about fence sitters and target customers, and their perception of value.

We can't judge that from the OP. He is clearly foreign. Is he from a country where the $/€ can have a very different relative value?

If someone is new to hosting and running a forum or they have a very small-community service need, then do they get the same value from a $140 investment as you do with your large existing communities?

Personally I think $140 is very cheap for a large commercial community. But that value doesn't translate equally to different situations.

Reaching out to these people is an imperative long term strategy. The attitude of the "clique": don't like it? can't fit it? then go away! is short sighted and doesn't follow the goal of expanding reach. Which IMO is what we want in any community of communities.

XenF is doing phenomenally well. And I'm also a supporter. But take a look at it from another perspective. 4000 members. I doubt there are more installs of XenF than there are members here. And doing a websearch count indicates that the current penetration of XF is 100th that of phpBB and just 1000th that of vB. And what is the strategy of XF? To bite at the heals of vB or to become ubiquitous on the net, adopted by practically any and all sites? Why the hell not? I believe that is where "lite" comes in. Make sure everybody is using it. Upsell to larger communities.

***

Does anyone know if there is good reference on "taxonomy of communities" ?
 
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lemonadesoda said:
XenF is doing phenomenally well. And I'm also a supporter. But take a look at it from another perspective. 4000 members. I doubt there are more installs of XenF than there are members here. And doing a websearch count indicates that the current penetration of XF is 100th that of phpBB and just 1000th that of vB. And what is the strategy of XF? To bite at the heals of vB or to become ubiquitous on the net, adopted by practically any and all sites? Why the hell not? I believe that is where "lite" comes in. Make sure everybody is using it. Upsell to larger communities.
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Compared to how long the software has been for sale - October 5 ? so just over 2 months - I'd say 4000 is pretty darn good, don't you think?

One other thing that is very important to consider - these stupid lawsuits.
Once they are cleared up, and Kier, Mike and Ashley wipe the floor with IB (and they will), I do believe that we will see a significant increase in that number.
I have no doubt.
 
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First of all I want to say that I am here as someone who is happy that Xenforo even exist, and I do hope that XF will be real competitor to VB in future...as good competition is always in benifit for us users VB & XF

All I want to say that licence is not that expencive (but for something that is with us just few months??? maybe), and that brand free is overpriced

Get real ppls, you are not good as VB which does not mean that you are bad...you are just in junior school...even someone who is not programmer/coder but simple owner of small site like me can see that
Also without place like vb.org you will never have product good as VB, even VB itself would be nothing without vb.org (by me)
In fact few coders who will "migrate" here brought me at XF at first place!

Cheers
 
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goxy63 said:
Get real ppls, you are not good as VB which does not mean that you are bad...you are just in junior school...even someone who is not programmer/coder but simple owner of small site like me can see that
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The problem with what you're saying here is that you are generalizing. You seem to ignore the strong aspects of XF and the weak ones in vB. I think if someone needs to get real here, it's actually you. You can't just say 'vB has more modifications' and then act like vB 4.x is a modern, stable, secure and well written product. Even if you would refer to vB 3.x (which was completely written by the XF developers BTW) you have to understand that both these products have their strong and weak points if you're going to compare them. Obviously 'more features' does not automatically translate into 'better product'.

Just because XF is a young product, doesn't mean it's automatically 'not as good'. In fact, the core product should be better than older software, since you expect the people that worked on it using all their experience and knowledge that they have build up while coding similar software in the last decade. And that's exactly what they did, anything else would make no sense for them if they expect to have any chance competing in this crowded software market.

If we would follow your reasoning, a completely new car designed by people who have designed successful cars in the past, has to be worse because it is younger. In reality what we see is cars becoming better and better. Not that different in the world of software; the core product (car) can be better than an older one, even though it doesn't yet have all the support from third party products like custom body kits or things to enhance the interior.

I think the price is exactly what it should be. You have to consider the fact that this product will get even better while the staff have made clear that the price will stay the same. I believe this is the right approach. It means they do not have to increase the price in the future which would likely upset customers at that time. Keeping your price stable is very much appreciated by customer indeed. Of course having this kind of plan can mean that some people who are dealing with a limited budget and/or require lots of modifications, may not be interested in your product from the start, but so far, the majority seems to be quite happy with it.
 
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In summary, Xenforo should be more expensive and have a greater committed/guaranteed feature set in its final release form, and some form of "approved/assured mods and addons" that can expand the feature set further. There would be confidence behind these approved/assured mods. To pay or not to pay that is another question.

If there was also a Xenforo lite, cheaper, with a maximum member count of (say) 350 members and no ticket support, this would be very popular with fencesitters and small non-commercial embryonic clubs (small communities), or people requiring only a development/test platform. It could even be called "home edition" or "club edition" ;)
 
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lemonadesoda said:
a websearch count indicates that the current penetration of XF is 100th that of phpBB and just 1000th that of vB.
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Your "websearch" numbers are wildly inaccurate. vB certainly does not have ten times the installs that phpBB has. If anything, that 10:1 ratio is the reverse. At least. I suspect the phpBB to vB ratio is much higher, favoring phpBB.

I think you are going to need more fingers and toes to really figure this out.
 
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Didn't talk about installs. Nobody knows those numbers, unfortunately (but you are welcome to try), but a web search engine is an "ok-ish" way to measure "penetration". Again, penetration =/= installs. But it is easy to measure and indicative of the point I was trying to get across. Let's not split hairs. Is going nowhere. :)
 
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goxy63 said:
First of all I want to say that I am here as someone who is happy that Xenforo even exist, and I do hope that XF will be real competitor to VB in future...as good competition is always in benifit for us users VB & XF

All I want to say that licence is not that expencive (but for something that is with us just few months??? maybe), and that brand free is overpriced

Get real ppls, you are not good as VB which does not mean that you are bad...you are just in junior school...even someone who is not programmer/coder but simple owner of small site like me can see that
Also without place like vb.org you will never have product good as VB, even VB itself would be nothing without vb.org (by me)
In fact few coders who will "migrate" here brought me at XF at first place!

Cheers
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LOL, if vB is so good why would people like me who own 3 "so called lifetime licenses" be looking to move the hell off the platform ?

One thing XF does need is a duplicate account search because I'm sure you are the same guy that started the thread that got locked last night.

It seems like Bob Brisco's secret agents have infiltrated this forum folks, so don't let them shake you up, that is the goal.
 
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lemonadesoda said:
Didn't talk about installs. Nobody knows those numbers, unfortunately (but you are welcome to try)...
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If not installations, then what is this mysterious "penetration" metric that you are measuring?

I can give you a high level view of the number of installs, and that number favors phpBB over vB by a wide, wide margin. I base that on my own observations working in the web hosting industry. Historically we would see more than 100 phpBB installs for every vB install (the number is likely higher than that, but why split hairs). Which you would expect, what with phpBB being free and all.

But I would hazard a guess that phpBB is downloaded more in a typical year than the total number of active vB licenses. You can define penetration however you'd like, but numbers are numbers.

Of course most of those phpBB forums suffer the same fate as most WordPress installations. That is they are installed and abandoned in short order. Which is less likely to happen when you are paying real money for the software.
 
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goxy63 said:
Also without place like vb.org
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vb.org is what made vBulletin important to me. I agree with you.

However .....

Since vB ruined vB4 and spoiled the community atmosphere there, I don't see a bright future.
vBulletin is run by a SuperConglomerate that isn't doing well.
vB Suite is horrific.
If all the bad releases don't phase you, you have an iron will.

goxy63: are you using vBulletin 3 or 4 ?
 
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mjp said:
Of course most of those phpBB forums suffer the same fate as most WordPress installations. That is they are installed and abandoned in short order. Which is less likely to happen when you are paying real money for the software.
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Which is why the number of unique installations is pretty irrelevant. A better metric would be number of active members per software platform. But... can't see how we can measure that unless the software vendors actually started collecting and publishing such data. Actually, here is a question: is there a site or service where you can "publish" your forum to, and that site will therefore collect such relevant data as: number of installs, active members, number of posts, etc. The analogue would be those game server hosts that list active game servers.
 
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I don't think you can say that XenForo will not look worth the money to people who are new to forums or just 'simple site owners' as you put it. Firstly many new people will no doubt not be as aware of the power of various forum packages and more likely to go based on look (and I think that default setup XenForo beats vBulletin, and most non-techy people I show agree with that*) and feel. Most new starters will not be that worried about all the mods and such, they will mainly want to see a few decent skins.
I think the lack of a strong modding community will damage sells with those experience people more, but if the software offers the right stuff out the box that may be less of a factor. Some will also buy it in the hopes of it building a strong modding community in the future.

So whilst you have a valid point none of this really impacts on the price, if people will pay X for it, then it is worth X. Also, do new forum owners / smaller forum owners really care about the branding bit? It is a tiny piece of text that most can live with until the forum is big enough that the revenue streams it provides can cover the removal. But at that point they might just invest it into something more worthwhile than paying to remove some text.


*The old default vB is much preferred to the new one, but even that loses out to XF for people who are less used to forums, those that have seem to recognise the 3.x look far more (my sample is of course subjective and a very small sample so is certainly not scientific and is purely qualitative.
 
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Coby said:
Perhaps that's your problem. You're attempting to discuss something you know nothing about.
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Do you honestly think that even 2% of VB or XF users are coders?
dutchbb said:
Just because XF is a young product, doesn't mean it's automatically 'not as good'. In fact, the core product should be better than older software, since you expect the people that worked on it using all their experience and knowledge that they have build up while coding similar software in the last decade.
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Didnt say its not good, only saying its not that good as VB at the moment, and it will not be for a while, young new and prices are high!
AnthonyCea said:
LOL, if vB is so good why would people like me who own 3 "so called lifetime licenses" be looking to move the hell off the platform ?
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Not shure why you are...only reason Iam interesting is cause of mod called "tv radio stations..." by Mr.Dream is not and will not be supported any more ta vb.org
AnthonyCea said:
One thing XF does need is a duplicate account search because I'm sure you are the same guy that started the thread that got locked last night.
It seems like Bob Brisco's secret agents have infiltrated this forum folks, so don't let them shake you up, that is the goal.
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??? is this in any way refering to me?
Digital Doctor said:
goxy63: are you using vBulletin 3 or 4 ?
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VB 4, happy with it only thing is that I am always planing my future steps and thinking of Xenforo as future option...also as mentioned above some modifications...


Do you people think that XF would have even 500 members here or 100-200 installs if developers are not known in VB community, must say that without VB you would not even exist (my opinion)...but that is life things are changing

And yes, I am not in any way related with VB except I own one single VB licence, that is all
 
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