Why is XenForo so expensive

I'd just like to add for anyone who thinks that XF is expensive, should see the price of Invision Community.

While this software does compete with XF on quality and features (I tried the demo and have an old license bought off a friend who ran his forum on it years ago, so I have first hand experience of it) it's an eye watering $600 to buy it. The renewals are then £$100 every six months! So, just renewing this software costs a lot more than the initial XF purchase price of $160! XF renewals are only $55 / year too, or effectively £27.50 every six months for a direct comparison. XF is a friggin' bargain.

Kinda puts the price of XF into perspective, doesn't it? 🙂

This is why, while I still have that IC license, I chose to go XF rather than renew it.
IPB is already not an option anymore since a decade ago due to its pricing policy.
If XF follows what IPB does then I am pretty sure people will vote with their footsteps.

Why can't you admit the huge financial differences among countries?
 
IPB is already not an option anymore since a decade ago due to its pricing policy.
If XF follows what IPB does then I am pretty sure people will vote with their footsteps.

Why can't you admit the huge financial differences among countries?
What?! Just where did I say that there aren't financial differences among countries?
 
You don't have to say that.

Anyway, quarrels like this won't work. It's the USD supremacy that brings these disasters.
Now you're denying it! I have no idea what you're talking about.

And if I'm not mistaken, it's you who'se started quarrelling with me. I'd never even heard of you before your post to me.
 
I am from India. Purchasing power is poor. I try to delay the renewal for as long as possible considering monetization has become a huge problem. We get spotify and other digital stuff for cheap compared to somewhere like USA. I would love to pay less money for XenForo renewals but I understand that for software products like XenForo it is just not a sustainable business model. XenForo as a software product is very different from a service which streams audio and video data. Plus, if they were to let's imagine make the software cheaper in India or Turkey, no one would buy the same product at European or American pricing. Everyone would just find a workaround to pay for the software using a spoofed IP and address. People in these countries would setup reselling shops where they would buy the product on your behalf using their own credit cards for a small fee and transfer ownership to you. I can see why this just is not going to happen.
 
Often times things are not that expensive, they are just not affordable given our income. For a middle-class Englishman or a middle-class Pakistani $160 does not have the same value ... unfortunately.
 
There is no software left that I haven't used in 20 years. I have never seen such a beautiful software in my life. Minimum wage in Turkey is 3550 TL. This software is here for 1,331,65 TL. That is 1/3 of the Minimum Wage. Although it seems expensive according to the conditions here, I can say that it is very cheap if he is going to use this software for a good job.
 
You don't have to say that.

Anyway, quarrels like this won't work. It's the USD supremacy that brings these disasters.
If they didn't price in USD, they would price it in GBP... If it wasn't priced in GBP it would likely be priced in Euro (pre-Brexit).

The price is the price because it's the cost that the company deems the amount to remain profitable. If they cannot remain profitable they cannot maintain development, or support.

Regional pricing is only sustainable for larger companies and it almost always has a large number of restrictions because it's extremely abusable (I use to buy Steam games at 25-30% of the cost from a friend in Russia for example when I was younger).

While I'm not a huge fan of any of the free software out currently, they are all good enough that you do not need XenForo if you can't afford it. And truthfully, the cost of XenForo isn't the biggest deal breaker if you have low income, but the fact that you'll be wanting a ton of add-ons that add up real quick.
 
I didnt know what category to post this thread in so I posted it here. But I have to ask, why is a XenForo license without any addons so expensive. I don't really like the style of other forum software and XenForo is the forum software that is the most appealing to me. And I don't want to get scammed by buying a license second hand from another website
You won’t get scammed if you do your due diligence and check the license, I’ve purchased 3 second licenses and no issues. But for the quality of what you’re getting XenForo is not expensive. Try buying those other two and that’s expensive. 😊
 
I've been around on nearly every forum software going back to the early days of phpNuke EVO, through phpBB, SMF, vBulletin 3 and 4, and finally onto Xenforo. Seen the decisions made that killed certain forum software (don't need to mention there) vs stagnating feature sets or security of others. Not to mention some lagging far, far behind in terms of addon tooling, UI and modernization, development community, style customization/support, etc.

Despite some people having specific gripes (this will always be the case), IMO Xenforo is essentially tops with a few arguments to be made in certain areas for similar enterprise level softwares, and as others have pointed out here, those are much more expensive.

The fact XF has such a brilliant team that came from peak vBulletin shows through.
 
Tag the prices tag with value and if you can get more value out of this, it is cheap..

In xenforo, the core development team has been reliable and resourceful. I switch from Vbulletin, and so far, it has let me sleep well at night as our site activities grow day by day.
 
I can't really say Xenforo is expensive, I do think it worths the price especially the latest version.
Don't get me wrong, Xenforo can be expensive for people in many parts of the world. The comparison I saw here is much fairer than my place.
Minimum wage here is about $44 so it will take like 3 months to be able to afford Xenforo. I purchased the licence in 2014 and has since renewed only twice. After version 2 and at the current version which is impressive imo.

My compliant here is some add-ons. In Xenforo you will see exactly what to expect which is different from some add-ons.
I recently purchased an add-on I thought can do something only the owner to inform me it's impossible to do.
I have not been able to have the time to read Xenforo doc to code some functionality I needed to add so, I have to depend on some add ons (which can be expensive) some of guys are annoyingly rude, custom jobs (way out of my budget) or ask someone to share a bit of their codes.
 
I've re-stablished all my sites back to XF due to the license changes of another vendor. The XF core product can't be beaten, it just lacked a few things I needed

But when the other vendor started imposing needing an active license to access third part add-ons you lose customers.
 
I'd just like to add for anyone who thinks that XF is expensive, should see the price of Invision Community.

While this software does compete with XF on quality and features (I tried the demo and have an old license bought off a friend who ran his forum on it years ago, so I have first hand experience of it) it's an eye watering $600 to buy it. The renewals are then $100 every six months! So, just renewing this software costs a lot more than the initial XF purchase price of $160! XF renewals are only $55 / year too, or effectively £27.50 every six months for a direct comparison. XF is a friggin' bargain.

Kinda puts the price of XF into perspective, doesn't it? 🙂

This is why, while I still have that IC license, I chose to go XF rather than renew it.
If you are going to compare the two, do it correctly.
Forum to forum.
The $600 figure you quote entails a LOT more than the simple forum.
$100 for Forum
$100 for Commerce
$100 for Pages
$75 for Blogs
$75 for Gallery
$75 for Downloads
And Calendar is free (which XF does not have)

My renewal for Forums, Commerce and Pages is $75 for 6 months.
$25 for Forum
$35 for Commerce
$15 for Pages
Also realize that included in that renewal for IPS is spam protection with the base forum option.

If you compare Forum to Forum, my yearly renewal for it would be only $50. Last time I checked, $50 was less than $55 that XF is... and actually my current 1 year extension for XF is $85. Yes, IPS is $65 more per year, but the abilities granted by Pages alone outweighs many of the XF add-ons and Commerce integrates with my Classifieds add-on that would allow me to sell classified ads (and items) direct from IPS using a professional level classifieds add-on with billing/payment built in if I chose to sell the "ability" to place classified ads on the site.
 
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