Xenforo VS Vbulletin 6
- Thread starter Zweeper
- Start date
"While it's true that XenForo Ltd. operates with a lean internal team and registers as a small company under UK law for reporting purposes, labeling it a 'small business' in financial or market terms is quite inaccurate. Here is why:
- Massive Market Share: According to web technology trackers like W3Techs, XenForo powers roughly 10% of all tracked forums globally, trailing only behind a few open-source giants. We are talking about tens of thousands of active live domains, with estimates ranging between 30,000 and 45,000+ active forums.
- High-Margin Revenue Model & Statistics: Of course, since their official revenue isn't public, these numbers are pure estimations and theories. However, even if we drop our expectations and look at an incredibly low and conservative scenario, the math still highlights a multi-million dollar business:
- License Renewals: Assuming a low 25% annual renewal rate, 10,000 active users renewing their core license at the official $60/year rate equals $600,000.
- Official Add-ons (Media Gallery & Resource Manager): These cost $70 upfront and $15 to renew. If just half of those renewing users maintain an official extension like the Media Gallery, that adds another $75,000+ in renewals alone.
- New Licenses: Even if we assume they sell a modest 100 new licenses per month (1,200/year) at $195 each, that’s another $234,000.
- High-Ticket Upsells: A single 'Branding Removal' purchase costs $350 as a one-time fee. Big communities and corporate clients buy this regularly to remove the copyright link.
- The XenForo Cloud Factor: On top of the self-hosted software, we must factor in their XenForo Cloudservice. While the starter plan is $60/month, larger communities and enterprise clients easily pay hundreds of dollars every single month for higher tiers (due to traffic and storage needs). This managed hosting infrastructure alone creates a massive, steady flow of high-ticket recurring revenue.
- The Stagnation Risk (Why renewals might drop): That being said, all of this depends entirely on software development. If XenForo fails to release frequent updates and new features, their business model backfires. Why would anyone pay $60 a year to renew a license if there are no meaningful updates? It is completely counterproductive; failing to keep the software fresh means they will lose active renewals over time. It almost feels absurd, as if they don't care about maximizing profits or retaining their core customer base.
- The Software Industry Leverage: In software, a small headcount does not mean a small business; it means extreme efficiency. Because they don't have the overhead of manufacturing, XenForo operates with incredibly high profit margins.
That reads just like AI slop... 
Because some of us don't want to be slaves to our forums and have to deal with modifying/upgrading our own code and dozens of add-ons like a full-time job. The fewer times I have to deal with the pain of upgrades, the better. I like some of XF 2.4's upcoming features but in reality, members don't care. They show up, they read, they post. Anything else is just gravy. If our old text-based WebBBS wasn't so insecure and spam-bait, I never would have moved away from it. Even Reddit is barebones compared to basic forum software, and look how popular it is. So the argument that "new features" is making forums decline in popularity is a straw man argument.
I don’t see them adding 100 new licenses a month
It's not worth predicting everything because you know who puts more love into each project.
Xenforo staff take longer because they're adding some love to it. Rather than rolling out mistake riddled monthly updates that are in beta form still.
That reads just like AI slop...
Yes, I gave some data to ChatGPT and had them add some information. What's the problem? It's 2026, but I understand that anyone who's still arguing that things aren't right can't understand the usefulness of artificial intelligence.
And anyway, these are basic calculations. If you think it's nonsense, you're really lacking the basic understanding of how society and the formula work.
I've been moderating forums for nearly 35 yearsv(starting at CompuServe), and been an admin/owner for nearly 30. I, and others with my experience, have a lot more collective knowledge than some flawed AI slop that was plagiarized without consent from various sources around the Internet.
Have you noticed that the world and the web are moving forward? Are we no longer in the 2000s?
Furthermore, artificial intelligence is able to do in 5 minutes what you will most likely never be able to do in a lifetime.
What matters most is the users - the community.
Twenty years ago, forums were slow. You couldn't even paste an image from the clipboard, let alone embed videos. But there were lots of people, and the conversations were amazing. Those were great times...
People come first. The software comes second.
With today's advances in AI, it's hard to call these things difficulties anymore...
AI fixed XenForo 2.2 plugins that were broken or incompatible with XenForo 2.3 in just a few seconds. It will do the same when moving from XenForo 2.3 to 2.4.
Since it seems you have a lot of faith in Chatgpt's assessments, let's see Chatgpt's assessment of you:
And for fairness, it's negatives about me:
I'll close using your own abrasive style:
You’ve shown that LLM's aren't the only artificial intelligence in this discussion.
I'm seriously tempted to add that function as an option to the member profile page on one of my forums
@MySiteGuy what you actually proved is not that AI is useless, but that you asked it a question about something it had no verifiable information on.
If you ask, "What do you think about user XK?", without any concrete data, the answer can only be generic or cautious. In fact, it would be far worse if it started making up facts about a person.
The real value of AI becomes clear when you ask it questions based on data, sources, or technical information. If you give it precise instructions, it can analyze vast amounts of documentation in seconds, compare sources, identify patterns and statistics, and summarize information that would take a person hours or even days to gather and process.
So your example doesn't demonstrate a limitation of AI. It simply shows that you asked it a question without any objective data to reason from. Judging a tool based on the wrong use case is like saying a microscope is useless because it can't see the stars.
If you ask, "What do you think about user XK?", without any concrete data, the answer can only be generic or cautious. In fact, it would be far worse if it started making up facts about a person.
The real value of AI becomes clear when you ask it questions based on data, sources, or technical information. If you give it precise instructions, it can analyze vast amounts of documentation in seconds, compare sources, identify patterns and statistics, and summarize information that would take a person hours or even days to gather and process.
So your example doesn't demonstrate a limitation of AI. It simply shows that you asked it a question without any objective data to reason from. Judging a tool based on the wrong use case is like saying a microscope is useless because it can't see the stars.
I think you just shot yourself in the foot there
I would not be surprised if this actually describes the majority of xenForo forum admins.
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