IPB full featured trial with member/post limits

[MrEdd]

This would be extremely useful for me personally but would also increase IPBs overall reach. Make a free trial version of IPBs fully featured latest version (full download, not ips hosted) but with limitations, i.e. member and post counts, maybe 2000 members max and 20,000 posts. I think this would bring in a lot of the phpbb/mybb crowd and present them with a nice upgrade path if their forum really takes off and makes IPB a serious alternative to vb for people who want the best features. Something else I just thought of while rereading this post, maybe make tiers, for example, free up to 2000 members, $30 up to 3000, $40 up to 4000, $150 unlimited. If there are concerns about people editing out the limitations then even an encrypted trial would be better than none, but I believe many who would edit it in such a way are likely to use nulled full versions anyway.

It would also be useful to me personally, I start many new forums, some take off and some don't and I can't afford a full license for every failed forum attempt. I don't want to delete a board because it only got a few hundred members as the content still brings me some traffic. If I where able to use the trial and then pay for a license if the forum took off it would be perfect and would also allow me the opportunity to get a lot of new communities started. Currently when I want to throw my hat into a new niche I am using patched up 1.3 boards for my new start up forums and then upgrading to 2.x if they take off which is less than ideal for many reasons.

I have I think 5 perpetual and 2 standard 2.x licences plus around 10 small 1.3 boards, some of which have the potential to become much bigger. Using 1.3 for these startups is limiting their success for obvious reasons. I could use phpbb etc for these startups but I use ipbsdk for many website features so I want to stay with IPB.

Thanks for reading.

[Brian Garcia]

I disagree, this just looks like some who wants things for free. If your site doesn't lift off but still gets you traffic aren't you using the traffic for money? Why else would you keep it open if it wasn't producing something worth your wile? I would just close the site and re-use the license for another idea.

[MrEdd]

Those sites don't make any money at all and their chances of success was time sensitive. They are useful for building up a following and channeling page rank and the like and their original value was in the chance of being successful, and some where and went on to become active forums with paid up licenses. There's also no sense in me dumping a domain I paid for and the extra hosting costs nothing.

Regardless of what you think about that, my other points still stand and I believe would benefit IPS and the size and depth of the IPB community as a whole.

[Brian Garcia]

I still don't see why IPS should offer trials like you have stated. If people are serious about starting sites then yes they should buy licenses, but if they can't then there are plenty of alternatives. If your site does make it successfully there is a converter that can change your software to IPB. I think this would make IPS lose sales then actually gain.

[TrixieTang]

If they did this people would start hacking out the member and post limit and piracy would become easier and more common, just get a license if you want to use it...

[MrEdd]

A free limited board will bring in a lot of new people who currently make do with inferior free software, many of whom would eventually turn into paid license holders. The presence of a large number of free trial users would also greatly increase the ipb community size, including the modding and skinning community, something that would improve the attractiveness of IPB considering how poorly this aspect of ipb fares compared to the likes of vb and phpbb. The fact that IPB forums are so rare on the net compared to vb and php boards also does it no favours.

Whether they would lose currently paying license holders would depend on where the post/member threshold was set.

[MrEdd]

If they did this people would start hacking out the member and post limit and piracy would become easier and more common,

Core files could be encrypted leaving others unencrypted, preventing unwanted modification and at the same time allowing 'normal' board modification. It would be as easy to find and download a fully nulled IPB as it would be to find and download hacked core files.

just get a license if you want to use it...

That fails to answer any of the points I raised.

[Mark H.]

I agree, and think your idea has merit.

The entire package could be encoded to prevent outright theft.

Pirates... no wait, let's call a spade a spade.. THIEVES will take the easiest way available to them, to steal what they want. A fully-encoded, and time-limited trial, would be too much work for them and wouldn't contribute to the problem one bit.

But it likely would expand IPS's market share.

[MrEdd]

Something else to consider, a large number people who currently pay for forum software originally started off using free software. Those that move onto paid software for the most part buy vb because rightly or wrongly, it is widely considered the best. By placing a post/member limited version of IPB into the market where currently phpbb resides you stand to get a lot of new customers.

[Chris Christian]

No.

Want IPB? BUY a license.

Want free? Go MyBB.

[MrEdd]

No.

Want IPB? BUY a license.

Want free? Go MyBB.

Do you have any sensible explanations to back up your overly blunt post?

[Guest Shikhir Arora]

IPB will start loosing hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in profit, and the company it self will decline.



It is fine as it is.

[MrEdd]

IPB will start loosing hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in profit, and the company it self will decline.

It is fine as it is.

It's fine as it is if you already paid for a license ;)

You can't say they will lose hundreds of thousands of dollars, neither of us have any idea how many licenses are sold per year for forums with less than say 1 or 2 thousand members or maybe even lower, whereever you might set the limitation.

[Twisted Gamer]

I have to agree with Mr. Ed.

So far no one has provided a well formed argument as to why this wouldn't benefit IPS.

My only though is No not a fully featured version, or not the current version. Either limited functionality of the current version or one that is one or two versions behind with just security patches. After all you want them to want to upgrade to a paid fully functional current version. Probably not a time bombed version either, well maybe if the time bomb is 365 days. Also gives them a chance to get enough users to want to upgrade. Honestly if it was a 30/60/90/180 day time bomb version I'd probably never bother with it.

[China J]

IPS already offers a free fully encoded board - Just host with IPS and get a free board that's encoded. When you are ready to buy a full license, you can do so and continue with IPS hosting or get your own hosting when you feel the site is becoming successful. :P

[Andrew S.]

They used to actually offer a free trial version of the software, they had taken it away back in 2005 so I don't know if they intend to bring back the free limited trial or not.

[Twisted Gamer]

[font="Arial"]They used to actually offer a free trial version of the software, they had taken it away back in 2005 so I don't know if they intend to bring back the free limited trial or not.[/font]

Well the code for it still looks to be in IPB 2.3.5 as the init.php still has the setting for it for running the software in trial mode.

I also wasn't aware you could get the encoded version simply by hosting with IPS. Got a link, maybe this will make Mr. Ed's point some what mute if the hosting is reasonably priced?

[China J]

Well the code for it still looks to be in IPB 2.3.5 as the init.php still has the setting for it for running the software in trial mode.

I also wasn't aware you could get the encoded version simply by hosting with IPS. Got a link, maybe this will make Mr. Ed's point some what mute if the hosting is reasonably priced?

http://www.invisionpower.com/hosting/community.html
http://www.invisionpower.com/hosting/compare_community.html

And for startup sites the hosting is really cheap to include a free board IMO

[Guest Shikhir Arora]

I actually don't think it's that bad of an idea. I mean, think of all the people out there in the world that use phpBB or some other free alternative but wish they could tryout IP.Board without getting a nullified version. There's a lot of people like that, trust me, I was one of them.

I must also agree that this could impact the overall license sales of IP.Board.

[China J]

For $10 they could try it out with hosting and if they don't like it then just opt-out. Surely they can afford $10 as they have to have money for some type of hosting anyhow and what's $10 for one month?

[MrEdd]

It would be $30 inc setup, but anyhow...

Comparing IPS hosting to a big company such as godaddy.com:
IPS $10 100Mb disk space, 5Gb bandwidth
Godaddy $2.16 10Gb disk space, 300 Gb bandwidth.

IPS hosting pricing is extremely uncompetitive and you will have to pay up the full IP.B license fee if you decide to move off their servers and want to keep your board.

The IPB hosting with "free" board has been available for a long time but it is not exactly setting the web alight is it? PHPBB and vB still vastly outnumber IPB installations.

[China J]

It would be $30 inc setup, but anyhow...

Comparing IPS hosting to a big company such as godaddy.com:

IPS $10 100Mb disk space, 5Gb bandwidth

Godaddy $2.16 10Gb disk space, 300 Gb bandwidth.

IPS hosting pricing is extremely uncompetitive and you will have to pay up the full IP.B license fee if you decide to move off their servers and want to keep your board.

The IPB hosting with "free" board has been available for a long time but it is not exactly setting the web alight is it? PHPBB and vB still vastly outnumber IPB installations.

Well what you are asking I don't feel is a good idea for the main principle of what's stopping someone from simply uploading a unencoded bootleg version of IP.Board replacing the Trial? Absolutely nothing and is no more difficult to do if they paid for a valid license or not. I think your idea would spark even more posers out there pretending they have a legit board when in fact they don't making it even more difficult to finger thieves :(

As far as paying up the full license on server move lol you would have to do that at some point anyway based on your suggestion...So I don't see the issue you bring up about that?

I dont know where you got your price comparison from but Godaddy is $4.29 monthly paying two months in advance for that space you mentioned, but even still you can't compare the cost with IPS because they are including a $299 Forum license with their hosting, setup it up for you, and ongoing support during your hosting duration and free upgrade peformed by them. You will never get a free IP.Board with Godaddy or support for it. ;)

[Guest Shikhir Arora]

True. But, there are a lot of kids on the internet who think they're top-notch web designers without jobs. ;)