sedated

If Internet Brands feels the need to subsidize executive bonuses, expect "major updates" every 6 months along with the same hefty "upgrade fees" that cost the same as a new license. The only Internet Brand I have now is on my rear end.

Agreed. Considering that a vBulletin "suite" costs $235 now and comparable later, current vBulletin owners would unfortunately have little incentive to pay more AND have the pain of migrating all their data to a new platform. If there was a competitive upgrade solution upon providing valid vBulletin license number (keep track of these numbers in the database along with domain), you'd have an incredible landslide of converts, each paying a price around the cost of your IPB board for the full suite that will bring in tremendous current and future revenues. Help us help you - this is an incredible opportunity for IPB. Unlike hardware, there aren't such 'fixed' costs with software. IPB has the power to provide a competitive upgrade. vBulletin became what it was because of vBulletin.org, a tremendous user community providing free hacks. Imagine being able to migrate away a tremendous number of those developers, all of whom would pay and sell your software. Then you immediately migrate away the current vB owners, many of whom would begin that path immediately. My guess is you will see an exponential increase in current revenues and new sales that you would otherwise not see. If it costs $130 to upgrade to the "vaporware vBulletin publishing suite" then think about a $1xx upgrade for the IPB publishing suite. Current vBulletin owners will migrate. It will be worth it to go through the pain and never look back. People... this is an incredible opportunity to capture the market. Think quickly. Don't think about how much of the sales you will "lose" by the discount - you wouldn't have them. Think about how many addition sales you will generate WITH the discount and the HUGE influx of "free mod" developers and new users by capturing the majority of the market share almost overnight.

Agreed. As I said, I can appreciate the sale discount. But if you want to take a HUGE number of vBulletin converts, including coders who will create a huge number of IPB add-ons which will steamroll into thousands more users, then I think the additional "limited time vBulletin crossgrade discount" makes incredible sense. For new owners, $250 is the price point. For current vBulletin owners, provide your verified license information and obtain an additional XX% discount to crossgrade. Understand this - Internet Brands will crucify their customers who will stay since the investment of $235 for a new license will be less painful than paying $250 for IPB software and then having to migrate. It's all about the long term effects. You may very well more than double your revenues in discounted crossgrades alone and then benefit from the huge following (as vBulletin did via vBulletin.org free add-ons) which results in far more sales and willingness to pay and payment of the current maintenance fees. This is a huge opportunity for IPB. Anyone can lower their price, especially with software that doesn't have the same fixed costs as hardware and physical items. The upside of a discount is tremendous and I can't imagine anyone, even IPB owners, would disagree. Help us help you. :D

Thanks for the information. While it's a good price to entice new users, people are looking not to lose the entire value of their forum investment. That's why crossgrades are popular, a way of bridging the gap and convincing people to drop their current license and start to invest in something new. Right now vBulletin owners can "upgrade" existing licenses for $130 and $190 for expired for their cms and forum and blog package. Paying $250 might sound good for new customers but for current vBulletin owners it's still too high. Currently customers will begrudgingly bite the bullet, pay Internet Brands the $130 or $190 and go without dinner for a few weeks. If there was a special offer that discounted that offer for current licenseholders of vBulletin, I'll bet you'll see many converts who will never go back to vBulletin or Internet Brands once switched over here. Once again, thank you for your consideration and extremely quick replies.

Preface: This is not a rant or flame, but the hope of appealing to the IPB powers that be for a mutual beneficial opportunity. If there was ever a time to significantly increase your forum owner customer base and also do right by what is probably many thousands of people, you have an extraordinary opportunity - especially during this lasting recession depression. As you know, the creation and success of a forum is hard work and also an investment in the platform you own. This past week a confusing and misleading email was sent to existing vBulletin forum owners about an amazing upgrade offer to the new vBulletin product and a discontinuence of its old support policy. When the smoke cleared, it became apparent that Jelsoft, now known as Internet Brands, a NASDAQ company, is now demanding that owners of vBulletin forums pay practically the same price to "upgrade" their vBulletin forums as new customers. If customers don't "upgrade" now to an entirely new product which has no demo or release date, their ownly choice is to practically pay for an entirely new forum since the existing customer "discount" is a mere $20 of the cost of the vBulletin 4 forum which is $195. Forcing your customers to pay 89.7% of the price of the new software is an outrageous, disgraceful customer disservice, especially when the new software isn't even out of alpha testing. Many of the long time vBulletin users who helped create "vBulletin.org", the large vBulletin modification site, are now regretting that decision greatly. In addition to the digust towards the evil empire of forum software, the practicality of upgrading vBulletin software quite simply is not there. This is where Invision Power Services can increase its user base signficantly by offering some discount pricing to current vBulletin owners or by crossgrading. Many vBulletin forum owners would sooner crossgrade to Invision Power Board and wipe their hands clean of the entire Internet Brands vBulletin pricing fiasco and avoid what could be even more punishing practices in the future with annual or semi-annual vBulletin upgrades regarding more payments. Please consider this opportunity.