AtomiCAST

I truly understand the points given here, but it doesn't stop sounding like a canned corporate response as to why you won't allow your product to offer addons instead of shoving the whole package down your throat. With how long Invision has been in the market, you can't tell me you can't find a way to make a product like IPB more affordable while being transparent about the features that it might not have. If you can't make an affordable product by cutting down on features that one would opt to get or not on their own accord feels like Invision is saying "Well, we sell this and we don't care if you don't like it". It's like wanting to buy Photoshop and having Adobe tell you "Well.. you can't get only one product. You need to get all the suite because we don't care about options and freedom when it comes to choosing which products you get." And I want to make something very clear, I'm not asking for a separate software to cover this type of package. I just want the forum part, not all the bells and whistles and I don't use or have a use for. In short, it's extremely close-minded to offer a product of this kind and not letting potential customers decide if they need the tools or not. As I said, I don't use any of those applications which is why XenForo is more affordable regardless of the upfront for me. I don't want to pocket $500 right away on addons I don't have use for, I want the freedom to choose whether I want to have those features (XenForo allows you to manually pick those and yet they haven't gone bankrupt like Invision thinks they will go).

I can definitely understand the ever evolving nature of the software and the needs of it, but that doesn't make much sense when it comes to offering a product in such a niche. I'm quite sure that anybody would pick an IPB license if they were told in advanced which features would the new "product tier" offer. At this point, there's no in between product that would suffice the less "loyal" customers to pick Invision over other companies out there and that feels like a shortcoming. I understand wanting a certain "quality" when it comes to offering the software, but since the market for self-hosting has shrunk down in the eyes of the company.. you're essentially leaving out the rest of the community which would love to support the company by getting a less feature packed suite for a smaller price while also being aware of such features being cut. As a potential customer it really puts a bad taste in my mouth to see that there's no lower tier that would put the software closer to what the competition has (Feels like you guys don't want to compete at all). Throughout the years, I've participated in multiple projects (Mainly gaming related) and when possible I have pushed for Invision to be the software of choice regardless of my business relationship with XF, but the same thing has happen multiple times when it comes to showing them that they have to pocket $500 One-Time and $200 per year for renewal (That's if the project doesn't require any of the extra bells and whistles, namely plugins/extensions). You can see how things start adding up for smaller communities or more casual projects which makes Invision pricing model extremely restrictive to us. I appreciate your insight on the matter and your time.

I've been a XenForo customer for a while, have run through a tons of scenarios in my head to find some logical explanation to this now that I'm looking into getting an IPB license but haven't found one yet. What makes IPB so expensive when it comes to Self Hosting? I can't find any logical explanation for paying $500 for a forum software that seems to be similar in features (Perhaps a few things are more detailed and/or complex) than other forum softwares out there. I know this question has probably been asked through out the years, but either Invision doesn't want to compete with other software or is just trying to grab as much money as possible (In my honest opinion). Why not lower the price for a stripped down version of the suite? I personally don't need all the bells and whistles, just something that I can offer to my community to store their posts and communicate in a more organized way. No need for a CMS, Gallery, Calendar, Ecommerce, Blogs or Clubs. I personally think that giving the price of the competition, if Invision had the amazing idea of lowering their prices drastically, it would certainly open up the doors for customers from other places to look into switching over. I don't personally mind paying anywhere between 200-250 and 75-80 in renewals (Or less in renewals but instead every 6 months due to being a stripped down version of it). I hope it doesn't come as rough or disrespectful, but I need some clarification to make a decision.