vBulletin is a traditional proprietary forum software package which has been around since 2000.
View Profile Submit ReviewOverview
- Traditional, familiar looking forum software
- Strong moderation support
- Technical support on forums for life of software
- Paid subscriptions
- “Visible Source”/Unencrypted files
- Upgrading will result in the loss of customisation
- Limited reporting
- Buggy software
- Easy to spam

Pricing
- Self-hosted lifetime license $249
- SaaS 25gb $14.99/mo billed annually or $19.95/mo billed monthly
- SaaS 75gb $29.99/mo billed annually or $39.95/mo billed monthly
- SaaS 200gb $59.99/mo billed annually or $74.95/mo billed monthly
- Branding removal: $169
- Installation support: $149
- Mobile app: $199
- Annual support for self-hosted: $199
- Monthly support for self-hosted: $49
Details
- Canned Reports
- Supports Google Analytics
- API for integration/selective exports
- 3rd party add ons available
- Social sign-up (Facebook)
Notable Clients
Features
Customer Reviews of vBulletin
Reviews Summary

1.3 out of 5
- Highly customisable
- Detailed user group customisation
- Self-hosted version
- Simple
- Cheap
- Many features simply don't work
- Extremely buggy
- Poor mobile optimisation
- Very limited analytics
- Out of date
Latest Reviews
Top of the line 10 years ago
I've been managing a vBulletin-based community for a while now. Back in the day, this was first rate software, offering incredible customisation options and a whole swathe of useful features.
March 16, 2017 | James Pickstone
Outdated but does the basics
Whilst vBulletin is reasonably priced, it's generally outdated with threaded conversations and an old school traditional forum kind of look. I ran a 15k member community on it and whilst we were able ... Read Full Review
March 15, 2017 | Liz Crampton
Traditional forum – cumbersome and heavy on technical debt
vBulletin is an old school forum, which can be cumbersome and hard to manage. I have used both the self-hosted and cloud-hosted options and found both sorely lacking in today's climate of modern tech.... Read Full Review
March 1, 2017 | Sarah Hawk