Sadly i joined the ranks of those that bought into the hype and found it less that desirable so I have moved to IPB.
Is it perfect? No.
Do they listen to their customers? Yes.
Will they make mistakes? Yes.
Is their product better than vB? Depends on what you’re really looking for/at.
For me, I came to vB because it was known to be the best.. using that name I bought into the vB 4.0 being bigger and better…. then came the day the site went down and their main site changed to that wonderful splash page and I was excited… and then the forums opened… sad is what I was feeling. The design, the 1st impressions was horrible.
It doesn’t take much to see that the customers here aren’t listened to unless there are a number of people screaming.. Support is lacking because of the path they (IB) have chosen and it shows.. People that have been running forums forever are having troubles with this new script and in the end I just couldn’t wait for a stable release. (stable meaning everything works and everything they said I would get was there)
So I chose to move to IPB. So far it’s been great, just looking at the pre-sales forum you will see the amount of time they spend with the community, listening, helping and communicating.. Take some time and compare pre-sales here and pre-sales there to see the difference.
For vB for become the leader again they will have to learn that the customer is always right and we have been telling you where you are going wrong for months now… it started with the leak slides and you had a chance to stop, listen and do the right thing, instead you moved forward as fast as you could and look where that’s gotten you.
Time will tell the grand affect… as we all have bought the vB 4.0 license which grants us use through the next version… it will be interesting to see what your sales are when vB 5.0 comes out.