I am currently working on a new community project and evaluating forum scritps. While I know VB is market leader followed by IPB, I do not like their boxy looks so I am considering other options like UBB etc.

Could you help me understand why I have to pay around $070 more for UBB and if there are any advantages of UBB over VB?

Unfortunately I can't tell you if there are any advantages between our software and any competitor's software. We don't have any comparision charts up because everything changes pretty fast. Advantages will really depend on what the individual user is looking for. One of the common things I do hear is that we have one of the best Control Panel layouts for the admin side of things compared to anything currently available.

Looking at these forums you'll see we aim to be just more than a forum solution. We're looking at more of the full community side of things which is why we offer the integrated portal built into the software without having to download anything extra. We'll be looking at a some sort of integrated photo gallery as well.

Not too much more I can say. Out of what's currently available in the forum market, we've been around the longest dating back roughly 10 years. Our price is a bit higher, but we do have a good, long track record. We do smaller number of overall sales mainly because we focus on what our current customers are looking for rather than what will attract new ones.

The biggest supplier of any product isn't always the best supplier

I can vouch for this company's support. Most of my issues were solved within minutes - literally.

Go for it. Support is one of the most important aspects of a product.

Rick and others thanks for your promt replies. Just add, I am not looking at point by point comparison. I like ubb interface looks quite clean as compared to others but apart from that I am looking if there are any main advantages for the extra $$ I may be paying it can be speed of forum script, support quality etc

Yomar touched on the support a bit. We do our best to get problems solved as quickly as possible. As for the speed. At the bottom of the page we have the page generation times turned on. Even on the main forum listing where we have all of the portal boxes turned on the generation times are quite quick. We do a heavy amount of caching for quite a few different things which keeps things pretty fast.

There are some products that store everything in the database. We try to split things up a bit, language files, templates, styles are all stored in just plain text files. Anything static that doesn't change to often we put in regular files. This keeps the database from being overloaded and splits some of the load with the regular filesystem.

Where else can you have the lead programmer login to your webspace and check out an issue you're having within the night? I don't know anywhere that woudln't charge you an arm and a leg for the kind of service that Rick provides... Not to mention that Rick will sit and listen to any ideas you have, even when he's swamped with work (yeh, we where a load of help coming up wiht the feature set list for .7 lol)...

Myself I have a UBB Gold license, I'm one of those old players that's been with UBB since it was freeware... I've seen tons of new features added, and dev teams that actually care about the customer rather than the all powerful dollar... A truely great company is one which listens and values their customers rather than striving for the all mighty dollar.

The support is great, I always get the answers that I need in a timely fashion, and have never been let down... Because of all of this i'm well satisfied with UBB.C (and yes I've used a lot of competing products, always coming back to the UBB).

thanks for the comments in detail. I am more or less convinced about going aginst stride (of VB/IPB :D) only thing thats holding on is the high cost...due to which I need to think thrice before I take a final call

I'd recommend starting off with just a standard license vs the larger ones, will aid your decision to stick with the ubb, until you're convinced that you're an addict and just need a Gold license ;)...

If you do much in the control panel, there's really no comparison - I've messed around recently with all of the forums you mention and threads has by far the best layout and thought-out control panel. With the updates to the public interface in threads 7 I prefer it over the others as well - cleaner, just better

My only current request for threads 7 is the ability to use the portal page outside the forum enclave - currently you have to forward people to the ubbthreads.php file when it would be nice to have it run on an index.php page in the root folder of a website

'eh i just use a simple redirect in an index.php page for the one site i need that on

All in due time. The whole portal is very functional for it's initial design. Future versions will bring more website integration. It is still by far in my opinion the best out there and the most flexible. The admin is 2nd to none as everyone is pointing out, Custom Islands, both admin and user portal control , post islands, Shoutbox (This feature just gets hammered all day and night long on my site.. it's a hit feature).. There is lots to be had. I have been a ubb customer since 1998 back when they were perl boards.

With version 7 and the latest technology refresh that took place with AJAX and other programming methods, they are leading edge by design. I have purchased other products in the past too but they are shelfware now. You're right, all others I have seen as well do look Boxy, squared off and plain by design. There is no turning back here. I am hooked... Totally worth the investment. I have renewed my user license every year since my initial purchase.

You know what I tell people who even contemplate moving to another product? I tell them to sell me their licesne, because if they're a fool enough to think the support elsewhere will be anywhere as good, they'll be crawling back soon ;)...

Is it possible to change smilies of UBB..the one thing which I really did not like is the default smilies I see here.

Yes, these are called Graemlins. You can add new ones via the Control Panel, including the codes used to 'call' them (like for ). You can also replace the standard smilies the old-fashioned way, i.e. by simply replacing the graphics files.

Yes you can change smilies, gremlins, forum icons and news icons from the main console. Something we have been boasting about

I've dealt with a lot of companies over the years and I can tell you without a doubt that this is the best customer service that I've ever received. That alone is worth the price difference to me. I did what gizmo suggested, started out with the standard license and moved up to the gold licence once they won me over.

I will soon have to pay IP/Groupee some money I am still on the time paid to cwsoft

My host (which is quite reputable host) has adviced avoiding UBB. As per host UBB is very resource heavy at least for shared hosting accounts

Could any obe give me an honest feedback?

I'd bet a pretty penny that they were refering to UBB.classic. .classic has that reputation as it used flat files to store everything and was quite resource intensive. UBB.threads is very resource friendly, similar to other MySQL/PHP driven forums. With the caching we are doing it's one of the most resource friendly forums available.

Thank you Rick, UBB is seriouse contender for my consideration. I just hope I will end up in buying one