Proboards

[ZandraJoi]

There are discussions here comparing Proboards with other platforms but I figure we have a thread dedicated to just Proboards.
What are your likes & dislikes with it? Do you have a forum with them? Have you in the past? What would you change if you could?
My forum is via Proboards. I like the ease of use although their customer support has gone downhill. My pet peeve is we can't migrate over if we wanted to move out; we'd have to start over.

 

[Arantor]

Unfortunately it's hard to look at something in a vacuum, especially without points of reference.

In terms of likes - I don't have any strong likes about it. In my head it's in the same group as Jcink and Forumotion: if I wanted an off-the-shelf free-at-point-of-use-with-ads forum, I have no strong preference for or against. It is as capable as any of the others in its weight class, it's about as customisable from what I can see (even if the customisation is perhaps not *quite* as glaringly obvious as Jcink made it).

On the downside, though, I know some folks have reservations about its content policies (no writing adult content for example), and they're a big company so any breach of the TOS will invariably not be met with someone willing to have a discussion about borderline cases. If this is your content model, then this may be enough of a deal breaker, but for general forums that aren't about writing R-rated content, that shouldn't be a problem in general.

The inability to migrate is annoying but in practice if you don't like the place you probably won't stay, and if you do like the place chances are you're not moving anyway. I should add that it's not impossible to migrate off - but it's... dubious. I'd likely not be on there in the first place if I were genuinely concerned that would ever realistically be a problem. I actually think this is less of a downside than it's often made out to be.

 

[Shortie]

I have never used Proboards myself as a forum owner but I have used it many times as a user and I find it easy enough to use as a user. I have heard though that the support has gone downhill quite a lot over the years which is a shame as it leaves many locked into their hosting and not able to get out even if they wanted to without losing everything.

I remember I looked into Proboards a few times in the past and was keen to use them but now I know what I know, I am very glad I never did.