💬 Platform Discussion What are some pros and cons of Invision?

[Jason]

Have they influenced your decisions significantly? Do you own or have owned the software? Does anyone plan to?

 

[Joeychgo]

Im not totally up to date on invision so my thoughts could be a bit dated.

When I was looking to switch from vBulletin back in 2015, I looked hard at all the main software packages. It came down to Xenforo or Invision.

Quickly my opinion of the negatives of Invision ruled it out.

1. Cost was higher, both for the software, renewals and addons
2. I found the addon community to be very expensive and hard to work with.
3. I found the custom addon creators to be expensive, arrogant and difficult to work with. Since I have many custom addons this was very important to me. I remember a coder quoting me something like $500 to do an addon that ended up costing me $100 to have made for XF.



Just my opinions, YMMV.

 

[Dismal_Bliss]

I host all my communities with Invision.

PROS

• Actively developed.
• New features regularly introduced.
• Bug fixes and security releases at least once a month.
• Support staff and community is helpful.
• Very customizable.
• The software does almost everything.
• Good amount of 3rd party extensions.
• Active developers will do custom orders.

CONS

• Support for self-hosted clients is forum-based and Staff is only around during business hours. If you screw up your site after hours, you may have to wait until the next day until someone reads your pleas for help.
• Upfront Cost is expensive, but you get everything. And it's not really that far off from WoltLab or Xenforo if you buy their everything packages too.
• Renewal fees for self-hosted annual licenses are a bit high.
• Licenses not renewed at least every 2 years cannot be renewed at all.

When I needed to migrate from freeware to paid software, I checked out Invision and Xenforo at the time, and ended up choosing Invision. I really feel I made the better choice because Xenforo has been as dead as the freeware I had to leave behind for several years now.

 

[Jason]

CONS

• Support for self-hosted clients is forum-based and Staff is only around during business hours. If you screw up your site after hours, you may have to wait until the next day until someone reads your pleas for help.
• Upfront Cost is expensive, but you get everything. And it's not really that far off from WoltLab or Xenforo if you buy their everything packages too.
• Renewal fees for self-hosted annual licenses are a bit high.
• Licenses not renewed at least every 2 years cannot be renewed at all.

Given some of these cons, I'm not convinced to move from XenForo, but I'm sure that Invision is excellent software.

 

[Dismal_Bliss]

Given some of these cons, I'm not convinced to move from XenForo, but I'm sure that Invision is excellent software.

The main differences are the cost of renewal and that even if you skip a year of license renewal, you must renew it the following year or the option is gone (you can keep using the existing software though). This means you are dropping at least $199 every 24 months.

On the flip side, the Suite as a whole is light years beyond Xenforo, but if all you need is a forum, then Xenforo usually fits the [much less expensive] bill.

 

[Empire]

• Support for self-hosted clients is forum-based and Staff is only around during business hours. If you screw up your site after hours, you may have to wait until the next day until someone reads your pleas for help.
• Upfront Cost is expensive, but you get everything. And it's not really that far off from WoltLab or Xenforo if you buy their everything packages too.
• Renewal fees for self-hosted annual licenses are a bit high.
• Licenses not renewed at least every 2 years cannot be renewed at all.

In fact, for me, the renewal fees turn out to be cheaper. But down the plug, it's yearly payment now were before it's 6 months.

 

[Dismal_Bliss]

Yes, Invision lowered my renewal costs as well. I am paying less than before, and I now have all the entire suite.

Actually, even the upfront costs for the entire suite was sliced dramatically. The only real change is you can't order a la carte anymore. Even if you just want Forums, you get Blogs, Commerce, Downloads, Gallery, and Pages whether you wanted them or not.

 

[Empire]

Yes, Invision lowered my renewal costs as well. I am paying less than before, and I now have all the entire suite.

Actually, even the upfront costs for the entire suite was sliced dramatically. The only real change is you can't order a la carte anymore. Even if you just want Forums, you get Blogs, Commerce, Downloads, Gallery, and Pages whether you wanted them or not.

Yeah, I had all software parts from blogs and now I blogs LOL I have not even installed the blogs yet and not even needed them

 

[Dismal_Bliss]

I have not even installed the blogs yet and not even needed them

I haven't had any success pushing Blogs. Nobody uses it. Clubs started off great but then they all died and after a year we closed Clubs and converted them all to subforums.

 

[cdub]

Nobody uses blogs on my site. (Bob's UBS). Sing members did yes back but no recent members.

I have private clubs through user groups but they're mainly dead compared to main site.

 

[Cedric]

Groups and blogs are always tricky to pull off. People aren’t invested into forums anymore as they used to were. So any of those add ons is more a distraction than an asset.

 

[cdub]

I think people have replaced user blogs with their social media account

 

[Jason]

The price of XF is getting very high. Well, people seem to be saying it's $195 now, but they had that price marked out on their website and $140 was put there. Anyway, $140 is not bad, but is that just a temporary sales thing?

 

[Arantor]

Yes, there's a sale on at the moment.

But that's also the entry price, not an annual price, which is somewhere nearer $60 I think? (And you don't have to stay renewed unless you want patches.)

Unlike Invision, who now insist you renew at least once every couple of years.

 

[Jason]

Yes, there's a sale on at the moment.

But that's also the entry price, not an annual price, which is somewhere nearer $60 I think? (And you don't have to stay renewed unless you want patches.)

Unlike Invision, who now insist you renew at least once every couple of years.

Yeah, it might be a good idea to buy XF during Black Friday etc..

 

[Arantor]

They don't usually have a Black Friday sale. I think this sale is the first time they ever did such a thing, possibly because of the delays in 2.3.

 

[Jason]

They don't usually have a Black Friday sale. I think this sale is the first time they ever did such a thing, possibly because of the delays in 2.3.

They might actually get more profit by sales occasionally, considering the price. It's about getting way more people to buy a cheaper product than a few people buying an expensive one.

 

[Ravenfreak]

Honestly the price is the main con I have with Invision. It's definitely cheaper than it was before, but it's still out of my price range. Plus the fact that you have to renew at least every 2 years. Also while we're talking about sales, vBulletin has a sale going on as well now but I feel like they have sales every year. :V

 

[Arantor]

Their argument has been historically that they'd rather not have sales, and just not put the price up for as long as they can.

 

[Arantor]

vBulletin has a sale going on as well

But why would you buy such an inferior product?