What do you hate about Xenforo?

[Naiwen]

I hate that it's really expensive, and paid so I can't afford it and most add-ons either.

 

[Cedric]

I honestly can’t say I hate anything about it.

 

[ClicketyKat]

I hate permissions! I always struggle when I see a usergroup permissions marked Inherit and I have no idea where it's inherited from and how to fix it. So I usually go through EVERYTHING all over again to be safe.

 

[nana kwasi]

Third, I detest permissions! When a usergroup permission is designated "Inherit" and I have no idea where it came from or how to alter it, I always struggle. To be safe, I always go through EVERYTHING again.

 

[Heatman]

Personally, I can't think of anything I hate about XenForo forum software. Yes, it's quite expensive but you're getting the value of the money you're paying for it. It's why that's my favourite forum software till date.

 

[Tracy]

Third, I detest permissions! When a usergroup permission is designated "Inherit" and I have no idea where it came from or how to alter it, I always struggle. To be safe, I always go through EVERYTHING again.

Permissions are the strongest point of XenForo and at the same time one of its weakest.
And that's partially due to what you relate. That ties directly into the way you also use/assign your groups. People that come from a script like IPS/Invision or any other that uses a static group for all permissions and have to set multiple primary groups for each need have great difficulty adapting.
Once you do learn the permission set, you begin to realize how forward thinking the XenForo developers were as you don't have to keep repeating permissions in multiple groups and just change one then assign a user or users to that one group to do something like limit their using of reactions (if using the appropriate add-on) or limit their use of an add-on to make entries until a promotion is ran.
The biggest problem I've seen in my decade of use of the script is users trying to shoe-horn the way XenForo uses groups/permissions into what they were used to with their old script.
Classic case is creating a new group with all the permissions that you want and then changing the default user group for users from Registered to whatever new group you configured. When you start doing that, you break the design. It can be used that way, but it becomes MUCH more complicated and you pretty much add to the complexity and issues you have running automated promotions.

As for how to find where it comes from... the ACP has the ability to analyze the permissions for a user and it will tell you that.

One thing that many forget about.. if you add a new add-on to the site that uses a few permissions, you need to make sure that you check your groups to modify their permission sets for that new add-on. Frequently folks will forget to set the for their moderator and administrator groups, only concentrating on the registered and any other member level permissions.

Personally, I can't think of anything I hate about XenForo forum software.

Biggest one for me is their long-term dependence on outside developers to offer features (or extend their base offerings) to what other scripts have native. And unluckily, many of those 3rd party extensions add to the cost of the base script.

 

[Tracy]

I hate that it's really expensive, and paid so I can't afford it and most add-ons either.

Originally XenForo was one of the best bang for your buck forum scripts when it came to cost. It only started getting as expensive (and in some cases more so) than the competitors when you started needing to extend it beyond a basic forum script, or offer what some of the competitor scripts offered native in theirs. Now that they have raised their prices it is not as attractive for what you get. And yes, it was past time for a price increase, but generally when you increase the prices drastically, you want to be offering your users a noticeable improvement over what you were offering, not at most an incremental change.
Recently they have fallen way behind the curve due to their slow development and failing to extend the script to offer more native features of use to the actual end user (the thing that keeps most sites alive) and continued reliance on letting that be done by 3rd party developers. The issue with that is the transient nature of many of those developers. In the over a decade of use, I have seen developers come and go, and many had offered add-ons that were widely used and then died on the vine if they were not allowed to be taken over by another developer (Snogs Flags anyone?).

As for price, unluckily not everyone can afford to run what they want, especially if first starting out. And if not running it as a business, they may not ever reach that point. That is not really anything to do with XenForo or any paid script. It's simply a fact of life. There are plenty of sites out there running (and doing) well that are running phpBB, SMF, myBB and other free scripts.