General Why move from free to paid software or visa-versa?

[Jason]

Why might a person do that? Well, with paid, they might get sick of the renewal fees. Anyway, with free, they might be sick of free software that seems limited in ability, unless you got the skills to do DIY (Do-It-Yourself) work.

 

[Empire]

started with free to get into the world of FOurms and able to see how I went or how it would start with going with free open software as a starting point is always a good idea at the time.

 

[Dismal_Bliss]

I started with Freeware and ran into limitations. On the plus side, it taught me how to manipulate code and I learned a lot of programming skills that way.

But the Free software I was using (Phorum) stopped being supported. The founders abandoned it and it was barely maintained by some fans.

When Hostgator kicked us off shared hosting for using too many resources, because our community grew so large and got lots of traffic, we had to move to a VPS. But then the software on the VPS was up to date, and the Phrorum software wasn't compatible with modern PHP and modern MySQL at the time.

That's when it hit me that I needed to move on to paid and regularly maintained software, and I haven't looked back since.

 

[Cory]

There's no point in me moving from Jcink to another software seeing as my board is all about Jcink resources. At least, it would be very weird to be on let's say Xenforo and have a Jcink resource board. Now, if I ran a different type of forum that's not related to the software and had the money to do so, I may consider switching if the free software had too many limitations that I couldn't do much about. But thankfully, knowing JavaScript is a big help in running a forum on free software so you can manipulate current features to add on new features. I know there is free software that can be self-hosted and has server-side capabilities, but I've always been more of a front-end kind of guy myself.

 

[Jane]

I have no desire to mover anywhere else. I have done Mybb.,phpBB and SMF… out of all of them..Mybb was the best..but the lack of themes drove me mad…plus it was such a faff to do something as simple as upload a smiley. Hosting panel..find the right file,,upload smiley..change it’s name..ACP on the forum..upload smiley. Screw that.
With Jcink things are easy..just the way I like them

 

[Ravenfreak]

When I was first getting into self hosting, I went with free software to get a feel for setting things up on my own rather than using free forum hosting. I also didn't have the money at the time to even consider purchasing a license for paid software. Once I was able to figure things out and had the money to spend, I wanted to move onto paid software since you get better support since you're paying for it. (Or at least most of the time, UBB threads is behind and they're paid software.)

 

[Dismal_Bliss]

(Or at least most of the time, UBB threads is behind and they're paid software.)

I never heard of them. Yup, they are behind the times for sure. Lot's of paying people over there complaining.

It's been 3+ years since a release. Kinda like Xenforo

 

[Arantor]

UBB is old though, it’s older than vBulletin, but has been coasting about as long.

 

[Husk]

I have a kind of funny (wishy washy) relationship in this regard. I started on free software, moved to self hosting for a long time, then in the past couple of years, moved to Jcink. I wouldn't have moved to something free if the software I was using before had the ability to create sub accounts (for roleplay forums) but them's the breaks. Now, however, I've grown rather sick of the way the Jcink RP community has become. So my husband and I are working on a made-for-roleplay software. It's just for myself and my friends to use, but I'm pretty excited by how it's going. I don't have to worry about all the fancy coding and bells and whistles that come with forums. And since it's built from the ground up specifically for me and how I roleplay, everything about it is simple and catered to what I want to use.

I did toy around with using Wordpress for a roleplay medium but it's just like forums in that there's a lot of useless back-end crap I don't want/need to use. So to be able to have something built exactly for what I need and nothing extra? I'm definitely glad to go back to self hosting.

 

[Arantor]

I have a kind of funny (wishy washy) relationship in this regard. I started on free software, moved to self hosting for a long time, then in the past couple of years, moved to Jcink. I wouldn't have moved to something free if the software I was using before had the ability to create sub accounts (for roleplay forums) but them's the breaks. Now, however, I've grown rather sick of the way the Jcink RP community has become. So my husband and I are working on a made-for-roleplay software. It's just for myself and my friends to use, but I'm pretty excited by how it's going. I don't have to worry about all the fancy coding and bells and whistles that come with forums. And since it's built from the ground up specifically for me and how I roleplay, everything about it is simple and catered to what I want to use.

I did toy around with using Wordpress for a roleplay medium but it's just like forums in that there's a lot of useless back-end crap I don't want/need to use. So to be able to have something built exactly for what I need and nothing extra? I'm definitely glad to go back to self hosting.

Now I’m intrigued. The fate of Vesta made me sad, and more RP-first solutions should exist.

 

[Husk]

I fully agree! I actually searched everywhere for something that would work but didn't find anything that was created specifically for RP. There's a software called Nova by Anodyne Productions but it was clearly made for a certain type of RP (in this case, Star Trek, I believe) and it just didn't have what I wanted in a roleplay oriented software.

We're basically distilling it down to what is needed for RP: character creation without having to log out/not separate accounts, a post listing, character profiles, and setting info/maps. If it goes as planned, I can always link you to the finished product.

 

[Ravenfreak]

I have a kind of funny (wishy washy) relationship in this regard. I started on free software, moved to self hosting for a long time, then in the past couple of years, moved to Jcink. I wouldn't have moved to something free if the software I was using before had the ability to create sub accounts (for roleplay forums) but them's the breaks. Now, however, I've grown rather sick of the way the Jcink RP community has become. So my husband and I are working on a made-for-roleplay software. It's just for myself and my friends to use, but I'm pretty excited by how it's going. I don't have to worry about all the fancy coding and bells and whistles that come with forums. And since it's built from the ground up specifically for me and how I roleplay, everything about it is simple and catered to what I want to use.

I did toy around with using Wordpress for a roleplay medium but it's just like forums in that there's a lot of useless back-end crap I don't want/need to use. So to be able to have something built exactly for what I need and nothing extra? I'm definitely glad to go back to self hosting.

Now this sounds awesome! When in doubt, if you've got the knowledge to make something from scratch that caters to your needs, that's the best path to take. I'm not much of a online roleplayer, but I am intrigued by the software. I hope you're both able to finish it someday.

 

[Arantor]

I‘m already starting the second iteration of mine for the record. I made some seriously flawed choices with StoryBB, but I have better plans this time. Like not having a stupid name for a start, not being backed into bad technical decisions by people who didn’t know better, forcing me to burn a year just to fix the mess they’d started, and no desire to redo it all as it should have been done in the furst place, not when I can start over and learn from my mistakes (and everyone else’s)

Hope it works out. I know we’ll cross paths but I already know I won’t be convincing you aboard my train, I remember you’re a fan of self hosting and… not going there again.

 

[Husk]

Hope it works out. I know we’ll cross paths but I already know I won’t be convincing you aboard my train, I remember you’re a fan of self hosting and… not going there again.

I am and I'm not. It's complicated. I've been okay with using Jcink for the past two years or so but there's a part of me that's paranoid that with the RPC crumbling and moving on to discord, that one day John is just going to say "It's been a good X amount of years but time to say goodbye!" Like so many others before it. Not to mention that Jcink itself is just... ancient and frustrating to work with.

So it's not exactly that I'm against hopping onto a new host or that I'm married to the idea of self hosting. But I do wish you luck! We're planning on banging out a good portion of our software over the holiday vacation since we're not doing anything else and it's my present.