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Simplemachines Forums... any drawbacks?

by Premier Plugins
6 replies
I'm curious if anyone has any experience with the open source forum software Simple Machines Forum?

It looks pretty good. How does it compare to a paid solution the vBulletin?

I'd hate to build a member base using this solution only to find some big flaw that I can't seem to spot yet.

Thanks!
#drawbacks #forums #simplemachines
  • Profile picture of the author Rich Struck
    It's been a loooooooong time since I've used either but back then, vBulletin was superior in every way, particularly in terms of member management and security. If you have the money, I think vBulletin is the way to go. I don't remember anything especially bad about smf, vb was just better.
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  • Profile picture of the author Freedom66K
    vBulletin is crap.

    If you want free, use MyBB.
    Paid, use IPB.
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  • Profile picture of the author tunity
    I use simplemachines at my own little niche forum and its very good for it being FREE.

    The 2.02 version is a lot better than previous version.

    However, as i plan to add CMS and blog to my own forum, I'll switch it to Vbulletin once i cross the 1,000 members mark
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  • Profile picture of the author Dietriffic
    I'm using vB for my forum, but it's not my preferred choice. I'm only using it because it's the best forum software to integrate with DAP.

    If I had a choice and I only needed a forum, I'd think about xenforo, or perhaps IPB.
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  • Profile picture of the author JimDucharme
    I've used SM and just about every other platform out there and overall, there's nothing I could recommend over VB. I used to manage dozens of forums with over half a million subscribers, so I've seen and used most of the platforms and I prefer VB.

    Of course, it wouldn't be fair for me to not mention that along with those subscribers also came several full time devs and two people handling support for me. Possibly not a fair comparison.

    One question I would ask here (If I were you) and elsewhere is about security. How does IPB and SM stack up for security issues and hacks? I'm just wondering...not suggesting that they are any worse or better than VB. Years and years ago I was using PHPBB and the thing was hacked by a bot twice in 3 hours!

    Regards,
    jim
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