Alternatives to vBulletin? Is it worth the cost? - For WP

It's worth the fee in my opinion. Of course you have to get vbSEO plugin for it. Which costs you another pretty penny but the results are dramatic. Not functionality wise, SEO and traffic magnet wise, which is the goal, attract traffic like a magnet.

I've always used phpBB for every forum I've ever run, and I've always found it to be great. It has mods for SEO that you can use. I'm not sure about a bridge to WP, I haven't looked at it in a bit, but I did set up a bridge between the two once via an installation of Joomla.

bbPress

From the creators of Wordpress. Integrates with Wordpress 2.5+

I have always used phpbb, but recently a programmer on my staff insisted that I use Vbulliten. So, I paid and bought plug ins. Nothing is really free with Vbulliten, but it can be customized in extraordinary ways (if you're a nerd like me). I still get a little irritated at having to pay for something when phpbb is open source, but the results are more professional and versitile. It is also more secure (according to my tech guys).

One of the final deciding factors for me was when I realized that my favorite forum, the Warrior forum, is Vbulliten. Must be something to that. (although I like the feel of this forum better than my own - haven't had time to tweek it as much as I'd like)

Either forum should integrate into a blog (again if you're a nerd like me).

Hope this helps - it's only 100 bucks and there's a ton of stuff for it (not free though)

VBulletin is the most powerful. One of my favorite forums, bikeforums.net has more than 7 million posts one it, and that was months ago. They are probably up to 8 M by now. Their inbox message limit is set at 15,000.

The Simple Machines Forum is usually thought of at least as highly as phpbb. The Blake board at Main Discussion uses it. It is free and if you have a DirectAdmin control panel, cPanel, or Plesk, the script installer probably has it already so it is just a few clicks, not even a download.

Tony Blake mentioned one time that he had over 200 people watching a hot video at the same time without a slowdown or a forum hiccup. He was pretty happy about that. It is hosted at Dreamhost.

I am only on the reading end of forums and have never had one, but have seen a few comments that they don't make a lot of money. Personally I would rather go with something free at least until you are sure it is going to need the power of VB. In my experience, money has been a little hard to come by, easy go. That wouldn't make a catchy song title for the teens but it isn't a song title, just my experience.

Good luck with all that.