Hosted communities (leased licenses)

[Blind Bandit]

There seems to be a rise of paid hosted communities or communities in the cloud. In which the software company hosts your forum for a fee. The admin gets acess to addon's and features. Yet they never have to worry about messing with sever issues. But they also don't own the software and if you want to move all you get is your databases and other data. You don't own any software licensees and you loose any customizations you have.

Right now the hosted community offers are,

forums.net by Proboards

Vbulletin Cloud by IB

Community in the Cloud by IPB

Is paying for what is essentially a leased licensed and hosting all in one a good idea? Would you pay higher prices to not worry about hosting? What do you think about this new trend?

 

[Nogitsune]

IF this was 2012 when I was 16 and just starting, I probably would've jumped on this.

I think it is a good idea in theory but the prices(for example IPS hosting) I felt were a bit high for what I got.

When I brought my license, I did debate their hosted service.

Not having to worry about finding a good host, Not having to worry about backend stuff, not having to worry about doing much and it would give me more time to focus on my community.

But then I realized that I want ALL POWER and CONTROL. I am not sure of the restrictions IPS has on their hosting or any of the other cloud hosting from the others, but what if I wanted to have a site dedicated to....being a Justin bieber fan and that was against their tos....i'd be held to what they deem an acceptable community.

Or if my site goes over on its usage....I don't want to worry about having to pay more when on my own hosting, it likely wouldn't be much to increase resources.

I think hosted services from your company are good for admins who don't want to have to maintain and worry about everything.

Young admins such as myself can benefit from them, but i'd rather pay for my own license because I don't want to "LEASE" anything. I want to own it.

 

[meetdilip]

It is like use a shared hosting and VPS. If we can manage by our own, better use our own hosting.

 

[HallofFamer]

I dont think Proboard's service should be listed here. Their forum engine is nowhere near VB or IPB's level, its better to compare them with Zetaboards' premium solution instead.

 

[Nogitsune]

I dont think Proboard's service should be listed here. Their forum engine is nowhere near VB or IPB's level, its better to compare them with Zetaboards' premium solution instead.

I don't think the question is about features or anything but in general, are hosted communities better.

 

[Blind Bandit]

I don't think the question is about features or anything but in general, are hosted communities better.

Exactly, well not so much better. As, Do paid hosted communities make sense to you? Why or why not?

 

[petertdavis]

There seems to be a rise of paid hosted communities or communities in the cloud. In which the software company hosts your forum for a fee. The admin gets acess to addon's and features. Yet they never have to worry about messing with sever issues. But they also don't own the software and if you want to move all you get is your databases and other data. You don't own any software licensees and you loose any customizations you have.

Right now the hosted community offers are,

forums.net by Proboards

Vbulletin Cloud by IB

Community in the Cloud by IPB

Is paying for what is essentially a leased licensed and hosting all in one a good idea? Would you pay higher prices to not worry about hosting? What do you think about this new trend?

I think all of those are bad options, for different reasons. If you're cost conscious, then get a cheap hosting account, a domain, and free software like MyBB, SMF, Vanilla or phpBB. If you're not, then get Xenforo and host it with a company that specializes in Xenforo hosting.

 

[Blind Bandit]

Also in case anyone is curious

Vanilla also offers a paid hosted service but to be frank its so expensive I almost didn't wanna link to it.

http://vanillaforums.com/plans

 

[Sysnative]

Also in case anyone is curious

Vanilla also offers a paid hosted service but to be frank its so expensive I almost didn't wanna link to it.

http://vanillaforums.com/plans

Wow... those plans are ridiculous. They limit the number of staff users your site can have?

 

[Darth_Apple]

I feel like free hosted services and paid hosting services are a whole different ball game, personally. Free hosting services have many issues including advertisement policies, database exports, etc... that you won't exactly run into the same way on a cloud IPB hosting service.

 

[petertdavis]

Yea, Vanilla hosted doesn't make any sense at all. Any of the hosted plans that base the cost on "per users" is not something I'd recommend anyone get into. When I was using IPB's hosted service, for example, they'd bump me up to a higher price level just because my site got hit by a bunch of bots. Baidu can bump you up in price levels really easily.

 

[Sysnative]

Just noticed some of the features that aren't included in the cheapest Vanilla plan. For a mere $ 99 /month, your forum software does not include features like:

Post Counts
Moderated Posts
Role Titles
Mark all discussions as viewed.
Tagging
Customizable profanity filter.
Add HTML or advertisement code to specific places in Vanilla.
File attachments.
Split and merge discussions.
WYSIWYG editor.
Add extra fields to member profiles and registration form.
Who's Online
Site Map
Warnings
User Ranks
Groups
Advanced Search
Sign out inactive users
Facebook/Twitter/Social buttons

All of the above cost extra...

For $99 a month, your forum lacks basic functionality and has a very limited number of users you can have. You'd have to be nuts to get the Vanilla hosting plan.

 

[Bannedus3r]

Forum Migration Starting at $1,560
Are you kidding me..