Knowledgebase

Invision Power Board and vBulletin are probably the two most popular commercial forum solutions currently available. If you are looking for a robust bulletin board application and you are willing to pay for it, you will most probably choose one of the two.

Here is a little comparison which, hopefully, will help you with your choice:

• Invision Power Board:

pros:

- supports MySQL, MSSQL and Oracle database engines;

- customizable attachment placement;

- search in active topics;

- various forum rules;

- address books, message drafts and attachments in private messages;

- banning by email address;

 cons:

- integration with other applications requires additional paid modules;

- no backward compatibility for most IPB mods - quite often an IPB mod can work properly only with a certain IPB version;

- the drivers for MSSQL and Oracle are paid;

- installation of additional skins/themes is not intuitive enough;

• vBulletin:

pros:

- user-based poll tracking;

- XHTML compliant;

- user logging;

- message drafts can be posted;

- tracking of topic participation;

- very easy-to-use plugin installer;

 cons:

- slightly more expensive than IPB;

- integration with other applications requires additional paid modules;

- does not support database engines other than MySQL;

- no attachments in private messages;

If you don't wish to pay for a forum application, or you want to try a free one first, then our phpBB vs SMF comparison will certainly help you make the correct choice.

SiteGround offers the best forum hosting package so that no matter which commercial forum application you choose, your hosting account can handle it without any problems.