Free forum software vs Paid?

[Smokey]

Which type of forum software do you prefer? Free or Commercial/Paid software?

I own licenses for both Xenforo and IPB, however, with the way forums are nowadays and my financial situation I've found it more financial suitable to use a free forum software such as MyBB over IP.Board or Xenforo. The reasoning behind this is because forums sometimes don't work out and tend to go under or financial restraints prevent the admin from keeping the forum up-to-date on the latest version. For my own forums I went with MyBB for this very reason and i'm happy I did thus far. I've made it as close to Xenforo as possible and I'm pretty happy with the results and the software. My members don't seem to mind it either. : Which type of software do you like? Free or Paid?

[Salt]

I think paid software is better, because it gives you flexibility to customize as you wish and it gives you the ability to monetize. Plus you always have control over the site. Say the free host decides to close down (as many are), then you are screwed and will have to pay a fee to get all that data transferred (if you're lucky!)

[fishbate]

If your just starting i think it's better to go for the free ones. It's a good way to see the potential of your venture and check the progress. However once the progress is good, i agree to use the paid ones where you can access more services and features.

[NoviceNinja]

If your just starting i think it's better to go for the free ones. It's a good way to see the potential of your venture and check the progress. However once the progress is good, i agree to use the paid ones where you can access more services and features.

I agree with this. It is best to get free software or a trial first to get a feel for what you might expect from the software. In time, if you realize it helps you a lot regarding being productive, then subscribe to the premium version of it (if they offer one). 

Getting paid tools may be good as well because it yields better results since you have access to all of the software features from the very beginning but it all depends on how knowledgeable you are from using it.

[AlterTab]

MyBB is great choice for a free software i've had good success with it, I've used Xenforo few years back when it was new and it seem fine as well. One thing you should consider is that Xenforo is made in Zend Framework while MyBB is made in custom MVC architecture. What it means to a layman is that Zend framework by default provides more security and other tools for developers and the code being encoded by ioncube makes it a little bit secure.

Few things you need to take in mind since its 2018 and most of these softwares were made in 2012 or before that so they do not have responsive theme support out of the box atleast I don't think MyBB does. So as long as you read up on SEO and use those plugins you should be good to go.

[Martin]

There are only a couple of forums software's I like. Xenforo as the paid option, then myBB as the free option. myBB is so far behind development wise though that I might have to eventually look into other options. But I think mostly it doesn't matter if you use paid or free options as long as the options are enough for your forums wishes.