Do you run a message board? Do you know what the differences are between phpBB and vBulletin, other than the price?

Last week I started a new message board for one of my more successful sites. With some help from some guys over at the Websitepublisher.net forums I’m happy to say that the board has really taken off.

I launched the board with using the free phpBB software. I’ve used phpBB before. Its easy to install with my webhost through cPanel using Fantastico or “Bulletin Board.” In other cases, I’ve had to manually add the MySQL database and user.

The start was a little slow. I contacted everyone who had e-mailed me through the site and let them know about the board. I also performed a few customizations like front-page registration forums. Next I mailed everyone in the site’s opt-in list. Then the board really took off.

I decided it was time to consider dropping the money on vBulletin.

Unlike phpBB, vBulletin is not free. Don’t try to download vBulletin for free either, Jelsoft aggresively pursues webmasters who use unlicensed copies — and yes, they know exactly what domains have paid and which ones haven’t.

On the outside, vBulletin and phpBB look virtually identical. One is 100% free, the other is going to cost you an upfront free and a minimum of $30 a year. When you log into the control panel the differences become very visible.

When I first started out, I immediately noticed that vBulletin was more complicated. There is a lot of stuff here — but thats not a bad thing. With phpBB you have to edit things by hand. If you want to change a font size or color, be prepared to open your text editor and get your hands dirty. In vBulletin all of this can be edited through the control panel — the colors, fonts, sizes, everything. With an hour and a half of work I had virtually mirrored the layout of my original phpBB theme.

Here is the point of this article. If you are stuck between choosing either phpBB or vBulletin for your forum software, don’t make your decision based on price. If you want to quickly deploy a forum which you expect to have a small userbase, go with phpBB. If you are thinking long term, and what a full-powered message board solution, go with vBulletin.