Well, I have mainly been using Phpbb, but I might change to Vbulletin, many, many more features. Did you start off using one of the free variants of BBoard systems, then migrate to Vbulletin?

Not a free variant but another competiting software and lets just say that flat file data storage deserves the worst idea ever award.

Yes, I used free version software first, to try out if a community is what I want. I was shocked by the poor quality code and insecurity they offered and tried to update the code and even tried to write our own community software. But then we noticed vBulletin and as soon as we had the money we converted - NEVER looking back again.

It is not strange to see that the market is being led by Jelsoft, BBS wise.