How do I recommend SMF over vBulletin?

[pepoluan™]

Guys, I've tested SMF 1.1 RC3 at my own webserver... and I fell in love with it!

Now I'm going to build a community for my high-school alumni association - 5000 members. But the previous manager of the community seems hell-bent on acquiring a vBulletin license... 

How do I convert him from the dark side and make him embrace SMF  ...?

Tips are *very* welcome.

[tones_ie]

do what i did..   set up a test admin account and let em go play on it for an hour or so....  if he still prefers VB then hes gone to the "Dark Side" for ever

[pepoluan™]

Ha, that's a good idea.

Okay I will do that... and will post the situation update... ;-)

[rockinaway]

Why don't you show the full calcualtions of how much VB will cost over years, and how much SMF costs!

[J. Williams]

Yeah Vbulletin has a worse billing method than IPB, but SMF is free

[SpilltheBeans]

vBulletin is the number 1 forum software despite their "high price", and it is a good piece of software. The big knock on it is that it has high server load, but you can tweak it to be better, such as removing the "users viewing" stats.

The way I would look at it is, does SMF do everything you think your community will need to do? If yes, why pay for something you don't need. If no, then get vBulletin. What feature in vBulletin will you need?

The website in my sig has SMF and vBulletin if you want to play with each.