In reply to Dolphin PRO Licensing Change Planned

GrnEyedDvl•31st of October 2014•to AlexT

1. OK, thanks. That is what I wanted, a list of modules.

2. OK. No details yet?

1. vBulletin started as a complete forum solution, with vBulletin 4 they added a lot of things very similar to what Dolphin has: Social Groups, Blogs, CMS (articles, front end management) and its far easier to skin. The whole site it not just a forum. XenForo and SMF are now doing the same thing. InvisionPower has all of that and more, though in the long run that one costs more as well, even more than Dolphin see more long term because of how they run updates.

I like the Dolphin platform for lots of reasons. I think it lays out better, and you guys did a great job with the drag and drop page builder. There are lots of good things with Dolphin, but where its weak its very weak. But the best thing you guys had going was a full install where you could play with everything for an extended period of time. Everyone else has 3-5 day test installs on their server only where you cannot play with the file structure. That is what got me interested in the first place, interested enough to buy a few hundred dollars worth of mods to test it further. Without that policy in place, I wouldn't still be here. I would have moved on to try something else.

2. That actually surprises me since almost every other package out there has multi group membership. Its pretty standard.

Regarding the PS: I understand that, and I am fine with that. What I am not fine with is the fact that I have been waiting to see what the update has before spending any more money, and you are raising the price before the update is released. That is a huge turnoff, and its more than a little irritating.

Dont get me wrong. I am fine with paying $1000 for a package that does what I want it to do. But this package is far from that as it stands now, and is twice the price of packages that are closer to what I need. Its now actually quadruple the price of vBulletin, so the question really becomes is it worth $750 more to have drag and drop page building. I think the answer to that is obvious.

To be fair vBulletin 5 does not have the CMS stuff (articles and blogs) but vBulletin 4 has long term support and I imagine they will put it back in for vB 6 since everyone there is raising hell about it. vBulletin has other inherent issues that I am not going to detail here that are prompting me to look at another package, but they are still very serious competition for Dolphin.

And since that competition is there then you guys need to take a serious look at how your competition does things. One goal of any company is to be better than the competition, or should be at least. And in some ways you are better, which again is why I am here.

What I havent seen in this thread is anyone that is happy that they have to pay more for it tomorrow than they did today, with no added features. And why would they be? I can promise you that if there was an update coming the day of the price change you wouldnt be catching as much heat for the change. But I would also bet that there are several people out there, such as me, that would be fine with a price increase if it came with some new stuff. Whoever thought that up needs to reconsider it. That was just a bad idea.

Dolphin absolutely has the potential to be the best full blown package on the market. But that doesnt happen if you only stick to your own idea of what it should be, or only what people request such as the multi group membership. You guys have to look at other platforms and see what they are doing and do it better. Especially since people will no longer be able to try the full package for free anymore.

What is going to happen under this model is exactly what I have been going through with other packages for the last 6 months. People will take a quick read through the features list (which will always be incomplete with not enough information) and if they dont see the core of what they want then they wont even try a demo. And if they do happen to try a demo if its a limited time demo like everyone else they will barely be able to figure out the basics, much less spend any time figuring out how to customize it so they can really see if it fits their needs.

I could write a novel here, but what I am looking for in a software package is something that is a mix of the best features out there. If it had all the features of vBulletin/XenForo/InvisionPower, and all the features of Dolphin then it would be a great start and I would already be on it with probably 10 sites. The multi-usergroup issue isn't the only thing I consider missing from Dolphin, just one of the big ones. The other big one is the weak forum setup.

But there are lots of other things out there that will attract bigger communities like mine. Some of them you guys have probably looked at, maybe even worked on (though I havent seen them mentioned anywhere) and some of them you havent. I would actually spend the time to create a detailed list if I thought someone was interested in seeing what some of the bigger communities out there want/need. I know some of it would be very long term, probably Dolphin 9 at the earliest, but I would still take the time to put a list together in the hopes you would actually use some of it. Simple stuff like BB Code (really, no bbcode support??) and more technical stuff like support for sphinxsearch.

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badeyemo•20th of November 2014•to GrnEyedDvl

I'm in agreement with several parts of your comment here. I've been trying out dolphin for a couple of years now, but never really felt the push to fully commit to it. I do admit that it's development has made some progress over the years and the upcoming v8 looks even better, but I share the belief that the license is way overpriced for what is currently available. It was overpriced before v7 and I started following the v8 development, which has been ongoing for well over a year now, hoping that see more

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