Companies Using vBulletin

We detect vBulletin on 2,154 domains, including Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, FIRST Championship, E.ON Next Energy Limited. A detection means the technology is present on that domain, which for large organisations is often a single storefront or subdomain rather than a company-wide deployment. Among domains we matched to a company with a resolved industry, the most common is Technology, Information and Internet (15.36%).

We detect 2,154 domains running vBulletin across our monthly crawl of live business domains. Company data could be matched for 343 of them (15.9%), and every company-size, industry and country breakdown on this page describes that matched subset rather than the full detected base. A further 213 domains carried a vBulletin detection previously and no longer do.

vBulletin holds 0.76% of the Community & Comments category, ranking #8. This is a share of the domains we detect running a platform in this category — not a share of all websites, and not a share of spending — so it is not directly comparable to figures published on other denominators.

The top alternatives to vBulletin include Livefyre (80.11% market share), Disqus (4.6% market share), XenForo (2.78% market share), phpBB (2.31% market share) — measured as a share of the domains we detect running a platform in this category.

United States leads with 144 matched vBulletin domains, followed by Germany (28), United Kingdom (17), France (14), Canada (9). These are counts within the 343 domains we could match to a company record, not the full detected base.

The most common company size is 1-10 employees, representing 65.19% of the vBulletin domains we could match to a company record and size — a subset of 343 matched companies, not of all 2,154 detected domains. This is followed by 11-50 employees (19.45%) and 51-200 employees (9.22%).

Among the vBulletin domains we could match to a company with a known founding date, most were founded in the 2020s (0.65%), followed by the 2010s (16.13%). That matched subset is drawn from 343 companies and is not representative of all 2,154 detected domains. This suggests vBulletin is most popular among relatively young companies.

The ideal vBulletin customer is: Company Size: 1-10 employees, Location: US, UK, or Germany, City: San Mateo, London, Stockholm, Irvine, Founded: 2000-2009, Company Age: ~15-25 years old — based on our analysis of 343 enriched companies at TechnologyChecker.io.

VBulletin is owned by MH Sub I, LLC, a subsidiary of Internet Brands (now part of WebMD Health Corp under Ziff Davis). The software was originally developed by Jelsoft Enterprises, which was acquired by Internet Brands in 2010. MH Sub I manages vBulletin's licensing and development, including the current vBulletin 6 release and vBulletin Cloud hosting service.

No, vBulletin is proprietary commercial software requiring a paid license. A self-hosted vBulletin 6 license costs $179 as a one-time purchase, with annual maintenance at $79/year for continued updates. Open-source alternatives like Discourse, phpBB, and MyBB are free to download and modify. VBulletin also offers a cloud-hosted option starting at $18.74/month billed annually.

Yes, but almost entirely by communities that started on it long ago. Our August 2026 crawl detects vBulletin on 2,154 active domains, ranking #8 of 63 in the Community & Comments category. The telling figure is that only 0.65% of its identifiable customers were founded in the 2020s, against 49.68% in the 2000s — the most backward-looking customer base in our index. Churn is 9.9%, the highest in the forum category, and most of it is boards closing rather than migrating.

vBulletin is sold under a commercial licence by MH Sub I, LLC, with owned-licence and cloud-hosted options. Pricing is secondary to the practical question for most prospective buyers, which is trajectory: only 0.65% of identifiable vBulletin owners are companies founded in the 2020s, against 49.68% founded in the 2000s, so new licences are rare. Our data shows 2,154 active domains and a 9.9% churn rate, the highest in the forum category.

XenForo was founded by former vBulletin developers after the vBulletin 4 and 5 releases divided the community, and our data shows that history still playing out. Domains that dropped vBulletin adopt XenForo at 37.5 times the rate of those that kept it, with no measurable flow in the reverse direction — the cleanest switching signature we have measured in this refresh programme, though at 15 domains it is too small to publish as a migration table. By footprint XenForo is now substantially larger, 7,881 domains against vBulletin's 2,154.

Among identifiable owners, Technology and Internet leads at 15.36% and Software Development at 8.21%. The more characteristic entries are the enthusiast verticals: Computer Games (4.29%), Online Audio and Video Media (3.57%), Motor Vehicle Manufacturing (3.57%), Entertainment Providers (3.57%) and Spectator Sports (2.86%). Car and motorcycle owner communities are among the most durable vBulletin boards, because decades of repair and parts knowledge exist nowhere else.

Yes, vBulletin was built for large-scale forums with millions of posts. Companies like Fandango, Flightradar24, and Slickdeals run active vBulletin communities with substantial traffic. The software supports MySQL/MariaDB databases, and its PHP architecture handles concurrent users well. That said, forum operators report that scaling vBulletin 5 and 6 requires more manual refinement than earlier versions did.

VBulletin.org, the community-run modifications and add-ons website, was shut down on September 18, 2023 per an announcement by vBulletin developer Wayne Luke. The site had served as the primary repository for third-party vBulletin plugins, themes, and modifications for over a decade. Its closure removed a significant environment resource and has been cited by forum operators as one reason for migrating to XenForo or Discourse.

VBulletin is proprietary PHP software focused on traditional threaded forums, while Discourse is open-source built on Ruby on Rails with real-time updates and a modern UI. Our data shows 45 companies switched from vBulletin to Discourse versus 5 going the other direction. Discourse tends to attract developer-focused and open-source communities, while vBulletin retains legacy general-interest forums.

VBulletin has faced multiple high-profile security vulnerabilities, including a critical remote code execution flaw (CVE-2023-25135) and the 2019 pre-authentication zero-day that exposed customer data on vBulletin.com itself. Two additional vulnerabilities were reported under active exploitation in mid-2025. Self-hosted installations need diligent patch management. Our data shows 60.5% of vBulletin sites now use Cloudflare, suggesting operators are adding external security layers to compensate.

XenForo (7,881 domains) is the natural destination and the only one our switching data can confirm, built by former vBulletin developers. For modern open-source communities, Discourse (3,760 domains) is the standard choice, with 17.98% of its customers founded in the 2020s against vBulletin's 0.65%. phpBB (6,550) remains the free self-hosted option, and Invision Power Board (3,001) the other commercial PHP forum. Whichever you choose, the migration challenge is the archive rather than the software.

Among the 343 vBulletin domains we can match to a company, the United States leads with 144 (42%), followed by Germany (28), the United Kingdom (17), France (14) and Canada (9). Those absolute numbers are small because enrichment is only 15.9% — most vBulletin boards are enthusiast communities with no company record. One geographic signal does show through the co-occurrence data: Yandex.Metrika appears on 6.1% of vBulletin domains and Liveinternet on 3.89%, marking a Russian-language cohort.

Our data shows less migration than you might expect and more closure. Of roughly 213 domains that dropped vBulletin, only 15 appear at XenForo and essentially none at any other named competitor — so most boards went offline rather than moving. Where migration does happen, XenForo is the destination, at 37.5 times the base rate. The underlying pressures are the vBulletin 4 and 5 releases that split the community, the maintenance burden of two-decade-old PHP, and the fact that only 0.65% of new companies choose it.