Quote Originally Posted by AthenaOfDelphi
The point is... vB4 provides all the features we need... things like member blogs, the ability to turn a post into an article etc. The ability for you guys to write content without having to use wiki markup or another set of login credentials. Having started porting my forums to it, I can safely say it kicks the ass of what we have now. It's a beast yes, with a lot of options... it has it's gnarly side which can be frustrating trying to find the option you want in the admin panel, but it does everything we want to do straight out of the box... no modules, no customisation... nothing... just install, setup your content and import the existing forums (it should be that easy). And for users... it's a pretty nice experience.

This makes it very appealing from an admin perspective because you don't have to worry about compatibility between modules during an upgrade. This has presented us with problems in the past and has resulted in upgrades not being done (the old boards got hacked because of this very issue), so anything we can do to prevent this situation occurring again is a bonus.

We (the admins) are discussing what we're going to do about this now. vB4 is in the running in a big way because of what it provides as standard.
If you guys really want to go with a paid forum, then yes, I would suggest going with vB and nothing else. (I didn't know it had that functionality right out of the box either)