Ip.Board Review 2016

Item: Ip.Board
Rating: 9.0
Author: Jonathan Kerns

Ip.Board is one of the leading forum softwares in the industry, with thousands of discussion board owners putting their trust in this top notch solution. It is crafted with four simple aims in mind such as delivering an experience for effective discussions, fostering user engagement, offering incredible flexibility and choice, as well as providing the tools to let users share and promote content from your website. This is probably one of the most feature-rich forum softwares in the market right now, providing you with unrivaled discussion capabilities, rich posting tools, deep customization options, easy to use moderation tools, as well as some serious security features. Is this the right forum software for you and your website? Read our full Ip.Board review below in order to find out!

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Jonathan KernsJuly 26, 2019

Pros

Ad-free: – One of the great things about the nature of paid software is that advertisements usually tend to be non-existent, which is exactly the case with Ip.Board. The absence of such ads results in a more uncluttered, pleasant user interface that your members will surely appreciate.
Customization Options: – Another great thing about this particular forum software is the fact that it offers incredible flexibility and choice to its users. You can configure profile fields to capture additional user information, fully customize the appearance of your forum, add other languages to accommodate non-English speaking members, as well as extend its functionality by installing plugins.
Robust Discussion Focused Features: – Ip.Board's discussion features are some of the best in the industry, allowing you to organize content in hierarchies that make sense for your community, automatically keep track of unread content for your users, sort topics in multiple ways, give your members the ability to quickly preview topics, as well as add tags that would make content discovery much, much easier.
Amazing Security Features: – Invision Power, the company behind Ip.Board, takes security quite seriously, which is why their products are built from the ground up with visible and invisible measures in place in order to keep your community safe, secure and shielded from various internet threats.

Cons

No Free Plan, Might be Expensive for Some: – Unlike other forum software solutions, Ip.Board does not have a free plan to offer its users. In addition, some people may find this particular product quite expensive, especially since some of its peers offers completely free plans.

Full Suite of Apps

Ip.Board is just a small slice of the Suite of Apps that Invision Power offers. Ip.Content is a content management system that allows you to build custom pages and databases, while Ip.Nexus allows you to sell products & subscriptions, collect donations, provide support & more. Other apps in the Suite include Ip.Blog, a community blogging platform, Ip.Gallery, for image sharing, Ip.Downloads, for file sharing, and Ip.Chat, for a real time chatroom.

Pricing

Depending on your needs or budget, you can purchase Ip.Board via two different methods. One, if you do not want to be bothered with software installation or licenses you can avail of their cloud-based community hosting, which starts at $20 per month. This allows an average of 25 people online at once, as well as 2GB worth of media and data storage. Next, $30 per month will get you 40 online users at once and 3GB worth of media and data storage, while $45 per month will get you 65 online users at once plus 4GB worth of storage. If you want 6GB of storage, priority support, and the ability to accommodate an average of 100 online users at once, be prepared to pay $70 per month. Additionally, for $120 per month, you will get 10GB of storage, priority support, as well as an average of 170 online users at once. Alternatively, for $330 per month, you get 30GB of storage, priority support, design & SSO, and the ability to accommodate an average of 450 online users at once. Finally, paying $590 per month will get you 80GB of storage, priority support, design & SSO, as well as the ability to accommodate an average of 750 online users at once. If you want more than that, you need to contact their Enterprise team in order to know more.

The other way to avail of Ip.Board is by licensing the software to run on your own server. It costs $175, with an option to renew after 6 months for only $25. It also comes with a free Ip.Chat plan for 5 users. You can opt to increase the number of users to 20, 50, or 250 for only $10 / 6 months, $15 / 6 months, and $40 / 6 months, respectively. Additionally, you can opt to upgrade the included standard support plan. For an additional $225 (with a $25 renewal fee), the Priority support plan gives you priority ticket support features. The Premium plan, on the other hand, gives you specialist support & priority ticket support features for an additional $500 (with a $500 renewal fee).

Features

Ip.Board offers some really amazing features that make using their forum platform an enjoyable experience. First off, it allows for in-depth organization of content, with support for categories, forums and sub-forums. It can also allow you to precisely determine who can access what, and limit what they can do with it. It also automatically remembers what content a user has seen, so any unseen content can be highlighted for them. Users can also quickly preview topics with the help of a handy pop-up so users can get a sample of a topic without ever having to leave the page. There are also multiple sorting options for easy navigation and topic tagging for easy content discovery. In terms of posting features, Ip.Board offers tools that gives its users the ability to post rich content. They have a full featured text editor with all the bells and whistles one would expect from forum text editors such as tools that allow one to post links, linked images, code and many more. Users can also quickly share media such as video and audio quite easily due to the fact that Ip.Board automatically detects video links and displays an appropriate video player. This lets your users view and discuss the content without ever having to leave your site. It also allows for speedy replying and editing, replying to and quoting multiple posts at once, poll creation, and content sharing from elsewhere in the community. Finally, you can customize the look and feel of your community forum to match your existing website, or create an entirely new style. Moreover, you can apply unique themes to individual forums within your community, which is quite helpful if you have multiple brands that you want to bring under one roof. You can also download different language packs in order to accommodate non-English speaking members, as well as add numerous plugins in order to extend the functionality of your forum.

Customer Support

Should you require any assistance, you can contact their support via an online contact form, email, and physical mail. They also have a support forum and a FAQ section that should cover just about any kind of question or concern you may have.

What's the Verdict on Ip.Board?

A Must Try

Ip.Board Review – Conclusion

If you are looking for a robust, full-featured forum software, then you should definitely take a look at Ip.Board. They offer an ad-free experience, incredible flexibility in terms of customizations, robust discussion and posting features, as well as some serious security features. One downside of this forum software is the fact that there is no free plan, as well as the fact that it may be too expensive for some. That said, if you don’t mind paying premium price for one of the most feature-rich forum softwares in the market, then Ip.Board can definitely deliver.