I recently got an idea for a new community, I decided to pick MyBB for this community but I think it's a bit outdated by 2025 terms. So I'm wanting to switch platforms but I'm not sure exactly which platform I want to switch to. If I had the money, I would pick Invision but I can't afford it. I also don't want to purchase another VPS account to host a NodeBB or Discourse instance. So I'd like to hear some feedback from people here on which platform I should switch to! I'm thinking about either vBulletin perhaps or Xenforo? vBulletin is cheaper and comes with a lot more features than Xenforo does out of the box. Plus I feel Xenforo as of late has been lacking with updates. I've thought about using another free script like maybe SMF, but there hasn't been an update since last year. Ubb threads is another option, but it feels a bit more out of date than MyBB lol.

There's another option with Flarum. True in that it might not be as feature rich as lets say, Discourse. It can be run on aa shared hosting plan and in a few hosts, it's found within the app installer. I hear you on not really wanting to spin up another VPS since Discourse can be a resource hungry beast out of the box. I had looked into WolLab awhile ago that is similar to Invision Community but is at a lower cost.

The XenForo is considered a good option, although it has update worries. It is flexible and can be configured in any way. vBulletin experiences the same with plenty of features built-in.

I have used MyBB, it is good except that it lacks responsiveness. For a lot of users xenforo is the ideal platform to switch from open source. However, of late I have been hearing that Invision is a better option. I haven't used Invision myself.