Invision Community ClassicReviews of invisioncommunity.com

I wouldn't use this company for any self-hosted solutions. EDIT (to make things clear) I wouldn’t use this company for self hosted solutions based on their attitudes towards their clients in that tier. EDIT 2 These guys are asking their community for reviews, lol. invisioncommunitycom/forums/topic/481851-do-you-have-a-few-minutes-to-help-us-with-trustpilot/ If I could go negative I would, truly feel I wasted $$$ After becoming a customer and dealing with community management I wouldn’t recommend any of their services.

To be honest, I’m disappointed with V5. V5 feels like a "V4 Lite" but with a higher price tag. Frequently requested customer feedback has either not been addressed or is still being ignored. What is V5 to me? To me, V5 is like a V4 Lite with a more modern UI but fewer features. A major point of criticism is the lack of an official marketplace. The current resources directory is poorly maintained, confusing, and frankly just a bad (very bad) joke. As a user, it’s just frustrating to find new or unread content on a site based on Invision Community. The new text editor is a disaster — texts and images are poorly handled by the software, and there’s little emphasis on consistency. It’s just a mess. If a user creates a post with 10 photo attachments and doesn’t embed them in the text at an appropriate size, you end up scrolling forever, and it looks terrible. The software heavily relies on external services and offers many embeds — unfortunately without proper opt-in solutions, making it hard to use legally in Europe. Back when we asked support, they said, “Our software can be used without concern, and the embeds are fine, but we’ll make some improvements.” What happened instead? They added a cookie consent tool no one wanted and hardly anyone uses. We even got hit with an expensive legal warning because of the embeds. So in terms of European data protection, it’s a no-go. The Invision team also made false promises in this regard. Pricing: The cheapest cloud package costs $1,068 per year. The self-hosted package is $199. You’re forced to renew the license annually; otherwise, the software’s spam protection stops working. Within two weeks of expiry, you’ll be flooded with over 100 spam accounts — all of which you must delete manually, as there’s no proper bulk deletion process. But hey, maybe there’s a plugin for that… wait, where do I even search for it? Right, there isn’t a proper plugin directory. If you don’t renew after a year, you’ll have to pay the full new price of over $500. How does the competition do it? The competition (e.g., XenForo) runs databases like StopForumSpam locally on their own servers, and the protection works even without an active license. It’s great that Invision is on Trustpilot — though criticism of their own software tends to disappear mysteriously. BUT The Invision Suite was an amazing piece of technology — about four years ago. The software had a unique dynamic and community flow that no other platform could match. It was genuinely fun to work with. But even V5 now feels outdated and uninspired. Creating content is tedious and no longer enjoyable. I don’t believe anything will improve with Invision, so we’re switching to XenForo.

Gone from bad to worse. I am in the process of moving my forum to Xenforo because my personal experience of Invision (both software and support) have just become so unpleasant that its not feasible to continue to support my business with their services. Firstly, despite constant protests from their customers, they've insisted on removing well loved and used features. Why? Because its costing them money to maintain. Ok, I guess that's fair? Lower the price then to reflect the reduction in services offered? Nah, they've increased it multiple times. Secondly, the support. I paid for lifetime support, which was scrapped without warning or refund. All support is handled via the forum now, and if you say anything they don't like they will just mute or ban you (like I am now). Matt, will undoubtedly reply here and tell me everything I am saying is wrong, but that's just his modus operandi. He is an absolute embarassment to the company he represents but nobody cares because Invision's only motivation is to make the most amount of money whilst keeping costs as low as possible; customers needs are not important to them. The software itself is outdated and honestly just bad. V5 is just embarassing. They staff are actually begging loyal fans to post positive reviews here. Could say far more but I think you get the message....just avoid IPS.

Greedy and untrustworthy company. I've been using invisionpower for several years and what a disappointment it has been. The software itself is full of bugs. They barely patch 10% of the bugs when new ones pop up like mushrooms on a sunny day. When you ask for support you get the standard reply. It's not our fault go and talk to your host when clearly the issues are caused by the many bugs. And when you pint this out you are placed promptly in post moderation. I would never recommend invision to my worst enemy. Avoid them, they want your money and nothing else!

Version 5 update Handled terribly, no input from users, removed beloved functions for double the price. Will not renew license.

The software is riddled with bugs. Technologically backward, modern features are implemented years(!) after they are already available in other software. Feedback from paying users is largely ignored, and price hikes are relentless. And to make matters worse, they're trying to force self-hosted clients onto their even pricier cloud service. If they're so intent on becoming a cloud-only company, they should consider open-sourcing their code for those who need a self-hosted option, as many reputable cloud SaaS companies do. Instead, Invision Power Services is damaging its reputation and complicating the use of its software by limiting the functionality of the self-hosted package and unjustifiably raising its price. Save yourself the headache and the money – consider open-source alternatives. They fancy themselves as the Apple of forum software, but unfortunately, they only embody the worst aspects of that comparison. Their closed-off nature, disdain for users, and constant reduction of features are huge obstacles to the sustainable growth of the community.

If your platform rely on great and diverse support from 3rd party developers and moders for making Skins, Hacks and such.. it is sad to say that Invision is not have a future. up until last year, they had great support from 3rd party developers and you could find really eye-catching skins and plugins in a dedicated marketplace. since decided their 3rd party marketplace discontinue, most of 3rd party developers support are gone. So vanilla design and features for future and Invision 5 version is all you are going to get really. very few designers left to support this platform. almost all third party developers who used to be dedicated for this platform stop supporting it now. When I reached out to some developers to ask if they re-create those skins and plugins they developed for version 4 into version 5, very few of them were positive and already moved on. for me specially skins and themes, since my forum is highly depended on a custom built skin and since it is not going to be available on version 5, I'm highly considering to move on to other platforms lately. I'm with this platform since 2012 to this day and purchased and renewed a few skin for years (version 3xx and version 4xx). one skin was the main reason to actually come to this platform and choose Invision in the first place. One of the first things admins are searching when want to choose a platform, is really browsing it's third party offering and marketplace. every community have that and decision to stop their marketplace was short-sightd. now they say it was not selling all that much but speaking to third party developers, none complain about their sell was down. more than one even said Invision stole their ideas and works from them for their benefits... they didn't even let marketplace continue function for duration of version 4 until the end. very suddenly and out of the thin air they can remove a mega feature like this, mid-way through a product, so it was alarming and stuff like this can happen again for version 5.

Heed the reviews on this page. The switching costs for this type of software are high. Don't get stuck with this company. The software itself is outdated and confusing. I still have no idea how to navigate the backend. (When I complained about this to Invision, they said I needed to give it time.) They don't care about their customers. If you raise a concern or issue, they tell you why they're right and you're wrong. Excellent customer service. There are so many options out there. Find one that values your business and cares about making a decent product.