Invision Community ClassicReviews of invisioncommunity.com

I had an account on there from years ago which was mysteriously banned. Now they claim they cannot find my account, even though I am getting an email back allowing me to reset the password. They will claim they cannot find an account with your email if it is banned. Very poor experience.

I've been a longtime Invision subscriber, both the software and their cloud hosting. Their off the shelf product remains best in class, but man am I disappointed with their cloud hosting. They're expensive, bureaucratic at every step, they don't provide ftp access, you have to go through them to perform backups and restores, they consistently lay blame on their customers, and they nickel and dime you every step of the way. The final insult happened today, when I'd finally had enough and decided to self-host my forums. They told me I'd have to pay $500 to change my plan (plus an additional $200/year for the service itself). I agreed -- what choice do I have? -- only to get an error when I tried to download the software. So what do they say when this happens, after I've spent $500 for the privilege of switching plans? No apology, no circumventing the system to just get me the software I just paid for. Instead, I receive this note: "After reviewing your request, we have determined that it is going to require further investigation by our advanced support/development team. I have escalated your request to that department and they will provide further assistance as quickly as possible. Due to the advanced nature of your request, please note that it may take longer than usual to fully address your concern. Please also note that advanced support is only available Monday through Friday. I apologize in advance for this delay." They sent this on a Thursday afternoon, btw. I am so angry. EDITED TO ADD: I just read Invision's response below and I want to point out that I'm not complaining about paying the $200/year for the new plan. I'm complaining about paying an *additional* $500 for switching to that plan... only to encounter an error when trying to download the software and then be curtly informed that it could be days before they address the issue.

Inquired about a cancellation and refund via their support e-mail, given they've recently closed their marketplace and was told "We offer free trials on our software to test out any functionality to prevent cases like this" without any further assistance in resolving the matter. Their customer service is absolute garbage. I've since initiated a dispute for the $99.00 charge.

As a Developer. Invision community documentation is the worst I have ever come across. Simple things that one needs to add manually are no where to be found. The documentation just assumed that everyone who's going to use invision is part of the core team that developed invision.

Discussing any form of criticism on their forums for their recent terrible decisions will get your account permanently suspended for "spreading fud" Look for another software. They're going downhill fast and trying to push their self-hosted customers away to force everyone into their cloud services so you can pay x4 the price for the same thing. EDIT In response to the IPS response, they note "temporary" restrictions. I've been permanently restricted from posting for over a year. Never received any previous warnings or citations. As with their "cloud" services, while this has been around for a very long time, it's only recently they started pulling features from self-hosted and releasing cloud-only features to try and box you out of being able to self-host.

I just got scammed Watch out for this company.. They will scam you and they say they cant refund your money if you already have paid. I asked for at refund 6 days after I bought the script and it was not used at all and still they cant refund my money. Scammers! There are also a lot of bugs in their system and also if any errors are pointed out they will blame you for making those errors! Before I paid the support was nice and fast. After I paid the support was not responding for 3-4 days. Keep your money in the bank, because these scammers will rip you for nothing. Update: Thats why you are scamming people! You dont answer e-mails until the trial is run out, so you Can keep the money. Very smart move!

We are two information technology managers and consultants both having 20+ years of experience who decided to launch a community directed towards executives. We chose “Invison Power Board” (IPB) from Invision Power Systems (IPS) as the tool for this since it had one for our offering critical functionality. The software had also been around for 10-20 years (depending on how you count a major version upgrade) and could be expected to be stable. This explains why we stayed on board through an 18-month-long orgy of bug reports. We used the SAAS “Invison Power Board” from May 2021 to October 2022. The application was used by two admins configuring and testing multiple use case scenarios and front-end designs. The site was plagued by quite a few issues. We estimate that the 18-month-long process would have taken us about 6 months with a stable and fully documented software, and an open-minded Support. A few issue samples: Autumn 2021 IPS support suddenly communicates that we had changed the program code, effectively leaving us without support – if we did not reverse the change. The Support was, as always, very confident and not open to arguments. “Our flag shows that you have changed the code.” End of discussion. Since we had not changed any program code there was nothing to reverse. We then communicated that we had decided to leave IPS. A Support staff then, but not until then, manually checked the code and concluded that we had not changed a single letter. Another one of these bugs. No excuse was given, but we decided to return to IPS due to all the hours invested. A critical mistake by us when viewed in the mirror. Autumn 2021 During our tests a large portion of new members’ registrations stalls. A showstopper. According to IPS Support everything points towards that our environment is to blame. In fact, nothing pointed in this direction. Quite the contrary, during three frustrating months we did several hundreds of user registration tests on all kinds of hardware, three different browsers and two separate networks. With the same result. Not until a senior IPS developer was engaged the IPS Support blame game stopped. Within two weeks of further testing and analysis, the error was found - in the IPS environment (the service worker). May 2022 During our tests, a large portion of new members’ Stripe payments stalls which (once again) effectively stops new members’ registrations. Another showstopper. Again IPS Support points towards our environment, despite us once again presenting a solid test battery showing the same stalling issue no matter what environment we use. In August 2022 Stripe Support asks for specific information from IPS but this is never provided despite reminders. The stalling issue was never resolved. August 2022 IPS Support does a ticket count and notes that we have filed 145 support tickets since May 2021. You might expect that this would render an excuse from IPS due to a software having more bugs than a stray dog. As you might guess by now, this does not happen. What happens is that IPS Support recommends us to look for an alternative community solution since they seem to think that we are to blame for their frustrating workload. A fascinating kill-the-messenger strategy. From August 2022 IPS Support reduces its support to us down to zero, thereby being in breach of the service agreement. We then escalate the case to the IPS CEO who reviews it and concludes that we are good to go ahead and use the solution. But since we still get no response from IPS Support we take a deep breath, cancel our IPB plan and let about 2000 hours of work go down the drain. We have now moved on to a different vendor where we have experienced about 5% of the issue frequency as compared to IPB. Conclusion Do yourself a favour and choose any other of the 100+ vendors of community software solutions. /Joachim 2022-11-26 I note that Invision communities in their reply state that we said above that we are still being plagued by the stalling issues that (among 100+ others) ruined our experience with them. We understand that the company is eager to interpret our story above like this. Facts: We haven't had a single network-related issue and no stalling with any of the three vendors we have evaluated since we left Invision communities. Neither did we have any of these issues with the seven other SAAS vendors we fully evaluated before we decided to go for Invision - nor in any other site we use. An example: It took us between 5 and 15 minutes to establish a fully functional Stripe payment process in the three recently evaluated vendors. With Invision Communities this was not possible for months. /Joachim

Invision Community is modern-day robbery. Avoid at all costs! After running forums for the past 15 years+, I decided to go with Invision for our latest project a few years ago. The reason being is that Invision WAS an established name in forum software. In total, I ended up spending $400 USD and I didn't really mind until the day they decided to drop support for the product. The only thing left was "community support". What kind of a joke is that? You pay a premium for a sub-par product then you're on your own for any issues. What is the point of the renewal fee then? If you don't pay your renewal fee and an update comes out, be prepared to close a pop-up window on YOUR website every 24 hours alerting you that an update has just come out. Nearly all the plugins and themes you require cost decent money too as well as have a renewal fee. This means the monthly costs really start to add up. The problem is you can use other forum software that does the same thing (or better) for free, and the plugins are free or have a one-off payment. You can really tell how much this company wants your money when you try to log into your client portal. There is simply no login for existing customers above the fold, we need to go all the way into the footer of their website for a tiny link. Invision Community, Invision Powerboard or whatever they call themselves this week is simply a shadow of its former self with a team who has no idea how the modern web works. Go elsewhere for your forum software!