Invision Community ClassicReviews of invisioncommunity.com

The multiple changes in licensing/pricing model are concerning. With the price increases and the need to alway renew the license (even if we are not interested in the new features or support), the price becomes more than 5x of what we used to pay. It is also worth noting that originally we had access to security patches for free, but at some point they became only available with renewals. For small volunteer communities, this is not sustainable. At the same time prices increased, the quality of support has been decreasing, and right now we only get access to "support" on the public forums. But even before, we had bad experiences with IPS "ignoring" the bugs. On the positive side, on the recent years the software itself reached a reasonable quality level (good set of features, and not as buggy as before).

I've used Invision Community software for years, and version 5 unfortunately continues the same trend: solid legacy functionality buried under outdated technology choices. Don't get me wrong, the app works. The interface is very nice, and core features like forums and member management still hold up. But the underlying technology stack feels like it's from a different era. There’s no OpenAPI support, no OAuth device flow, and it lacks even basic modern deployment tools like Docker or a Helm chart. Want to scale or integrate in a modern infrastructure? Good luck. Even basic tech choices are questionable in 2025, still no PDO support, which means no PostgreSQL compatibility. That alone is a dealbreaker for many modern environments. In short, it's still the old-fashioned web: PHP, MySQL, manually managed, and monolithic. If you're looking for a modern, API-friendly, cloud-native community platform, you may want to look elsewhere. I will continue to use it tho, because it works and it's quite complete. It have some very nice features. Downloads and Pages are very nice. Answering Mat: Thanks for taking the time to reply, but to be honest, it feels like you didn’t really read or address the core points of my review. Yes, I’m aware that Invision has built-in OAuth integration, that’s not the issue. I was referring specifically to OAuth device flow support, which is important for integrating with modern APIs and headless environments. Likewise, saying there's a "cloud-based platform" using React and Node doesn’t change the fact that the core software — the one self-hosted customers use — still lacks critical modern standards like: OpenAPI support Docker images Helm charts No Composer PostgreSQL support (due to no PDO) And overall, a more modular, API-first design. The UI is fine, and yes, the functionality works. But in 2025, functionality alone isn't enough — developer experience, deployment flexibility, and integration capabilities matter just as much. Please don’t deflect valid technical criticism with vague marketing terms. I’d love to see Invision modernize, but that starts with acknowledging the gap.

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.

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

The customer service is about as great as the software. Have to escalate everything to the devs (who are not speedy), even on very basic questions like how to edit a page. Why isn't this documented.

Awful overpriced forum software...i bought the self hosting because why pay serious amounts of money just to have no access or control over files? so i got self hosting for like $600...just for after like a year they want me to pay like $60 to renew my key or something? complete robbery..$600 and thats for the forums....then they rob you $60+ for good themes then plugins which you'll want minimum i would say 5 at like $10+ and most are way over $25..i think for my community i spent over $125 on plugins and a theme...so total over $785 then you've got web hosting...no wonder everyone just gets nulled tbh, don't get me wrong the software is pro and looks slick but no way is it worth that amount of money...so over priced its unreal..."but get the cloud plans" why pay $45 a month for nothing but an admin panel and 65 visitors? do people not realise how low this is..funny thing is someone can just bot your website and stop all your visitors even getting on it..and 65 is nothing when you have large servers..i had over 3000 people signed up, really think these people need to sit down and get back into the real world...its 2020 and you still charge this amount of money for a forums software? downloads $75...gallery $75 but hey atleast they give you a calendar free..and they wonder why for every 10 forums you visit 7 are nulled as people really want to use the software but aren't silly enough to spend this much money on it...sure they shouldn't null it but with these prices what do you'll expect.