Invision Community ClassicReviews of invisioncommunity.com

Mediocre software at best, atrocious customer service, and absurd pricing for something that costed far, far less years ago, yet it does the same exact concept. They seem to think their bogus features and ugly designs are worth thousands. Yeah, sure. Don't recommend and stay as far away from these bums as possible because they'll rob you in a heartbeat then just ban you once you disagree.

Do not get involved with this company. They are money-grubbers and goal post shifters. I have had 2 licenses for the full suite for over 10 years. They used to be great, but now you just can't trust them at all. Support is rude and as others have said they no no longer even allow those whose support licenses have lapsed to even post on their forum. Such a pity that their greed has overtaken their souls. EDIT after IPS reply: I started my online community in 2006 with free open source software. As the community grew I had to find better software to manage it. That software turned out to be IPS (now Invision Community). As Matt mentions in his response below, I have been using this software since 2011. When I was using version 3 I spent an inordinate number of hours building customised templates for camera lens reviews that were always available for free to all members. When version 4 came out I discovered that ALL my work had pretty much been destroyed and that I would have to start again. Lesson learned. Don't trust software "developers". They are not in it for your benefit, they only want to benefit themselves. Since being on version 4 I have seen IPS destroy the 3rd party developer marketplace, which contained templates, themes and plugins that I had paid for but which can no longer be updated. This essentially scorches my community user experience because small things we have come to love will no longer be possible to use. People who complained about this were shut down and censored on the Invision Community forum. That is a fact and I challenge IPS to deny this. For me the last straw now is that because I have elected to not pay for the support on my self-hosted licenses (2 of them) I am not allowed to even post on the community support forums. And this is just absurd. The reason why I have decided to not renew is that they have also changed the licensing of the self hosted products to an annual fee of $200 - you have no option but to accept their new T&C's if you don't want to pay that fee. This is a ridiculous amount of money and cannot be justified in any way, because the software is STILL THE SAME thing it was 10 years ago. It doesn't do anything different. Sure, they may have added some features and glitzed it up a bit but it doesn't do anything different to what it did when v4 first came out. It is a forum, gallery and blog with a very limited content management system attached. It can also act as a paywall with extremely limited payment gateway options (because who in their right mind would develop a gateway for a company with such fickle attitudes to 3rd party devs?). This product does not justify a $200 annual fee. Not in the slightest. What has truly broken the camel's back for me is that I cannot believe the amount of bot sign-ups I am receiving since allowing the support to lapse. Try as you will your registration net cannot filter these out, or even delete their un-verified accounts from the queue automatically (a supposed feature of the software I paid for) unless you pay the $200 to IPS. How do they do that? I strongly suspect that as soon as your support license lapses they sell your details to some nefarious organisation and give them the instructions on how to bypass the reCaptcha option for signups. No, sorry. IPS are the equivalent of the mafia when it comes to community software. I cannot believe how far they have rolled from the tree of usefulness. 2ND REPLY "As part of the license cost/renewal, you get our cloud based spambot registration filtering. Once your purchase period ends, then you will no longer have access to this paid service. " Thank you for confirming that. Funny how none of the dozens of WordPress websites I have designed and manage for customers has this same issue of spambot registrations bypassing reCaptcha. 3rd Reply: Since writing this review I have private messaged Jeff to give more reasons why I have written this review (which has nothing to do with their v5 product at all). My message was not well received and I was given a warning on their system for daring to give them a piece of my mind via private message. Well, it's pretty obvious that IPS are not the company they used to be and it reinforces my statement above that you should not get involved with them if you are planning to start an online community. Do I have any good things to say about the current IPS? Unfortunately no. They do not understand their purpose in the world of internet communications and seem to be under the delusion that they decide what's important and what isn't to the people who have actually created the online communities that they provide software for, i.e. their customers. When you start to dictate to your customers you should know that we won't be by your side forever. I would rather spend the $200 on a Xenforo license right now than pad the already fat IPS wallets

This company is a complete disaster, prices have skyrocketed several times recently! In a time when forums are collapsing! On top of that, their cloud service keeps experiencing outages! If you don't know how to do something, don't get into it! Not to mention, all negative and critical opinions about IPS on their forum are being deleted... At least here you can see from other people's reviews how pathetic this company is. I have a feeling that in a few years this company will be gone with such practices and astronomical prices. There are plenty of cheaper and less unreliable cloud solutions.

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.

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!