What is vBulletin used for?

Ying Yue

Ying Yue

@fluffy-rickshaw
Published: May 9, 2026
Updated: May 12, 2026
Views: 99

Hello everyone! I am student researching on evolution online community software. I have come across vBulletin frequently in my readings. It is a popular forum tool. I'd love to know:

  • What type of organizations choose vBulletin over free alternatives like DIscourse?

  • Is the tool mainly used for legacy support of older communities?

  • Is it still used by high-traffic community hubs?

  • How popular is vBulleting in different industries like gaming, tech support, d2c etc.?

Any insights will be greatly appreciated. I have to submit my report before 25th of May.

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  • Kaustubh Katdare

    Kaustubh Katdare

    @kaustubh-katdare • May 10, 2026

    Welcome to Jatra, Ying. We're happy to have you in the community. I've run a vBulletin (vB) powered community for a few years and following answers are based on my knowledge of using the forum software.

    • vBulletin was used by variety of forums back in the day. These days, it's mostly running on all the legacy communities and hobby forums. It's chosen by small teams as well as a few enterprises who are familiar with the forum-like interface or have to carry the old forum data.

    • Yes, most businesses use it to run support-based communities.

    • Yes, vB does power a lot of high-traffic communities with millions of visitors per month and hundreds of active users.

    • vB is mostly popular in the tech support and hobby forums. You'll find several software brands using vBulltin as their primary forum software for customer support. Some of the game-based communities continue to run on VBulltin - but gaming communities these days prefer Discord over vBulletin.

    I hope this helps if you have follow-up questions; feel free to post them here.

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  • Florian

    Florian

    @florian • May 12, 2026

    Don't use vbulletin. It was one of the worst performing forum software during our research.

    0