What is vBulletin used for?

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.

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

I agree that vBulletin is still useful for established gaming communities, especially where users need searchable guides, troubleshooting discussions, and long-term game-related content. Discord is great for real-time chat, but forums are often better for keeping detailed gaming discussions organized and easy to find later.

vBulletin is definitely not limited to “legacy” communities. Its biggest advantage is maturity and control, especially for organizations that need structured forums, advanced moderation, user management, customization, and a proven ecosystem.

It has historically been popular in gaming, tech, automotive, support, and enthusiast communities. Gaming communities in particular have used vBulletin for game guides, player discussions, clans, tournaments, and troubleshooting. Many high-traffic forums still use it because migrating years of users, content, URLs, and community history can be risky and expensive.

For a new community, platforms like Discourse may be more attractive because of their modern UX and easier setup. But for an established community, vBulletin can still make sense because stability and existing community value often matter more than having the newest platform.

For your report, I'd compare them based on new adoption vs. established communities, rather than simply calling vBulletin “old software.”

vBulletin is a good example of how online communities have evolved over the years. Forums like these were especially useful for bringing people with shared interests together and keeping discussions organized. Gaming communities are a good example of where forums can still be useful today. I also came across Pak 14 Game while exploring gaming resources.