I ran SMF/Mambo for a couple of years (when SMF was Yabb) and was terribly impressed with it's speed and low resources (low on bandwidth), but since moving to vB and vBPortal I must admit I have never looked back. They work really very well together, and are extremely fast. The fee, in my opinion, is reasonable as I am getting a solid and stable framework for my community, and the support is prompt and full.
The main reason for my choice of vBPortal was simply that it was designed to seamlessly integrate with vB, and it's power is quite stunning for the price. (can't compare it to Mambo/Joomla though, but they are in a different class altogether!)
There, my twopennethworth...

I agree, as a user I enjoy vBulletin for ease of use and being able to find the threads I posted in fast, that is the best part, you have to please your members or the forum can't grow long term!

__________________
[FONT=Arial][URL=http://www.searchwars.squarespace.com]Search Engine Intelligence Forum[/URL]
[URL=http://www.webcenter.squarespace.com]Search Engine Research[/URL]
[URL=http://www.searchenginesinternational.com/wst_page2.html]Search Engines & Directories [/URL]
[URL=http://www.internetnamebank.com]Domain & Website Exchange[/URL][/FONT]

well i just have to say that phpbb is the greatest free forum software and you can't expect anymore for free.

thanks for the post, so people are getting angry in these thread! wow.