Jelsoft sold!!!

Yes, it's true...see this thread:
Jelsoft's future: acquisition news - vBulletin Community Forum

Love to hear what other's here think...especially those of us in the third party market who make a living with our addons for vbulletin. How do you think this will change things if at all?

It is really a big news but before commenting about anything we shall see how the new company will try to handle Jelsoft.

Oh boy, guess I will hope for the best with this. New ownership always means change, no matter what is said up front.

Should be interesting, at the very least...

here is a post by James that might clear some things up

Firstly, thank you all for your comments so far. I’m keen to answer as many questions as possible, and clarify any details of the deal or our vision for Jelsoft moving forward.

To touch on a couple of points that have been raised. Internet Brands is in the business of creating value. With Jelsoft, they are looking to work with us to improve every aspect of the company, helping us to scale up in terms of development, sales and marketing and customer service. After many weeks of discussions with their executive team, as well as a visit in person to their offices in Los Angeles, I am extremely confident that Internet Brands is very much in tune with the vision that we have for Jelsoft, and understands fully the dynamics of the market that we are serving. There is no intention of changing Jelsoft in a way that would impede on our core goal – to provide excellent, great value, community solutions.

From my perspective, it a very complimentary partnership - they have the scale and experience that can facilitate Jelsoft to grow and continue to provide solutions for our customers, and we have the expertise in this field that can only be gained by developing a product and being involved in this marketplace for seven years.

As a technical note about the structure of the deal – Jelsoft will continue to exist as a stand-alone company. All Jelsoft staff, including management, will remain the same, and the headquarters will continue to be in the UK. The ongoing development of products will continue as planned.

There have been a couple of points raised about the possible conflict of interest between IB’s existing communities and sites that may be run by our customers. I can assure you that there are no plans to restrict access to vBulletin for sites with topics that compete with other IB companies, or to add additional functionality to the IB communities that is not included in the product. Doing either of these would be anti-competitive, and is certainly not in keeping with the culture of Jelsoft or IB. In fact, it is more likely that custom code created by IB for their communities will also be included in vBulletin!

Onto the subject of product pricing. Since the first release of vBulletin 1.0 in 2000, we have never raised the price of vBulletin licenses. The key strategy moving forward is not to shift prices markedly upwards and make buying vBulletin an unattractive proposition, but rather to offer a broader range of products and services to better cater for all audiences. We are in business to serve our customers, and we will continue to do just that in order to remain competitive.

As a final point, I’m personally very excited to be working with IB. We have extremely ambitious plans for the future, and I’m confident that with the additional support and resources from Internet Brands, we will continue to be able to provide great, well supported products and services.

Just to reiterate my thanks for all your comments so far... please keep them coming. I will continue to participate in this thread over the coming days, and am keen to reassure everyone that this is a great thing for Jelsoft and our customers moving forwards.

I think it's a good thing thats happened to vbulletin. They can now focus even more on doing what they are good in, developing community software.

When will vbSEO be next?

Originally Posted by Loco

here is a post by James that might clear some things up

The only thing that long statement told me is that they are saying what the customers want to hear right now. This is typical for any business during an ownership change like this.

Originally Posted by Mike

The only thing that long statement told me is that they are saying what the customers want to hear right now. This is typical for any business during an ownership change like this.

I agree with this but noone knows what will happen. I prefer Jelsoft had been acquired with a software development company but we all have to wait and see what will happen to vBulletin.

I'm not upset that they got bought out.... but rather who it was that did the buying.

Internet Brands - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

every site on there up top "spams" my adsense ads with low-paying crappy ads. i've blocked them all at this point, but i think this speaks a lot about what is going to happen :(

back to IPB? ipbseo ???

The news is disturbing to say the least.

I actually feel that Jelsoft/vBulletin has sold out. The chance of a quick buck and they take it and run. I won't believe any of the PR work that they are doing over at vbulletins' community.

They have to spin the truth, otherwise the unhappy customers will drop or sell their licenses/not renew their expiring licenses...etc and jelsofts' parent company is then screwed.

They were probably told to make it appear business as usual. I see cutbacks on the way, replacements..etc.

The people we've known through the years to work on vBuletin - I see them being out of a job sooner than later. It happens in every buyout.

Originally Posted by Mike

Oh boy, guess I will hope for the best with this. New ownership always means change, no matter what is said up front.

Acquisitions rarely seem to run smoothly on the internet.

Originally Posted by Mike

The only thing that long statement told me is that they are saying what the customers want to hear right now. This is typical for any business during an ownership change like this.

Indeed. Let's see whether vbulletin support goes downhill because they are too busy scaling on IB's projects.

soo IB, brought shares off jelsoft... hmm dodgy.. newbie owners imo...

theres always ways to make money from "pixel products"

im sure by now vbulletin have gotten there money back from what it cost to code/dev vbulletin..

they could offer special discounts, they could do competitions.. people design a product, or a style for them.. they don't really work with there customers at all... well silly.. #1 thing for a business is there customers..

vBulletin.org lost alot of its coders due to the way it was ran... time to see vbulletin to go down hil... takes the piss.. vBulletin is the best forum software out there..


maybe if it does die.. alot of vBulletin coders will go onto ovbb -.-

So then wait for me to get rich and buy it again

A lot of doom-mongering here too, like on vb.org. Personally I do not believe it's a bad thing. Why would IB do anything to hurt their own income? We'll have to wait and see what happens the next year(s).

Originally Posted by Martyn

soo IB, brought shares off jelsoft... hmm dodgy.. newbie owners imo...

theres always ways to make money from "pixel products"

im sure by now vbulletin have gotten there money back from what it cost to code/dev vbulletin..

they could offer special discounts, they could do competitions.. people design a product, or a style for them.. they don't really work with there customers at all... well silly.. #1 thing for a business is there customers..

vBulletin.org lost alot of its coders due to the way it was ran... time to see vbulletin to go down hil... takes the piss.. vBulletin is the best forum software out there..


maybe if it does die.. alot of vBulletin coders will go onto ovbb -.-

didn't know about ovbb until now, software is good. thanks Martyn