Zippy Promotion Forums Webmaster Chat Hosting and Software Chat Open Source vs. Premoum Software

Do you use open source software for your community or a premium software? What made you choose the software you are using at the moment? If you have used both, how do you compare them for performance and features.

I'm currently using premium software on a few of my forums. This one uses UBB Threads which is a paid software. I also use Woltlab Suite for Thee Zone, and currently use vBulletin for Glitch Talk. As for my other forums they all use free open source platforms or are hosted on free forum hosting like Forum Spark.

If you are using premium forum software and if you have quite a few forums, I think you will be spending a lot of money running your forum, right. I have two forums on Xenforo. I have to pat $120 annually for just software renewal. Thankfully, I have monetized my forum and I manage to cover all my expenses.

I use XenForo for my community, which is a premium forum software, but I originally started with MyBB before eventually switching to XenForo.