Paid Forum Software: Worth it?

Paid softwares are being paid for only one reason... Because they want it to be paid.

Personally i think paid softwares are bloated with unnecessary features like Blog, Gallery, etc. A forum software is supposed to be a forum software and not a combination of blog, gallery, etc. Consider how wordpress is the best blog script, and it has features that only belong to a blog software.
The reason why paid forum softwares include such unnecessary features is, they want to create an idea among people that they have far more features than the free alternatives. I would even choose phpBB (which i hate too) instead of choosing VB (as its bloated).

And people does choose MyBB over Xenforo or others, if not there shouldn't be any MyBB forums around.

That really differs with person to person. Personally i hate to join any VB or IPB forums, rather i like to join MyBB and even phpBB.

And just to mention, there are several forum owners who use free forum software like MyBB and invest several hundreds (or thousands) in things like custom theme, contests, etc. For me, that shows the real dedication rather than a forum admin who buys a paid software and believes he made his forum unique with it.

I don't think it is unless you have a humongous forum. I personally think free forum software have enough features that you don't need to spend a ton of $ to get a paid forum software.

Yes that true i can mention some really huge mybb forums, Personally the VBulletin ACP Looks like its be smacked together that what i did not like when I bought a license one day. ICB Is a pretty decent software everything is perfect & XenForo looks promising aswill.

As for Mybb i could mention over 10 forums that are huge uisng the mybb system including one webmaster forum that The owner of SupportForums .net owns.

So it doesent matter what forum software your using, Its all about your hard work and dedication towards your project and you should succeed.

My favourite forum software at the moment is Mybb, for free it gets updated alot lately.

I think vBulletin is worth the price, but i also like phpbb because its free. But when you want large community i prefer vbulletin because i think its more advanced for the purpose.

I would say if it is a bit or too much pricey, it is wise to invest in a paid software if you are very serious about it. Heard a lot about how often free scripts are getting hacked.