Forced, badly designed features ruin the overall functionality.

On the official BuddyPress website, you are promised the option to choose which of its features you wish to use with the bold statement “BuddyPress is not ‘all or nothing’ “.

However, this is not entirely true.
Even with features such as “Extended Profiles” and “Account Settings” disabled, BuddyPress still drastically modifies the default bbPress user profiles to include lists items and buttons specific to other BuddyPress features.

Additionally, installing BuddyPress will likely leave your website scattered with minor bugs, such as broken title attributes and 504 errors for profile images, and due to it’s incompatibility with even slightly modified bbPress themes, you’re naturally lefty questioning how applicable the plugin is for anything beyond a hobby website with more serious customization.

If, however, you are not interested in compatibility with prior customization and are willing to accept all the features provided with BuddyPress, out of the box, in their full extent, you will likely overcome the minor issues relatively fast.