Soft vore is the type favored most by the furry vore community.  While in past years the phrase merely denoted the whole, alive swallowing of prey, it now bears the connotation of non-lethal to many.

While prey may be scraped by teeth or injured in a predator's attempts to subdue them, they are largely intact and alive when swallowed.  This is more fun for the prey than helping describe the predator eating a lifeless carcass, and more fun for the predator in that pleasurable squirming/struggling takes place within them.  Psychologically, alive prey can enjoy being conquered, even humiliated, as they are dominated in the most thorough fashion possible to mortals.  This also appeals to the predator, forcing their prey to witness their ingestion and even see the organ that will ultimately kill them.

Those more interested in non-lethal vore or even the endosomatiphilia aspect are more concerned with the sensual feeling of being swallowed, experiencing the wet muscular massage of peristalsis forcing them down into a predator's depths.  The predator in these situations enjoys the sensation of movement inside them, the comfortable weight of prey stowed in their stomach, and even empathize with the prey as an intimate, stimulating experience.  Lovers can't hope to be closer to each other, to enjoy a deeper embrace, than for one to rest wholly inside another.

Sex is a common element in soft vore, willing or unwilling.  Male and female prey both are often teased when their genitals lay within reach of a predator's tongue, and may be brought to orgasm in the predator's mouth.  Willing prey excited by the journey into a predator may climax in the mouth, throat, stomach, or any/all of these.  Predators may choose to have sex with their prey before consuming them, and again, this may be consensual or not.  Predators who are left sexually aroused after their meal may masturbate, sometimes with the aid of their swollen stomach, or may find another partner to help relieve their arousal. 

Communication between a predator and his/her prey is often an important part of a vore experience.  Whether the predator is mocking the prey, the prey is begging or berating the predator, or they're exchanging blissful moans, it's often taken for granted that one can hear the other even through intervening layers of skin and hair.  Some predators choose not to communicate with their prey at all once he/she has ingested it, treating the prey like the mere food it has effectively become.  Very few people talk to their food after all, especially once it's consumed and out of sight.  Even the involuntary 'communication' of a full stomach making noise as it digests its contents is important to the vore experience for many.  Gurgling and sloshing, often exaggerated in a cartoonish/comic-book way, as well as belching help flesh out the food element of vore.

Digestion may or may not be part of soft vore.  Many predators who digest their prey do so painlessly or 'off-stage' so to speak to avoid descriptions of what would be, in reality, a very gruesome demise.  Other predators will cut their prey's suffering short by belching up the air in their stomach, forcing them to succumb through suffocation before proceeding with the digestion.  The motives for digestion include a desire for realism, an interest in making prey part of themselves, establishing a sense of finality for the scene and prey, an interest in snuff, and as part of the build-up to scat.  Prey who follow the entire length of the predator's digestive system (whether or not they're digested/killed along the way) are said to be participating in 'full tour' vore.  Those predators who dwell an especially long time on digestion may do so out of sadistic tendencies or even a wet-and-messy fetish.

'Reforming' prey is common in soft vore.  Through magic, technology, or some other deus ex machina, a predator restores the eaten prey outside the predator's body.  The restored character may or may not remember what transpired earlier, and is free to be devoured again at a later date.  Reforming is controversial to some because it defeats what many hold to be the purpose of vore: putting an end to another's life to prolong your own.  Some characters reform immediately after being completely swallowed, while others not only choose not to reform, but to never play the prey-character that was eaten again. 

There's a subset of soft vore which could be called 'storage vore' wherein the prey is not digested nor is it released.  The predator takes pleasure in being occupied by either willing or unwilling prey, and keeps them imprisoned in his/her flesh indefinitely.  The motives for this include a fetish for gluttony, weight-gain, a desire to dominate, and a craving for companionship.  Many elements of storage vore echo those of unbirth.

Anal vore, genital vore, and any method of engulfment that doesn't cripple/kill the prey falls under the umbrella of soft vore, but is nearly always referred to as the specific method in question.  Very few would assume that someone who claims to enjoy soft vore automatically enjoys other-orifice vore.

Absorption could be classified as soft vore, since no dismemberment takes place outside the predator.  Absorption is frequently the mode used by amorphous creatures like blobs, slime-girls, mud-men, water elementals, etc.  Instead of one organ or a system of them, the predator's entire body is capable of digestion and absorption of prey.  Prey may be engulfed entirely before the digestion or absorption begins, or may take place the instant a part of the prey's body contacts the predator.

Consult http://en.wikifur.com/wiki/Vorarephilia for corroboration.  There are as of yet no authoritative publications from academics on the subject of vore as we know it, only on the loosely-related subject of cannibalism, so I rely on my identity as a vore fetishist for over a decade, author of many erotic vore stories, and frequent vore-scene roleplayer to lend authority to my definitions.