Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Discourse VS Focus

Compare Discourse VS Focus and see what are their differences

Discourse logo Discourse

Discourse is an open source discussion platform built for the next decade of the Internet.

Focus logo Focus

New Tab page that gives you a moment of calm and inspires you to be more productive.
  • Discourse Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-06-13
  • Focus Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-18

Discourse videos

Why We Chose The Discourse Platform For Our Forums

More videos:

  • Review - Why Discourse is the Best Forum Software Out There (No, Really) | Location Rebel
  • Review - A Grammar Review for Discourse Analysis

Focus videos

Focus - Movie Review

More videos:

  • Review - Focus movie review
  • Review - Ford Focus 2020 in-depth review | carwow Reviews

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Discourse and Focus)
Forums
100 100%
0% 0
Productivity
0 0%
100% 100
Forums And Forum Software
Time Tracking
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using Discourse and Focus. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Discourse and Focus

Discourse Reviews

20 Telegram Alternatives to Chat With in 2024
Discourse is a basic forum function that could be an alternative to Telegram if you want to stick to text discussions. It's pretty analog, missing both video and livestreaming tools. Instead, Discourse is a basic community that lets you organize discussions--it feels a bit like having your own reddit or Quora.
18 Best Discord Alternatives 2020 | Expert Reviews
Discourse comes in a couple of flavours. You can self-host it yourself in which case the software is free, and you simply need to sign up for server space, or you can pay Discourse for a hosted-for-you option, though self-hosting is a lot cheaper the premium option takes care of the technical side.
IndieHackers: Best forum software
I used Flarum when trying to get a community set up for my product (ended up abandoning it to revisit when we have a larger customer base). It worked fairly well and I enjoyed it but it's definitely beta and unless you're fairly tech savvy it's not quite worth the setup / maintenance. Lots of config changes, crashes, huge issues with plugins, and some features missing. I'd...

Focus Reviews

We have no reviews of Focus yet.
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Social recommendations and mentions

Focus might be a bit more popular than Discourse. We know about 24 links to it since March 2021 and only 23 links to Discourse. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Discourse mentions (23)

  • Qilin: A Starter Project Template For Every Open Source Project
    GitHub Discussions can also be a great place for support as long as these are regularly monitored. Another option along the same lines is Discourse and the Open Source Matrix which is used by quite a few Open Source and community-based projects. - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • Ask HN: How to run an old-school mailing list?
    A lot of communities use [Discourse ](https://discourse.org). [LPSF](https://forum lpsf.org) migrated to it when Yahoo Groups was discontinued. Some of the advantages are that it's open source, self-hostable, and can be configured to work as both a traditional mailing list and modern forum. - Source: Hacker News / 2 months ago
  • My Fediverse use – I'm hosting everything myself – PeerTube, Mastodon and Lemmy
    More like https://discourse.org/. You can run it yourself, but I can also just have them ding a credit card every month and not think about it again (I do this for a community). - Source: Hacker News / 6 months ago
  • Reddit faces content quality concerns after its Great Mod Purge
    Discourse perhaps? I've seen it in use in a few places; it has a modern look and feel to it at least. https://discourse.org/. - Source: Hacker News / 9 months ago
  • So Long, Twitter and Reddit
    I fully agree with you see my comment here[0] -- I think you may have misread my comment, it says "Discourse" (as in the forum software[1]), not Discord. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37245220. - Source: Hacker News / 9 months ago
View more

Focus mentions (24)

  • App to prevent distractions at work
    I've been having success with the HeyFocus app, version 1.x, which is available on Setapp. Source: 6 months ago
  • Looking for the right app
    Apps I have tried and are not enough: - https://heyfocus.com/ - https://freedom.to/ - https://selfcontrolapp.com/ - https://www.forestapp.cc/ - https://www.rescuetime.com/. Source: 7 months ago
  • Cognitive Load and Your Development Environment
    There are plenty of apps and organizational systems that will help you remember future tasks and reduce distractions. For example, Focus blocks distractions and schedules your breaks and Freedom will block distractions on all of your devices at once. - Source: dev.to / 9 months ago
  • A collection of useful Mac Apps
    Focus - Price: $19.99/year App for Mac that blocks distracting websites and apps to help you stay focused. Source: 11 months ago
  • Automatic emergency braking should become mandatory, feds say
    Just https://heyfocus.com which I must have installed through Setapp, as I don't remember paying for it. It has a scripting capability so in theory I might be able to do something to prevent it from triggering when I'm active in a form. - Source: Hacker News / 12 months ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Discourse and Focus, you can also consider the following products

Flarum - Flarum is the next-generation forum software that makes online discussion fun. It's simple, fast, and free.

Cold Turkey - Cold Turkey is a free productivity program that you can use to temporarily block distractions so that you can get your work done!

phpBB - Raspberry Pi. The Raspberry Pi is a cheap, credit-card sized computer. The official website uses phpBB for their discussion forums. phpBB is not affiliated with nor responsible for any of the sites listed on the showcase.

SelfControl - V2 updates! - Custom time interval for distraction free mode - Ability to turn off ' always on' mode - Improved UI -- Self Control -- A simple app to keep you focused online by blocking sites that you spend way too much time on.

Vanilla Forums - Build an engaging community forum using Vanilla's modern cloud forum software.

Freedom.to - Freedom is a productivity hack that lets you block apps, websites or the entire Internet on iPhones, iPads, Windows and Mac computers.