Discourse
Flarum
phpBB
Vanilla Forums
XenForo
NodeBB
MyBB
Forumbee
tryinstance
Whop
Skool
Circle.so
Mighty Networks
Discord
Kajabi
Rocket.Chat
Instance is a branded community platform for businesses and creators that runs on their own domain. It combines memberships, Stripe payments, paid roles, chat, voice, storefronts, push notifications, email, moderation, and automation. Visitors can explore public areas before registering, purchase access in one tap, and receive the correct permissions immediately. An assistant and Bot API can manage members, products, channels, permissions, and community workflows. Instance is designed for operators who want direct control over their customer relationships instead of running their business inside a third-party social platform.
Discourse tryinstancetryinstance's answer:
Instance is built for serious operators whose revenue, retention, or customer experience depends on community. That includes creators, educators, membership businesses, agencies, professional networks, SaaS companies, paid groups, clubs, and organizations selling access, expertise, content, software, or services. It is especially valuable for teams that want a branded product on their own domain, direct access to members, native payments and permissions, and the ability to automate operations without surrendering the customer relationship to a third-party platform.
tryinstance's answer:
Instance is built as a secure multi-tenant cloud platform using modern progressive web app technology, real-time messaging and voice infrastructure, Stripe Connect, role-based access control, push notification and email delivery systems, REST APIs, webhooks, bot events, and AI-assisted operations. These technologies are integrated around one identity, payment, and permissions model so changes in commerce or membership state are reflected across the product immediately.
tryinstance's answer:
Choose Instance when the community is the business, not just a conversation layer. Operators get their own domain, brand, member accounts, Stripe relationship, permissions, storefronts, push subscriptions, email reach, and automation. Prospects can inspect public areas before registering, buy access inside the experience, and enter with the correct role immediately. In measured cold-traffic tests, this lower-friction path has converted two to three times better than the alternatives it replaced. Instance also unifies commerce, communication, access, moderation, and AI operations, eliminating the fragmented stack and platform dependence common to marketplace, course, and chat products.
tryinstance's answer:
Instance gives a business its own branded community app on its own domain, with the entire member relationship under one operating system. Public community previews, one-tap purchasing, Stripe-connected access, roles, storefronts, chat, voice, push notifications, email, moderation, analytics, webhooks, bots, and AI operations all share the same identity and permission model. A payment can grant access immediately, an announcement can reach the app, phone, and inbox, and automation can manage the community through the same controls used by the product. Instance is not another page inside a marketplace. It is the infrastructure for owning and operating the business directly.
tryinstance's answer:
Instance works with a growing group of community operators and internet businesses. Many run private or paid communities, so customer names and operating metrics are not disclosed publicly.
tryinstance's answer:
Instance began with a simple conclusion: an internet business should not have to rent its customers from the platform that hosts its community. Existing products split identity, payments, access, messaging, notifications, moderation, and automation across disconnected services, while the operator remains dependent on someone else's account system and rules. Instance was built from the ownership model outward. The result is a complete branded application where discovery, purchase, access, engagement, retention, and automation operate as one system controlled by the business.
Based on our record, Discourse seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 23 times since March 2021. 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.
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 / over 2 years ago
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 / over 2 years ago
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 / over 2 years ago
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 / almost 3 years ago
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 / almost 3 years ago
Flarum - Flarum is the next-generation forum software that makes online discussion fun. It's simple, fast, and free.
Whop - Communities and software to help you earn online
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.
Skool - Community Platform for Creators
Vanilla Forums - Build an engaging community forum using Vanilla's modern cloud forum software.
Circle.so - Bring together your discussions, memberships, and content. Integrate a thriving community wherever your audience is, all under your own brand.
