Software Alternatives & Reviews

Meetup VS Discourse

Compare Meetup VS Discourse and see what are their differences

Meetup logo Meetup

Helps groups of people with shared interests plan events and facilitates off line group meetings in various localities around the world.

Discourse logo Discourse

Discourse is an open source discussion platform built for the next decade of the Internet.
  • Meetup Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-19
  • Discourse Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-06-13

Meetup videos

Meetup.com - Finding People You Can Relate To

More videos:

  • Tutorial - How to Use Meetup App Using Meetup Groups │ MeetUp.com Review
  • Review - 4 Tips For Joining A Meetup Group

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

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Meetup and Discourse)
Event Management
100 100%
0% 0
Forums
0 0%
100% 100
Event Planning
100 100%
0% 0
Forums And Forum Software

User comments

Share your experience with using Meetup and Discourse. 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 Meetup and Discourse

Meetup Reviews

Top Five EventBrite Alternatives
Moving away from a purely ticketing focus, Meetup is an increasingly popular platform for creating local groups centered on specific interests. However, similar to Eventbrite, Meetup allows users to browse when they’re looking for something fun to do in their area, making it easier for event hosts to promote their events to the general population no matter the size or...
Source: rsvpify.com
9 Alternatives to Meetup.com
Eventbrite is a social platform used for hosting and registering for events and is one of the most popular Meetup alternatives. In a few simple steps, you can create an event, set up seating and ticket pricing, and then put the word out using social media to draw a crowd. Users can also register for events, using Eventbrite’s search engine to find events close to them, of a...
A list of Meetup.com alternatives
Meetup.com just announced that they are changing their business model, and will be imposing a $2 fee on attendees for each event. This is presumably a combined consequence of WeWork acquiring Meetup in 2017 and the failed WeWork IPO earlier this year.
Source: phacks.dev
Best 6 Sites Like Meetup
You may be interested in Meetup or already be a member, but you may also be wondering if there are other websites or apps out there that may better meet your get-together needs. If that’s the case, then look no further. Here at TechBoomers, we’ve compiled a list of sites like Meetup for you, so you can see exactly what the alternatives to Meetup are, how Meetup’s competition...
Source: techboomers.com

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...

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Meetup seems to be a lot more popular than Discourse. While we know about 4196 links to Meetup, we've tracked only 23 mentions of 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.

Meetup mentions (4196)

  • I (24M) am unsure how confidence will fix my non-existing dating life.
    There might not be anything specifically like meetup.com but there are probably things going on. Source: 5 months ago
  • Anyone willing to play Badminton this Saturday?
    It is a pain to find a proper badminton community here in Budapest. In other cities, all you needed to do is search up on google and then you are immediately greeted by a bunch of badminton-loving people online. Although there are, some niche and quite hidden badminton meetup groups such as the two large groups on meetup.com, however, the users there are not made to be active and you cannot host meetup events on... Source: 5 months ago
  • after 2 years of living in CT, I have made not one in-road into the surrounding community
    Try going on Meetup.com and see if there are activities you and your wife would like to do. There are Meetup groups for just about any interest and you might find something new to try together. Source: 5 months ago
  • I've completely failed to reintegrate into society
    My point is: keep your chin up, mate. You get what you put in, so prepare to work hard for what you want. A good place to start is to find communities centered around your hobbies. Recently I joined a community of foam blaster enthusiasts. Almost instantly I was talking the night away with some of the lads, and within days they were inviting me over to theirs for a meet and greet. Another option is meetup.com;... Source: 5 months ago
  • UPDATE Friend lost out on a winning $1000 lotto ticket because of me, he's crying over money, and I don't feel guilty!
    You can also use meetup.com . It has a lot of interest groups on there. I belonged to a kick ass book club from that site for years before moving. Source: 5 months ago
View more

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 / about 1 month 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 / about 1 month 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 / 5 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 / 8 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

What are some alternatives?

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

Eventbrite - Discover Great Events or Create Your Own & Sell Tickets

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

DownToMeet - DownToMeet is a platform to organize, find, and attend group events.

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.

Facebook Local - Discover places to go and events happening near you

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