- Updated 15 October 2019
Given the recent payment changes that Meetup.com is apparently rolling out testing (they updated their page) that would result in people being charged $2 to RSVP to an event, people are looking for alternatives. These are some of the ones I have found. Note that Meetup serves multiple purposes:
- Event discovery - finding events near you or with your interests.
- Event organization - creating events as an organizer, listing them, publicizing them.
- Event publicity - providing easy ways to publicize and share your event.
- Event attendance - allowing people to RSVP to an event, providing a way to update attendees
- Event comments - organizers and attendees can leave comments on event pages with updates, messages, links, etc.
- Event fees - Meetup allows organizers to charge a fee to attendees to attend an event
- Community building - people can join a "meetup" and become part of that community, receiving updates about new events, commenting on events, etc.
It is not clear yet that there is any one alternative service that provides all of these functions. Many provide some features, but not all.
[NOTE: I have NOT yet tested any of these myself. They are listed alphabetically in each section. In some cases I have added a few notes.]
- If you are a Pro user or a nonprofit, you can continue to use the site without these fees.
- How to keep using Meetup for event publicity/discovery, but use Eventbrite for RSVPs
- gettogether.community
- Joined.in
- Code available on Github - see the About page for more info
- Operated by a not-for-profit, the Joinedin Foundation
- Focus seems to be on getting feedback about events
- Does not appear to have a RSVP mechanism
- Mobilizon
- "A free and federated tool to get our events off Facebook!"
- Apparently coming in early 2020
- From a nonprofit, Framasoft
- Beta launched on 15 Oct 2019
- See it in action at https://test.mobilizon.org/
- Blog post references supporting multiple identities and allowing you to choose which one to use to RSVP.
- Support TLS and works over IPv6.
- Chapter
- Free tool being developed by the freeCodeCamp community. Read their blog post
- Intended to be a Docker image that any organization could run on their own server or virtual machine.
- Development has just started in reaction to the Meetup announcement.
- grou.ps - per someone on Twitter, it is apparently a PHP tool to do this, but it has an expired TLS certificate so I didn't visit the site yet
- (WordPress plugins? There are MANY event plugins)
- Codemotion
- Seems to be limited right now to various European cities.
- Parent company also provides conferences.
- Overall focus is on connecting developers.
- Eventbrite
- Free for free events.
- Large, existing player in this space that is already widely used.
- Hobnob
- "Download Hobnob, create a private, ad-free Space in minutes for free, invite your group members and start chatting, sharing, and planning events. Creating gorgeous invites, managing RSVPs, and getting together has never been better."
- Seems to require use of iOS or Android mobile apps.
- Kommunity
- Terms of service says you must be 18 years old to use service
- References subscription fees paid by organizers - ("Use of some of the features on our Platform is free, and we charge fees for other features. We may in the future implement a new fee, or modify an existing fee, for certain current or future features of our Platform.")
- On Twitter, a good number of groups are replying to various threads saying they are using Kommunity.
- On Twitter, the Kommunity founder replied about Kommunity being free and open.
- Meetabit
- Tito