Meetup just announced they'll start charging group members $2 per RSVP. Lol yeah that's not going to fly. Organizations who host free events for their communities, which includes a huge number of developer meetups, are not just going to start charging members money out of nowhere.
If you want the full story, Quincy Larson from FreeCodeCamp does a great job of telling it here: WeWork is Desperately Squeezing Cash Out of Meetup.com by Taxing 225,000 Communities.
But there is more to gain than lose here. Meetup organizers represent an awesome community in their own right. Organizers have been stepping up in a big way, announcing plans to build replacements or shedding light on viable alternatives. Here's a few I've come across so far.
Chapter
FreeCodeCamp is going to build Chapter, which is a way to "let every organization host their own Meetup.com in a box." Chapter is open source and already has over 600 stars on GitHub despite being a day old. ⭐📈
freeCodeCamp
/
chapter
A self-hosted event management tool for nonprofits
Welcome to Chapter
After several years of being dissatisfied with existing group event tools (Meetup, Facebook events) we decided to build our own.
This will be a self-hosted Docker container deployed to the cloud with a one-click and then configured by the owner. No coding required.
Your organization can host an instance of Chapter under a sub-domain of your website, such as chapter.sierraclub.org or chapter.womenwhocode.org.
All of an organization's user data will remain under their control.
Our Vision statement provides more details on the reasons for Chapter.
Terminology
To better communicate and more easily build an API and UI, the current contributors have decided on a collection of terminology to clarify discussions surrounding the Chapter project:
| Term | Definition | Example |
|---|---|---|
| instance | a web server deployment of the Chapter application, managed by an organization. | a Docker container running on a web host |
| organization | a non-profit with |
Chapter even has a data model already! 🤓
meetingplace.io
Egghead.io instructor Chris Achard is building a Meetup.com replacement called meetingplace.io.
Chris seems very open to input about how this should look, so if you've spent sleepless nights dreaming of what a great event-hosting experience should look like (I know I have!) then this is your chance to make those dreams a reality.
Active projects
This GitHub repo by coderbyheart contains a solid table of open source meetup alternatives, including a field for maturity.
coderbyheart
/
open-source-meetup-alternatives
Open-Source Alternatives to Meetup
Open-Source Alternatives to Meetup
ℹ️ Pull-requests are welcome!
| Name | Source | Maturity¹ | Backend Language | License |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Agorakit | GitHub | mature | PHP | GPLv3 |
| attendize | GitHub | mature | PHP | Attribution Assurance License |
| Calendar.social | gitea | inactive | Python | AGPLv3 |
| Chapter by freeCodeCamp | GitHub | inactive | JavaScript | BSD 3-Clause |
| Communecter | GitHub | inactive | PHP | Apache 2.0 |
| Epicyon | GitLab | new | Python | AGPLv3 |
| eventoL | GitHub | mature | Python | GPLv3 |
| Friendica | GitHub | mature | PHP | AGPLv3 |
| Gancio | Framagit | new | JavaScript | AGPLv3 |
| Gath | GitHub | new | JavaScript | GPLv3 |
| GetTogether | GitHub | inactive | Python | BSD 2-Clause |
| Gospeak | GitHub | inactive | Scala | Apache 2.0 |
| Hubzilla | Framagit | mature | PHP | MIT |
| Human Connection | GitHub | inactive | JavaScript | MIT |
| joind.in | GitHub | mature | PHP | BSD 3-Clause |
| Meetdown | GitHub | inactive | Structr | Apache 2.0 |
| Meetup Alternative by Thinkmill | GitHub | inactive | JavaScript | unlicensed |
| Mobilizon | framagit.org | in development | Elixir | AGPL |
| on_ruby | GitHub | mature | Ruby | (extended) Beer-ware |
| Open Event | GitHub: Frontend, Backend | mature | Python | Apache 2.0 & GPLv3 |
| Open Tech Calendar | GitLab | mature | PHP | BSD 3-Clause |
| Openki | Gitlab | mature | MeteorJS | AGPLv3 |
Some notables on the list:
- Mobilizon crowdfunded €58k and has released a beta written in Elixir
- on_ruby is fairly mature and powers usergroups like the Ruby User Group Berlin
- Agorakit is written in PHP and supports multiple groups, calendars, notifications, and shared files
For more options, including some that are SaaS, check out this great article by Nicolas Goutay.
Last resorts
You could always use Eventbrite. Their share priced dropped 39% yesterday but it could easily recover if they would just replace this impossible-to-use 90's-era rich text editor with something better 😛
Update: community suggestions 👯♀️
Here on dev and on twitter I got some additional suggestions of alternatives to include. Here they are:
Final word to the wise
Don't make unpredictable and unreasonable pricing changes if a non-trivial portion of your users are developers, designers, and product builders. They might just get motivated enough to build you out of their stack. 😘
Top comments (10)
Nice compilation of meetup alternatives!
Also, I just wanted to point out this related discussion here:
So meetup.com is going to charge attendees in future - what's next for event organizers?
Eugene Cheah ・ Oct 15 '19 ・ 1 min read
Thanks for the shout out. Adding in a github list which I am updating as it goes along as well =)
Compiling a list of meetup alternatives, and possible replacement technologies. PR is welcomed.
list-of-meetup-alternatives
Compiling a list of meetup alternatives, and possible replacement technologies. PR is welcomed.
Context
So meetup.com maybe planning to charge a $2 per RSVP - this will effectively kill any "free meetup". So as a meetup co-organizer myself, this is me researching for a plan to mitigate this!
Open Source Solutions (with demo)
Get Together
GIT - DEMO
Most feature complete, one-to-one with meetup.com, as it was part of its original design goals.
More importantly its the only project to recognize the need for federation of events.
Open Event
…
I missed an entry for GetTogether (github.com/GetTogetherComm/GetToge... and gettogether.community/) in the notables list. It's a great alternative, already deployed, federated.
Do you care to add it to the list? The Telegram discussion group is growing since Meetup's announcement :D
Added!
gettogether.community makes me nervous because there is no imprint and no human with a name mentioned anywhere on the page.
I came across an app called outist, which looks really similar to meetup. Looks to be in beta testing at the moment.
Thank you for this review of alternatives!
Could you please also add timepad.ru?
It's like Eventbrite, but for Russia. It's very popular for meetup organizers.
community-z.com - interesting community platform
There is also kommunity.com. It's also pretty great.
Added to the list!