I had a lot of trouble keeping Discourse running on my own. There are a lot of moving parts and a ton of configuration to keep track of. Making changes or even updating the instance were tasks I dreaded because of the likelihood something would break. It requires a lot of system resources. I like Docker a lot in many situations, but with Discourse it only seemed to reduce visibility into the problems I was having.

I have to say the folks on meta.discourse were helpful though.

In the end, the users decided—I ended up integrating a Mailman 3 server with the website, and we're in the process of switching over to it. The users preferred the simplicity of LISTSERV-style mailing lists over a web forum. This probably would've happened no matter the choice of forum software, but I can't help but think Discourse's unpleasant UX played a part in them reaching that consensus.