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Comment by dade_ | Hacker News Reader

In the last few months the organizers of the meetups I go to have been complaining about changes to meetup, and noted that it is obvious that the changes are being made by people with no clue about what organizers need or how they use the platform. I've been using Meetup for at least a decade, and I've never heard this topic raised before.

The conversation continued about alternatives and only Facebook was considered a viable alternative.

This could be a big opportunity for a new player.

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I have a friend who wrote a lightweight alternative to meetup.com for tech meetups:

https://meetingstar.io/

If you're looking for another option, it's worth evaluating.

I am this friend. I am both a software guy and a meetup organizer. I searched high and low for an alternative to meetup last year, for my own use, and mostly because I didn't think Meetup.com provided me enough value to warrant their $180/year fee. I didn't find any usable alternatives at the time.

In the months since, I have found these platforms, which are all built by organizer/techies attempting to solve their own problems, and to tap into the groundswell of discontent with Meetup.com.

https://eventpeg.com (Australian guy, all types of groups)

https://groups.place (American guy, all types of groups)

https://opensports.net (Canadian team I think, sports groups only)

http://getmeetingstar.com/ (This is mine, all types of groups)

I've put a lot of energy into reading complaints about Meetup.com in the last few months, and one of the most common ones is a real frustration among organizers about being heard. There are endless stores of sending messages to Meetup support and hearing nothing, or receiving canned answers. About having no input into the interface updates. About corporate messaging that is all about the experience for meetup group MEMBERS (the ones who don't pay meetup) and not the organizers (the ones who do). And a great deal of pessimism about the WeWork purchase, and how little incentive there could be in that future, to improve things for organizers.

I recognize it's hard for a small company with millions of customers to make everyone feel heard, but right or wrong, this is the narrative in places like http://www.discussmeetup.com/forum/index.php and https://www.sitejabber.com/reviews/meetup.com

Thank you for sharing.

I help at misc non-profit orgs. Event coordination is a constant thorn. I've tried both meetup and fb. Meh.

I basically want is a lightweight whitelabel or OSS optionally self hostable thingie, backed by a repo, some kind of calendar link. I checked out a bunch of wordpress add-ons. The stuff I found it both too little and too much, if that makes sense.

I haven't had the gumption to write my own. I'll check out the links you've provided.

Out of curiosity, what are the things the organizers are complaining about? I’ve used meetup as an organizer but not in the last couple of years.

organizer here. I'm mostly complaining about the new website:

- still not working on mobile (I'm not using their app), infinite redirects on anything I click

- publishing a meetup is no more intuitive as before making me show up by alone on my meetup at first

- meetup descriptions are plain text now (for concert meetups, I used to post links to buy tickets, embed youtube videos, etc)

- more than 8 participants becomes a clickathon to manage

Meetup.com is expensive beyond any reasonable justification if we consider that most services provided by GitHub/GitLab, Facebook, Doodle, etherpads, Google calendar... are more complex and yet free.

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