Circle
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Community software that looks like yours, not ours
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Visit Discourse
discourse.org
Growing an audience
Running the business
discourse.org
Discourse is the forum the internet settled on: threaded, searchable, indexed by Google, and open source, so a community that outgrows the hosted plans can take the database and run it on its own server. That escape hatch is the argument for it over anything closed. The hosted pricing starts where a hobby project stops, and self-hosting swaps the bill for a sysadmin.
A free hosted plan sits at the bottom of the comparison table. Pro is $100 a month and Business $500, with monthly email allowances of 20,000, 100,000, 300,000 and more by tier, and API and webhook access included. Prices are in USD, plans change at any time, and no card is required up front. Self-hosting is free and costs a server plus somebody to run it.
Communities where the archive matters and the conversation should be findable a year later, and anybody who wants the option of taking their data and running it themselves. A community that wants chat rather than threads should stay on Discord.
The reason to choose this over Circle or Mighty Networks is that the conversation is public and indexed, which makes the forum an asset rather than a cost. The reason not to is that it is a forum, and an audience raised on Discord will find it slow.
Community
Community software that looks like yours, not ours
Community
Community, courses and memberships
Community
Charge for access to a Discord or Slack group
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