Meetup.com alternatives

> Imagine you want to have some small hyper local group such as Memorial Park Dog Owners. Obviously, members will not pay for such a group, but the organizer is on the hook for almost $200 a year.

It is 4 big macs a month. It is 3 Starbucks coffees a months. It is 3 cans of soda bought as singe units in a super market a month.

If a group cannot afford it, then maybe stop pretending that the group needs RSVPs or other services. Use a paper and a pen and pin an announcement on the bulletin board of a park.

Weird, a lot of meetups that I see have fees set up and say that you get into the meetup free if instead you register on Meet More You www.meetmoreyou.com

So they are trying to get people on the platform by putting up a paywall on meetup so that nobody that is tech literate would actually sign up on meetup.

I am surprised that this site hasn't been mentioned once. It seems pretty decent.

Very interested to see all these Meetup competitors developing! Seems there are kind of two main buckets here: simple tools focused on organize events, and platforms that are more a two-sided market where event discovery / matching interests and attendees is a factor as well.

For hosting small dinners and learning events, I'm looking mostly for the former, and one tool that's quite new but looks very promising is Mixily: https://www.mixily.com

It's a nice streamlined tool, prioritizes privacy, and has a number of solid features like messaging and event reminders, date polling (like doodle), comments wall, variety of privacy settings. Also some other very cool things in beta, like contact lists, and ticketed / donation-based events.

> Yes. 4 big macs a month for a small meeting that noone is making money on is too expensive. You're absolutely right.

That's the type of argument akin to "If you do not have a funded retirement you should not have a latte": if someone thinks that saving a money on a latte is going to make a difference in his or her retirement, then they have a structural problem that not having a latte won't solve.

> There are free solutions, Meetup can turn over and die.

Yes. They are called email lists or pen and paper.

Exactly. I started and run the largest crypto meetup in Aus (~3300 members). I've been very conscious about this problem for a few years and have been wading through trauma/drama to steer the ship back to basic pub meetups with no sponsors and no speakers.

Another huge problem are co-organisers. You bring them onboard because they're happy to take turns organising events and it takes the load off.

I never start meetups with the intention of getting a job or business opportunities, but that's often why co-organisers join. You think, sure, everyone's a volunteer so it's fine if they get something out of it.

Then years pass and those co-orgs are deeply involved to the point where their livelihoods depend on the subject matter (Ethereum in this case). And they want to keep the sales pitch lecture model, since they almost always slot themselves in as speaker when it's their turn to organise.

You suggest changing the meetup name to be less tribalistic and to change the format to drop speakers and sponsors. HUGE drama. You put it to a vote, 5-3 agree to the change. The other 3 decide to clone the meetup under the same old name, email all members telling them to join, steal the Facebook and Twitter accounts, harass me everyday for a week over Telegram until I snap, then screenshot my response and spread it through the community.

Communities man.