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Discourse

The online home for your community: a powerful platform for support, teamwork, and everything community.

Quick Info

Starting at $20 per month
0 reviews
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Overview

Discourse is a powerful, open-source discussion platform designed to be the modern online home for any community. It moves beyond traditional forum software by offering a rich, interactive user experience focused on engagement, readability, and mobile-friendliness. The platform is built to facilitate meaningful conversations, allowing users to easily participate, discover content, and contribute to a shared knowledge base. Discourse serves a wide array of use cases, from customer support and technical communities to internal team collaboration and interest-based groups. Its robust feature set, including advanced moderation tools, trust levels, and a flexible plugin architecture, ensures that communities can scale and evolve. Whether self-hosted for complete control or utilized through their managed hosting services, Discourse provides a comprehensive solution for building and nurturing vibrant online communities.

Pricing

Starter

$20 per month

  • Unlimited members
  • 2 staff
  • discourse.group domain
POPULAR

Pro

$100 per month /per month

  • Unlimited members
  • 5 staff
  • Custom domain
  • 16 plugins
  • Custom themes
  • API and Webhook access

Pros & Cons

Pros

  • Highly customizable and extensible through plugins
  • Excellent user experience with a modern, intuitive interface
  • Strong moderation tools help maintain community health
  • Open-source nature allows for self-hosting and full control
  • Actively developed with continuous improvements and new features
  • Supports a wide range of community types and scales
  • Robust search and discovery features enhance content accessibility
  • Strong focus on user engagement and retention

Cons

  • Can have a steeper learning curve for initial setup and configuration for self-hosted instances
  • Managed hosting plans can be expensive for smaller communities or bootstrapped startups
  • Requires technical expertise for advanced customization or troubleshooting self-hosted versions
  • Some advanced features might require specific plugins, adding complexity
  • The default styling might be too minimalist for some brands without customization
  • Performance can be impacted on self-hosted instances without proper server optimization

Use Cases

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Best For

  • Customer support forums for SaaS products
  • Developer communities for open-source projects
  • Internal team collaboration and knowledge sharing
  • Online learning and educational discussion platforms
  • Interest-based communities and hobbyist groups
  • Product feedback and feature request forums
  • Technical support and troubleshooting communities

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