Alternatives to Discourse logo

Alternatives to Discourse

Disqus, Flarum, Discord, Slack, and WordPress are the most popular alternatives and competitors to Discourse.
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What is Discourse and what are its top alternatives?

Discourse is a simple, flat forum, where replies flow down the page in a line. Replies are attached to the bottom and top of each post, so you can optionally expand the context of the conversation – without breaking your flow.
Discourse is a tool in the Forums category of a tech stack.
Discourse is an open source tool with 42.6K GitHub stars and 8.4K GitHub forks. Here’s a link to Discourse's open source repository on GitHub

Top Alternatives to Discourse

  • Disqus
    Disqus

    Disqus looks to make it very easy and rewarding for people to interact on websites using its system. Commenters can build reputation and carry their contributions from one website to the next. ...

  • Flarum
    Flarum

    Flarum is the next-generation forum software that makes online discussion fun. It's simple, fast, and free. ...

  • Discord
    Discord

    Discord is a modern free voice & text chat app for groups of gamers. Our resilient Erlang backend running on the cloud has built in DDoS protection with automatic server failover. ...

  • Slack
    Slack

    Imagine all your team communication in one place, instantly searchable, available wherever you go. That’s Slack. All your messages. All your files. And everything from Twitter, Dropbox, Google Docs, Asana, Trello, GitHub and dozens of other services. All together. ...

  • WordPress
    WordPress

    The core software is built by hundreds of community volunteers, and when you’re ready for more there are thousands of plugins and themes available to transform your site into almost anything you can imagine. Over 60 million people have chosen WordPress to power the place on the web they call “home” — we’d love you to join the family. ...

  • Google AdSense
    Google AdSense

    It is a program run by Google through which website publishers in the Google Network of content sites serve text, images, video, or interactive media advertisements that are targeted to the site content and audience. ...

  • Mailchimp
    Mailchimp

    MailChimp helps you design email newsletters, share them on social networks, integrate with services you already use, and track your results. It's like your own personal publishing platform. ...

  • HubSpot
    HubSpot

    Attract, convert, close and delight customers with HubSpot’s complete set of marketing tools. HubSpot all-in-one marketing software helps more than 12,000 companies in 56 countries attract leads and convert them into customers. ...

Discourse alternatives & related posts

Disqus logo

Disqus

2.5K
466
Elevating the discussion, anywhere on the web.
2.5K
466
PROS OF DISQUS
  • 141
    Ease of use
  • 116
    Free
  • 62
    Great ui
  • 45
    Sign-up not required
  • 40
    Wordpress integration
  • 26
    Replies
  • 18
    Up votes
  • 8
    Threaded discussion
  • 6
    Easy ghost integration
  • 4
    Tumblr Integration
CONS OF DISQUS
  • 4
    Ads
  • 1
    Poor support
  • 1
    Bugs with migration tool

related Disqus posts

Dale Ross
Independent Contractor at Self Employed · | 22 upvotes · 1.6M views

I've heard that I have the ability to write well, at times. When it flows, it flows. I decided to start blogging in 2013 on Blogger. I started a company and joined BizPark with the Microsoft Azure allotment. I created a WordPress blog and did a migration at some point. A lot happened in the time after that migration but I stopped coding and changed cities during tumultuous times that taught me many lessons concerning mental health and productivity. I eventually graduated from BizSpark and outgrew the credit allotment. That killed the WordPress blog.

I blogged about writing again on the existing Blogger blog but it didn't feel right. I looked at a few options where I wouldn't have to worry about hosting cost indefinitely and Jekyll stood out with GitHub Pages. The Importer was fairly straightforward for the existing blog posts.

Todo * Set up redirects for all posts on blogger. The URI format is different so a complete redirect wouldn't work. Although, there may be something in Jekyll that could manage the redirects. I did notice the old URLs were stored in the front matter. I'm working on a command-line Ruby gem for the current plan. * I did find some of the lost WordPress posts on archive.org that I downloaded with the waybackmachinedownloader. I think I might write an importer for that. * I still have a few Disqus comment threads to map

See more
Niall Geoghegan
at experiential psychotherapy institute · | 8 upvotes · 94K views

I created a Squarespace website with multiple blog pages. I discovered that the native Squarespace commenting tool is not currently capable of letting people subscribe to my blog pages if they are using Google Chrome or Safari! I then discovered that Disqus email verification doesn't work with Yahoo Mail. I also hate that there's no way to turn off that email verification (which I don't need since I moderate all comments anyway). So I want to use a different commenting system. I've read some good things about Commento. Three questions: (1) will it work on a Squarespace site? (I'll pay a developer to integrate it for me) (2) Does it have its own issues/elements that don't work smoothly, similar to the other two? (3) Is there another plugin I should be considering for my Squarespace site?

See more
Flarum logo

Flarum

55
47
Delightfully simple open-source forum software
55
47
PROS OF FLARUM
  • 13
    Elegant
  • 11
    Open source
  • 8
    Fast
  • 7
    UX
  • 7
    Simple
  • 1
    Extendable
CONS OF FLARUM
    Be the first to leave a con

    related Flarum posts

    Discord logo

    Discord

    1.7K
    782
    All-in-one voice and text chat for gamers that’s free, secure, and works on both your desktop and phone
    1.7K
    782
    PROS OF DISCORD
    • 64
      Unlimited Users
    • 58
      Unlimited Channels
    • 54
      Easy to use
    • 50
      Voice Chat
    • 48
      Fast and easy set-ups and connections
    • 45
      Clean UI
    • 42
      Free
    • 42
      Mobile Friendly
    • 32
      Android App
    • 28
      Mention system
    • 26
      Customizable notifications on per channel basis
    • 25
      Customizable ranks/permissions
    • 21
      IOS app
    • 20
      Good code embedding
    • 18
      Vast Webhook Support
    • 15
      Dark mode
    • 13
      Roles
    • 13
      Easy context switching between work and home
    • 12
      Bot control
    • 12
      Great Communities
    • 11
      Very Resource Friendly
    • 11
      Robust
    • 11
      Easy to develop for
    • 11
      Great Customer Support
    • 11
      Video Call Conference
    • 11
      Video call meeting
    • 10
      Sharing screen layer
    • 10
      Able to hold 99 people in one call
    • 9
      Easy Server Setup and joining system
    • 9
      Shares screen with other member
    • 9
      Easy
    • 8
      Great browser experience
    • 7
      Easy to code bots for
    • 7
      Lower bandwidth requirements than competitors
    • 6
      Noice
    • 3
      Easily set up custom emoji
    CONS OF DISCORD
    • 10
      Not as many integrations as Slack
    • 9
      For gamers
    • 5
      Limited file size
    • 4
      Sends data to US Gov
    • 4
      For everyone
    • 2
      Undescriptive in global ban reasons
    • 2
      Suspected Pedophiles in few servers
    • 1
      Unsupportive Support
    • 1
      High memory and CPU footprint

    related Discord posts

    Josh Dzielak
    Co-Founder & CTO at Orbit · | 19 upvotes · 433.2K views

    Shortly after I joined Algolia as a developer advocate, I knew I wanted to establish a place for the community to congregate and share their projects, questions and advice. There are a ton of platforms out there that can be used to host communities, and they tend to fall into two categories - real-time sync (like chat) and async (like forums). Because the community was already large, I felt that a chat platform like Discord or Gitter might be overwhelming and opted for a forum-like solution instead (which would also create content that's searchable from Google).

    I looked at paid, closed-source options like AnswerHub and ForumBee and old-school solutions like phpBB and vBulletin, but none seemed to offer the power, flexibility and developer-friendliness of Discourse. Discourse is open source, written in Rails with Ember.js on the front-end. That made me confident I could modify it to meet our exact needs. Discourse's own forum is very active which made me confident I could get help if I needed it.

    It took about a month to get Discourse up-and-running and make authentication tied to algolia.com via the SSO plugin. Adding additional plugins for moderation or look-and-feel customization was fairly straightforward, and I even created a plugin to make the forum content searchable with Algolia. To stay on top of answering questions and moderation, we used the Discourse API to publish new messages into our Slack. All-in-all I would say we were happy with Discourse - the only caveat would be that it's very helpful to have technical knowledge as well as Rails knowledge in order to get the most out of it.

    See more

    From a StackShare Community member: “We’re about to start a chat group for our open source project (over 5K stars on GitHub) so we can let our community collaborate more closely. The obvious choice would be Slack (k8s and a ton of major projects use it), but we’ve seen Gitter (webpack uses it) for a lot of open source projects, Discord (Vue.js moved to them), and as of late I’m seeing Spectrum more and more often. Does anyone have experience with these or other alternatives? Is it even worth assessing all these options, or should we just go with Slack? Some things that are important to us: free, all the regular integrations (GitHub, Heroku, etc), mobile & desktop apps, and open source is of course a plus."

    See more
    Slack logo

    Slack

    119.6K
    6K
    Bring all your communication together in one place
    119.6K
    6K
    PROS OF SLACK
    • 1.2K
      Easy to integrate with
    • 876
      Excellent interface on multiple platforms
    • 849
      Free
    • 694
      Mobile friendly
    • 690
      People really enjoy using it
    • 331
      Great integrations
    • 315
      Flexible notification preferences
    • 198
      Unlimited users
    • 184
      Strong search and data archiving
    • 155
      Multi domain switching support
    • 82
      Easy to use
    • 40
      Beautiful
    • 27
      Hubot support
    • 22
      Unread/read control
    • 21
      Slackbot
    • 19
      Permalink for each messages
    • 17
      Text snippet with highlighting
    • 15
      Quote message easily
    • 14
      Per-room notification
    • 13
      Awesome integration support
    • 12
      Star for each message / attached files
    • 12
      IRC gateway
    • 11
      Good communication within a team
    • 11
      Dropbox Integration
    • 10
      Slick, search is great
    • 10
      Jira Integration
    • 9
      New Relic Integration
    • 8
      Great communication tool
    • 8
      Combine All Services Quickly
    • 8
      Asana Integration
    • 7
      This tool understands developers
    • 7
      XMPP gateway
    • 7
      Google Drive Integration
    • 7
      Awesomeness
    • 6
      Replaces email
    • 6
      Twitter Integration
    • 6
      Google Docs Integration
    • 6
      BitBucket integration
    • 5
      Jenkins Integration
    • 5
      GREAT Customer Support / Quick Response to Feedback
    • 5
      Guest and Restricted user control
    • 4
      Clean UI
    • 4
      Excellent multi platform internal communication tool
    • 4
      GitHub integration
    • 4
      Mention list view
    • 4
      Gathers all my communications in one place
    • 3
      Perfect implementation of chat + integrations
    • 3
      Easy
    • 3
      Easy to add a reaction
    • 3
      Timely while non intrusive
    • 3
      Great on-boarding
    • 3
      Threaded chat
    • 3
      Visual Studio Integration
    • 3
      Easy to start working with
    • 3
      Android app
    • 2
      Simplicity
    • 2
      Message Actions
    • 2
      It's basically an improved (although closed) IRC
    • 2
      So much better than email
    • 2
      Eases collaboration for geographically dispersed teams
    • 2
      Great interface
    • 2
      Great Channel Customization
    • 2
      Markdown
    • 2
      Intuitive, easy to use, great integrations
    • 1
      Great Support Team
    • 1
      Watch
    • 1
      Multi work-space support
    • 1
      Flexible and Accessible
    • 1
      Better User Experience
    • 1
      Archive Importing
    • 1
      Travis CI integration
    • 1
      It's the coolest IM ever
    • 1
      Community
    • 1
      Great API
    • 1
      Easy remote communication
    • 1
      Get less busy
    • 1
      API
    • 1
      Zapier integration
    • 1
      Targetprocess integration
    • 1
      Finally with terrible "threading"—I miss Flowdock
    • 1
      Complete with plenty of Electron BLOAT
    • 1
      I was 666 star :D
    • 1
      Dev communication Made Easy
    • 1
      Integrates with just about everything
    • 1
      Very customizable
    • 0
      Platforms
    • 0
      Easy to useL
    CONS OF SLACK
    • 13
      Can be distracting depending on how you use it
    • 6
      Requires some management for large teams
    • 6
      Limit messages history
    • 5
      Too expensive
    • 5
      You don't really own your messages
    • 4
      Too many notifications by default

    related Slack posts

    Lucas Litton
    Founder & CEO at Macombey · | 24 upvotes · 321.4K views

    Sentry has been essential to our development approach. Nobody likes errors or apps that crash. We use Sentry heavily during Node.js and React development. Our developers are able to see error reports, crashes, user's browsers, and more, all in one place. Sentry also seamlessly integrates with Asana, Slack, and GitHub.

    See more
    Jakub Olan
    Node.js Software Engineer · | 17 upvotes · 446K views

    Last time we shared there information about our decision about using YouTrack over Jira actually we found much better solution that our team have loved. Linear is a minimalistic issue tracker that integrates well with Sentry, GitHub, Slack and Figma which are our basic tools. I would like to recommend checking out Linear as a potential alternative to "heavy" issue trackers, maybe at enterprises that may not work but when we're a startup that works awesome!

    See more
    WordPress logo

    WordPress

    97.6K
    2.1K
    A semantic personal publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability.
    97.6K
    2.1K
    PROS OF WORDPRESS
    • 416
      Customizable
    • 367
      Easy to manage
    • 354
      Plugins & themes
    • 259
      Non-tech colleagues can update website content
    • 247
      Really powerful
    • 145
      Rapid website development
    • 78
      Best documentation
    • 51
      Codex
    • 44
      Product feature set
    • 35
      Custom/internal social network
    • 18
      Open source
    • 8
      Great for all types of websites
    • 7
      Huge install and user base
    • 5
      I like it like I like a kick in the groin
    • 5
      It's simple and easy to use by any novice
    • 5
      Perfect example of user collaboration
    • 5
      Open Source Community
    • 5
      Most websites make use of it
    • 5
      Best
    • 4
      API-based CMS
    • 4
      Community
    • 3
      Easy To use
    • 2
      <a href="https://secure.wphackedhel">Easy Beginner</a>
    CONS OF WORDPRESS
    • 13
      Hard to keep up-to-date if you customize things
    • 13
      Plugins are of mixed quality
    • 10
      Not best backend UI
    • 2
      Complex Organization
    • 1
      Do not cover all the basics in the core
    • 1
      Great Security

    related WordPress posts

    Dale Ross
    Independent Contractor at Self Employed · | 22 upvotes · 1.6M views

    I've heard that I have the ability to write well, at times. When it flows, it flows. I decided to start blogging in 2013 on Blogger. I started a company and joined BizPark with the Microsoft Azure allotment. I created a WordPress blog and did a migration at some point. A lot happened in the time after that migration but I stopped coding and changed cities during tumultuous times that taught me many lessons concerning mental health and productivity. I eventually graduated from BizSpark and outgrew the credit allotment. That killed the WordPress blog.

    I blogged about writing again on the existing Blogger blog but it didn't feel right. I looked at a few options where I wouldn't have to worry about hosting cost indefinitely and Jekyll stood out with GitHub Pages. The Importer was fairly straightforward for the existing blog posts.

    Todo * Set up redirects for all posts on blogger. The URI format is different so a complete redirect wouldn't work. Although, there may be something in Jekyll that could manage the redirects. I did notice the old URLs were stored in the front matter. I'm working on a command-line Ruby gem for the current plan. * I did find some of the lost WordPress posts on archive.org that I downloaded with the waybackmachinedownloader. I think I might write an importer for that. * I still have a few Disqus comment threads to map

    See more
    Shared insights
    on
    ElementorElementorWordPressWordPress

    hello guys, I need your help. I created a website, I've been using Elementor forever, but yesterday I bought a template after I made the purchase I knew I made a mistake, cause the template was in HTML, can anyone please show me how to put this HTML template in my WordPress so it will be the face of my website, thank you in advance.

    See more
    Google AdSense logo

    Google AdSense

    24K
    0
    A program that allows bloggers and website owners to make money by displaying Google ads
    24K
    0
    PROS OF GOOGLE ADSENSE
      Be the first to leave a pro
      CONS OF GOOGLE ADSENSE
      • 1
        Plenty installs but low on actual users

      related Google AdSense posts

      Shared insights
      on
      Google AdSenseGoogle AdSensePurpleAdsPurpleAds

      which of the ads platform pays better? What about PurpleAds?

      Google AdSense has refused to post ads on my site.

      See more
      Shared insights
      on
      TaboolaTaboolaGoogle AdSenseGoogle AdSense

      Really can not decide which one to add. Google AdSense email say that they are ready to show ads... Taboola is on review.

      See more
      Mailchimp logo

      Mailchimp

      22.7K
      1.2K
      Easy email newsletters
      22.7K
      1.2K
      PROS OF MAILCHIMP
      • 259
        Smooth setup & ui
      • 248
        Mailing list
      • 148
        Robust e-mail creation
      • 120
        Integrates with a lot of external services
      • 109
        Custom templates
      • 59
        Free tier
      • 49
        Great api
      • 42
        Great UI
      • 33
        A/B Testing Subject Lines
      • 30
        Broad feature set
      • 11
        Subscriber Analytics
      • 9
        Great interface. The standard for email marketing
      • 8
        Great documentation
      • 8
        Mandrill integration
      • 7
        Segmentation
      • 6
        Best deliverability; helps you be the good guy
      • 5
        Facebook Integration
      • 5
        Autoresponders
      • 3
        Customization
      • 3
        RSS-to-email
      • 3
        Co-branding
      • 3
        Embedded signup forms
      • 2
        Automation
      • 1
        Great logo
      • 1
        Groups
      • 0
        Landing pages
      CONS OF MAILCHIMP
      • 2
        Super expensive
      • 1
        Poor API
      • 1
        Charged based on subscribers as opposed to emails sent

      related Mailchimp posts

      Kirill Shirinkin
      Cloud and DevOps Consultant at mkdev · | 12 upvotes · 694.4K views

      As a small startup we are very conscious about picking up the tools we use to run the project. After suffering with a mess of using at the same time Trello , Slack , Telegram and what not, we arrived at a small set of tools that cover all our current needs. For product management, file sharing, team communication etc we chose Basecamp and couldn't be more happy about it. For Customer Support and Sales Intercom works amazingly well. We are using MailChimp for email marketing since over 4 years and it still covers all our needs. Then on payment side combination of Stripe and Octobat helps us to process all the payments and generate compliant invoices. On techie side we use Rollbar and GitLab (for both code and CI). For corporate email we picked G Suite. That all costs us in total around 300$ a month, which is quite okay.

      See more
      Spenser Coke
      Product Engineer at Loanlink.de · | 9 upvotes · 297.4K views

      When starting a new company and building a new product w/ limited engineering we chose to optimize for expertise and rapid development, landing on Rails API, w/ AngularJS on the front.

      The reality is that we're building a CRUD app, so we considered going w/ vanilla Rails MVC to optimize velocity early on (it may not be sexy, but it gets the job done). Instead, we opted to split the codebase to allow for a richer front-end experience, focus on skill specificity when hiring, and give us the flexibility to be consumed by multiple clients in the future.

      We also considered .NET core or Node.js for the API layer, and React on the front-end, but our experiences dealing with mature Node APIs and the rapid-fire changes that comes with state management in React-land put us off, given our level of experience with those tools.

      We're using GitHub and Trello to track issues and projects, and a plethora of other tools to help the operational team, like Zapier, MailChimp, Google Drive with some basic Vue.js & HTML5 apps for smaller internal-facing web projects.

      See more
      HubSpot logo

      HubSpot

      11.2K
      88
      All the software you need to do inbound marketing.
      11.2K
      88
      PROS OF HUBSPOT
      • 47
        Lead management
      • 20
        Automatic customer segmenting based on properties
      • 18
        Email / Blog scheduling
      • 1
        Scam
      • 1
        Advertisement
      • 1
        Any Franchises using Hubspot Sales CRM?
      CONS OF HUBSPOT
        Be the first to leave a con

        related HubSpot posts

        Shared insights
        on
        HubSpotHubSpotPipedrivePipedrive

        Looking for the best CRM choice for an early-stage tech company selling through product-led growth to medium and big companies. Don't know if Salesforce or HubSpot are too rigid for PGL and expensive. I also had an experience of companies outgrowing Pipedrive pretty fast

        See more
        Shared insights
        on
        FreshsalesFreshsalesHubSpotHubSpot

        Comparing HubSpot and Freshsales, not sure which to choose. Company and contact information is shareable among tech and sales teams allowing both parties to upkeep customers' contact details. Capturing leads from social media and system assigning to sales or having the option to manual assign. Sales follow up with sales activities. Once deal, technical involve to follow up regular customer visits, support ticketing, training, remind customers to renew licenses, work on projects and etc. Require a single platform to share a calendar to understand internal team activities and customer activities.

        See more