Discourse vs Zapier: What are the differences?
Developers describe Discourse as "The 100% open source, next-generation discussion platform built for the next decade of the Internet". 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. On the other hand, Zapier is detailed as "Automate tasks between other online services (services like Salesforce, Basecamp, Gmail, and 400+ more)". Zapier is for busy people who know their time is better spent selling, marketing, or coding. Instead of wasting valuable time coming up with complicated systems - you can use Zapier to automate the web services you and your team are already using on a daily basis.
Discourse can be classified as a tool in the "Forums" category, while Zapier is grouped under "Web Service Automation".
Some of the features offered by Discourse are:
- Remembers your place
- Log in with … anything
- Paste to share images
On the other hand, Zapier provides the following key features:
- A Zap is a blueprint for a task you want to do over and over. In words, a Zap looks like this: "When I get a new thing in A, do this other thing in B." The first part is the trigger and the second part is the action. An example is "When I get a new entry from a Wufoo form, create a new lead in Salesforce."
- You can pick what fields from the trigger service should go to the action service and you can use static text and custom fields too. For instance, you might say that the phone number from your Wufoo form should be the work phone of your new Salesforce lead.
- Zapier regularly checks your trigger for new data. When the Zap triggers, Zapier automatically performs your action for you. Continuing with the Wufoo scenario, say you receive five new entries. Zapier takes each one and makes a new lead in Salesforce, customized to the way you specified in your Zap.
"Open source" is the top reason why over 20 developers like Discourse, while over 40 developers mention "Sync cloud services" as the leading cause for choosing Zapier.
Discourse is an open source tool with 28.6K GitHub stars and 6.47K GitHub forks. Here's a link to Discourse's open source repository on GitHub.
According to the StackShare community, Zapier has a broader approval, being mentioned in 241 company stacks & 66 developers stacks; compared to Discourse, which is listed in 42 company stacks and 7 developer stacks.
