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Meetup triples subscription price with less than a months notice

27 points by koehr ↗ HN
Meetup.com just wrote me (and probably all other subscribers), about a price change: from 29 to 99 USD for the six-month subscription! My community has over two thousand members and I'm pretty sure it's partially because Meetup.com is such a well known platform. But our community was always non-profit and I don't think this can work for us anymore.

18 comments

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beniaminp
Is there not any alternative viable for this? With the same features and cheaper?
codegeek
Meetup has been dying for a while. I have been part of few meetups and almost all of them died due to low participation. I doubt meetup is doing well as a company and this is probably their last shot at trying to stay afloat. I would jump ship.
leros
Meetup brings a ton of people into my Toastmasters club. It sure is expensive though.
1123581321
My experience across several groups has been different, as recently as 2023. Meetup is one of the few platforms that reliably gets random people to show up to your event.

We paid quite a bit more than $50/year for fewer members than OP, too. Their new price is still less than we were paying for a couple of our groups.

TheCapeGreek
Give Luma a try. Free tier has fairly generous for now and the UI for community & event management isn't ancient. It also offers an embed, so you can chuck it on your site.

Used to use meetup for a few years before going with Luma this year. Sure discoverability is a bit less if Meetup is the go-to in your area, but you can still get a core group of attendees in other ways and then grow the group from there.

solardev
Sadly only supports major cities :( https://lu.ma/discover
TheCapeGreek
For discovery maybe, but I doubt many people are using it for that as a Meetup alternative yet.

I run an event in Cape Town for what it's worth.

ElijahLynn
There is a newer meetup replacement called Heylo, which makes its money from you charging for your meetups. They get a percentage. It seems much more sustainable than Meetup. I'm going to start my next Meetup on it. I'm so done with Meetup.
solardev
There is not a single group in my area on there, sadly (Central Oregon), vs the dozens upon dozens on Meetup.

Reminds me of the eBay & Craigslist situations where there's a strong network effect, and they're not easy to displace despite the poor UX and such. It takes someone with an already-big network (like Facebook Marketplace) to stand a real chance. It's going to be hard to dethrone Meetup.com :(

jerlam
Meetup was just acquired in January - no doubt their new owners are seeing how they can make their investment profitable.
TheAdamist
Were you grandfathered in at a lower rate or something? I was paying $89.99 for 6 months back in 2018. Which was a completely ridiculous rate for a few meetups a year with a dozen or so people.

Cancelled meetup shortly thereafter and migrated the regulars to a Facebook group.

Then COVID basically killed the group anyway.

octokatt
Wow. I was going to start kicking an old gaming Meetup back to life, but looks like I'm going to invest my sanity elsewhere.

Likewise, I've only used Meetup for non-profits/community organizing, and frankly I can get most of the same features from a Wordpress/Jekyll website, a couple of plug-ins, and maybe Mastodon.

solardev
I guess the missing piece there is discoverability... Meetup is great for newcomers to an area to find the groups and events near them. Hosting your own website is good for people who already know about you, but harder for new people to find...
gabrielsroka
I did a quick search. I think the price went up a while ago.

I would gladly pay a buck or two a month per group to attend. Have you asked your members?

There was a post here recently on replacements for meetup.com

nashashmi
What’s an alternative to meetup? Facebook?
Lokalpod
Hi.

I'd made a small app for events and such a long time ago.

Would anyone be interested to try it if I dusted off that project and re-launched it?

I would be happy to share it on Show HN in the next few days.

jlokier
I'm surprised your price started that low.

Back in 2019 they were charging me 89.94 USD per 6 months. In 2023 it went up to 108.99 USD.

I'm expecting to be charged 178.99 USD at the next 6 month renewal, from their web page, https://www.meetup.com/blog/new-organizer-pricing-key-improv...

From my point of view it's a big increase, but nowhere near triple.

burry_me_now
Ours just went from $98 to $178 2x a year! Almost double. I don’t know if my groups can do this. We don’t need most of the improvements