In the last few months the organizers of the meetups I go to have been complaining about changes to meetup, and noted that it is obvious that the changes are being made by people with no clue about what organizers need or how they use the platform. I've been using Meetup for at least a decade, and I've never heard this topic raised before.
The conversation continued about alternatives and only Facebook was considered a viable alternative.
I am this friend. I am both a software guy and a meetup organizer. I searched high and low for an alternative to meetup last year, for my own use, and mostly because I didn't think Meetup.com provided me enough value to warrant their $180/year fee. I didn't find any usable alternatives at the time.
In the months since, I have found these platforms, which are all built by organizer/techies attempting to solve their own problems, and to tap into the groundswell of discontent with Meetup.com.
I've put a lot of energy into reading complaints about Meetup.com in the last few months, and one of the most common ones is a real frustration among organizers about being heard. There are endless stores of sending messages to Meetup support and hearing nothing, or receiving canned answers. About having no input into the interface updates. About corporate messaging that is all about the experience for meetup group MEMBERS (the ones who don't pay meetup) and not the organizers (the ones who do). And a great deal of pessimism about the WeWork purchase, and how little incentive there could be in that future, to improve things for organizers.
I help at misc non-profit orgs. Event coordination is a constant thorn. I've tried both meetup and fb. Meh.
I basically want is a lightweight whitelabel or OSS optionally self hostable thingie, backed by a repo, some kind of calendar link. I checked out a bunch of wordpress add-ons. The stuff I found it both too little and too much, if that makes sense.
I haven't had the gumption to write my own. I'll check out the links you've provided.
Meetup.com is expensive beyond any reasonable justification if we consider that most services provided by GitHub/GitLab, Facebook, Doodle, etherpads, Google calendar... are more complex and yet free.
The conversation continued about alternatives and only Facebook was considered a viable alternative.
This could be a big opportunity for a new player.