Best Meetup alternatives.Matched to why you are leaving.

Because Meetup raised its organizer prices from June 6, 2024: new Standard and Pro plans paid the new price from that date, existing Standard subscriptions moved to it at their next renewal, and Standard now starts from $29.99 a month. Meetup’s help center says the increase paid for better communication tools, merging its website and apps, and fixing bugs.

It also feels expensive because the subscription is flat. A hobby group with no income pays the same Standard price as a group that sells tickets, and Pro is charged per group. If you charge members, Meetup takes 7.5% plus $0.50 from each dues payment, and members without Meetup+ pay a service fee on top of paid events.

Meetup suggests covering the subscription with member dues or event fees. Six-month and annual billing also lower the monthly price, and one Standard plan covers up to three groups.

On Meetup’s own prices, running a group costs from $174.99 a year on the Standard plan billed annually, or from $29.99 a month billed monthly, before the cost of the gatherings themselves. It is free only on the Starter plan, which is for first-time organizers and allows one group, two in-person events a month and ten people per event.

The venue, food and drink, and any speaker are on top, and they are usually the larger cost. Meetup’s help center suggests asking members for dues or charging event fees to cover them; it takes 7.5% plus $0.50 from each dues payment, and PayPal takes its fee on event fees. Pro, which adds member email export and a Mailchimp sync, starts from $55 per group per month.

For a worked example with paid tickets, see what a monthly 100-person meetup costs per year, further down this page.

Meetup is the free member account; Meetup+ is an optional paid subscription for members, not an organizer plan, that waives the service fee when you RSVP to paid events and unlocks direct messages to any member, full attendee and member lists, full member profiles, a priority place on waitlists, earlier event announcements and no ads.

Meetup sells Meetup+ by the week, month or year. Its help center does not publish a price, so check the one shown in the app. Running a group needs an organizer plan (Starter, Standard or Pro), which is a separate subscription.

For an organizer, Meetup+ matters because of what your members see. Members without it pay a service fee on top of your paid events, and see other members’ names, photos and interests blurred or locked.

Yes, in a few ways Meetup itself describes: paying for six months or a year costs less per month than paying monthly, the Organizer Subscription page shows any special offer available to your account, and first-time organizers can start on the free Starter plan. As a member, you get a lower price on a paid event when its organizer offers a promo code.

Coupon sites list Meetup codes and student or military savings; Meetup’s help center does not mention them, so treat them as unconfirmed until you see the price at checkout. If the subscription itself is what you want to stop paying, the free alternatives on this page cost nothing for free events.

• Longer billing. Standard starts from $29.99 a month, $99.99 for six months (about $16.67 a month) or $174.99 a year (about $14.58 a month). Pro starts from $55 per group per month, or $47 per group per month on six-month billing.
• Offers on your account. Meetup says prices vary by location and special offers, and shows the exact price and current offers on the final step of starting a subscription. It will not match one organizer’s price to another’s.
• Where you pay. Prices also depend on whether you subscribe on the web or in the iOS or Android app; to switch from an Apple or Google subscription to a web plan, which may have different rates or discounts, cancel the app subscription first.
• A sponsored network. Some organizations pay for their groups through a Meetup Pro network. Google Developer Groups, for example, applies a 100% discount to a connected group’s subscription for as long as it stays in the network.
• Promo codes for members. Organizers can create promo codes on paid events, such as a lower price for first-time attendees, and combine them with early bird pricing.

There is no single replacement: organizers who leave Meetup pick a tool for the job Meetup did for them, such as Heylo or a Facebook group for a free social group, Luma for free event pages, Eventbrite for public ticketed events, Mighty Networks for a paid online community, and SocialLoop for a group that sells tickets and memberships and keeps its own member list. No one publishes a count of where Meetup groups go, so treat any “most popular” list as an opinion.

The section below matches each reason for leaving to the tools that fit it, and the table after it shows what each one costs the organizer.

Yes, depending on why you are leaving: Heylo or a Facebook group for a free social group, Luma for free event pages, Eventbrite for public ticketed events, Mighty Networks for a paid online community and SocialLoop for a group that sells tickets and memberships. Meetup stays the better choice as long as its discovery brings you most of your new members. Ask a few first-timers how they found you before moving.

For an organizer, paying for Meetup is worth it while Meetup brings you most of your new members; if most newcomers already come through friends, your own posts or your email list, the subscription is paying for discovery you barely use. Ask every first-timer at your next few events how they found you, and count the answers.

If Meetup brought, say, ten of your last twenty first-timers, the subscription is earning its keep. If it brought two, compare a year on Meetup with the alternatives below before you renew. For a member weighing Meetup+, the question is narrower: it pays off if you RSVP to paid events often, because it waives the service fee, or if you want to message other members directly.

Stay on Meetup while it is still where most of your new members find you; move when most of them come from your own people, and you need what Meetup holds back: your members’ email addresses, or a smaller cut of your dues. Look at the last few months before you decide, not at feature lists.

Ask every first-timer at your next few events how they heard about you, and count the answers. If Meetup brings most of them, leaving means replacing that flow first. If they mostly come through friends, your newsletter or your own posts, the subscription is paying for discovery you are not using much.

Then compare the four things that differ most. New members: Meetup puts your group in front of people searching by interest and city; on community platforms such as Circle and Mighty Networks, plan on bringing people yourself unless the platform shows you otherwise. Your list: on Meetup, member email addresses come only with Pro, and only from members who RSVP and agree to share them. Dues: Meetup takes 7.5% plus $0.50 from each dues payment; Circle’s Professional plan is $89 a month billed annually with a 2% transaction fee, and Mighty Networks’ Explore plan, $350 a year, includes paid memberships; its page does not state a transaction fee, so ask. In-person events: all three run them, but Meetup is built around the local event, while Circle’s and Mighty Networks’ plans are organized around an online space for members, with a feed or discussions, chat and profiles, and events included.

If your group is mostly online conversation between gatherings, a community platform fits. If it is mostly people in a room each month, choose the tool that makes the event, the payment and the door easiest, and keep your own list of everyone who comes.

Through channels you build yourself, mainly members bringing a friend, local partners who share your audience, a public event page people can find in search, and your own email list, plus whatever marketplace your new platform has. Test them while you are still on Meetup, and leave only when they bring enough first-timers without it.

Start with a number. Count how many first-time attendees Meetup sent you over the last three months. That is what the other channels have to replace.

For the next two or three months, keep Meetup running and give every other channel its own link or code: one for members to share, one per local partner, one for your newsletter. Ask every first-timer how they found you. Count people, not RSVPs, and count each person once.

A worked example, illustrative only: last quarter 20 people came for the first time and 12 of them found you on Meetup. Before you leave, the other channels need to bring about 12 first-timers a quarter on their own, or you need to accept a smaller group. If they bring 4, you are not ready; work on the channel that is closest, then measure again.

Built-in discovery differs by platform. Eventbrite runs a marketplace for public events, Luma has a public Discover page, and Heylo says it lists groups in its discovery directory and on search engines. SocialLoop lists public events for people to find, but it is not a network of people browsing for groups to join, so you bring your members.

For a channel-by-channel worksheet, see can new people still find you after the move in our paid community guide.

Yes, if one platform holds the paid tickets, the capacity and the check-in list, and Meetup only points people to it. Running two lists that both take bookings for the same room is what causes double bookings and a confusing door.

Set it up this way. On Meetup, describe the event and put one link to where people buy or register. Sell every seat on the other platform, and set its capacity to the room. Check people in from that list only. Meetup’s policy on business promotion allows registration or ticketing outside Meetup under conditions, among them that it is clearly explained to members; read it before you rely on this.

To avoid counting people twice, treat a Meetup RSVP as interest and the ticket as the booking. Someone who RSVPs on Meetup and buys a ticket is one attendee. At the door, the ticket list is the list.

To see whether Meetup brings new paying people, give the Meetup event its own link, and add a short question to the registration: how did you hear about us? A person is a new paying attendee the first time someone with that email address buys a ticket from you. Count those each month, by source. If Meetup’s share stays high, the subscription is earning its keep; if it falls close to zero, you may not need it.

In SocialLoop, RSVPs, paid tickets, the guest list and check-in sit in the same event, each guest is kept in the CRM, and you can add your own registration questions. That makes it a fit for the second platform in this setup.

Add four things for a full year at your real size: the subscription, the platform’s cut of each ticket or dues payment, card processing, and any separate email tool you will need. Then check who pays each fee, you or your members, because that changes both your margin and your members’ price.

• Fees your members pay. On Meetup, members without Meetup+ pay a service fee on top of paid events; Meetup’s example is $1.62 on a $10 ticket. On Eventbrite and SocialLoop, buyers pay the fees by default unless you choose to absorb them.
• Fees on dues. Meetup takes 7.5% plus $0.50 from each dues payment. Circle lists a 2% transaction fee on its Professional plan. SocialLoop takes a 5% platform fee on memberships, and card processing comes out of your share.
• Prices that depend on billing. Meetup’s Standard plan starts from $29.99 a month or $174.99 a year, and Meetup says prices vary by location. Circle’s Professional plan is $89 a month billed annually. Luma Plus is $59 a month billed annually.
• Limits on free plans. Meetup’s free Starter plan allows one group, two in-person events a month and ten people per event, for first-time organizers only. Luma’s free plan sends up to 500 invites or newsletters a week. SocialLoop’s Free plan covers 1 event per month and a community of up to 50 members; the pricing page lists every limit.
• Your list. Exporting member emails from Meetup needs Pro, from $55 per group per month. If you plan to email members from a separate tool, add its price too.

Reviews tell you what went wrong for someone else; they cannot tell you how your members will get through joining, paying and arriving. Use them to make a list of worries, then run one real, small event on each tool you are still considering.

Review sites and organizer forums are worth reading for patterns, but they are written mostly by people with a problem, and a complaint from three years ago may describe a product that has since changed. We have not summarized them here. What follows is a test anyone can run in an afternoon with two or three willing regulars.

• Join and pay on a phone, as a new member would. Note every step where you had to explain something.
• RSVP, cancel, and RSVP again. Fill the event and see what a waitlisted person is told.
• Change the venue or time and check what message people receive.
• Check someone in at the door, on your phone, with a bad connection. Try one person who cannot find their ticket.
• Refund one payment and see what happens to the ticket and the list.
• Export everyone who came, and check which details are in the file.
• Read what happens if you stop paying. On Meetup, for example, an organizer whose subscription lapses is stepped down after a grace period, and the group closes if no one else takes it over.

Check that a first-timer can RSVP on a phone in a minute, that repeating events is easy, that you can check people in from your phone at the door, that you can email everyone who has come and export that list, what a year costs at your size, and how your current members will come across.

• RSVP. Can a first-timer RSVP on a phone without friction? Can you ask a question or two, cap the room and run a waitlist?
• Repeating events. Can you copy last month’s event in a minute, or set up a series?
• Check-in. Can you and a co-organizer check people in from your phones, by name or by QR code?
• Email. Can you email everyone who has RSVPd or attended, without paying for a second tool? Can you see the addresses and export them?
• Cost at your size. Work out a year at your real number of events, people and ticket price, as in the example above.
• The move. Can you import a list you already have, with permission, so people do not start from zero?

Only the primary organizer can close a group: on the Meetup website, open the group, choose Manage group, then Transfer group ownership (Standard and Starter) or the close option (Pro), select “Do you want to close your group instead?”, answer the questions and click Close group permanently. Closing a group does not cancel your organizer subscription, so cancel that separately from your Organizer Subscription page.

• Closing is permanent. Meetup removes the group’s photos, discussions, events and member list, and cannot reopen it. Tell members first so they can save what they want.
• To keep the group alive without you, step down instead and nominate a new organizer, or let Meetup ask members to take over.
• To stop paying, cancel the subscription. It stays active until the end of the period you paid for, then a 15-day grace period starts; after that you are stepped down, and if nobody takes over, the group closes within another 15 days.
• Refunds of the latest subscription payment can be requested within 20 days of the period start on monthly plans and 60 days on yearly plans, with exceptions; subscriptions bought through the Apple App Store are refunded by Apple.
• Moving the group rather than ending it? Keep it open until your members have followed you, as described above.