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Discourse

discourse.org
Summary
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Discourse is a modern forum software designed for building and managing online communities. It provides features for discussions, support, and teamwork, including chat, moderation tools, and various integrations to enhance community engagement.

Features
8/13
See all

Must Have

2 of 5

Rich Text Editor

Community Feedback Tools

Distribution & Recommendation Engine

Membership & Monetization

Reader Engagement Metrics

Other

6 of 8

User Profiles & Following

Tags & Topics

Email Newsletter Integration

Mobile App Access

Social Sharing & Embedding

Search & Discovery

Publication Management

Audio Story Playback

Pricing
Subscription
See all

Starter

$20.00 monthly
  • Unlimited members
  • 2 staff
  • 20k monthly pageviews
  • 20k monthly emails
  • 5GB Storage
  • Secure web access
  • Mobile app
  • Global CDN
  • Custom themes and components
  • Custom domain
  • API and Webhook access
  • Local login
  • Discord
  • Facebook
  • GitHub
  • Twitter
  • Google
  • Apple Support user authentication via Sign in with Apple
  • DiscourseConnect (SSO) Integrate your community with Single Sign On (SSO)
  • AI Full suite of AI features designed to enhance community engagement and management
  • Cakeday Show a birthday cake emoji beside the names of members on their join anniversary or birthday
  • Checklist Add interactive checklists to your posts
  • Footnote Insert expandable footnotes into your posts
  • hCaptcha Integrate hCaptcha into the sign-up form
  • Math Display mathematical notation in posts using LaTeX
  • Reactions Enable multiple reactions that can be selected in addition to likes
  • Spoiler alert Hide content in posts behind a spoiler tag
  • Advertising Display ads on your site using Google Adsense, Google Ad Manager, Amazon Affiliates, and more
  • Policy Create policies and require members to accept them
  • Templates Create and save common replies for repeated use
  • Topic voting Let your community vote on their favorite topics
  • User notes Attach notes to users for all staff to see
  • discourse.group domain
  • Community support

Pro

$100.00 monthly
Popular
  • Unlimited members
  • 5 staff
  • 100k monthly pageviews
  • 100k monthly emails
  • 20GB Storage
  • Secure web access
  • Mobile app
  • Chat Adds chat functionality so it can natively support both long-form and short-form communication
  • AI spam detection Fight spam with Discourse AI, a powerful tool that automatically detects and flags spam posts using advanced AI models
  • Global CDN
  • Custom themes and components
  • Custom domain
  • API and Webhook access
  • Local login
  • Discord
  • Facebook
  • GitHub
  • Twitter
  • Google
  • Apple Support user authentication via Sign in with Apple
  • DiscourseConnect (SSO) Integrate your community with Single Sign On (SSO)
  • Amazon Support user authentication via Amazon, LinkedIn, or Microsoft
  • Learning Management Systems Integration Support the LTI 1.3 standard for authentication, allowing integration with a number of learning management systems
  • LinkedIn Support user authentication via Amazon, LinkedIn, or Microsoft
  • Microsoft Support user authentication via Amazon, LinkedIn, or Microsoft
  • OAuth2 and OpenID Connect Support authentication with a custom external provider via OAuth 2.0 or OpenID Connect
  • SAML Integrate your community with SAML authentication
  • AI Full suite of AI features designed to enhance community engagement and management
  • Cakeday Show a birthday cake emoji beside the names of members on their join anniversary or birthday
  • Chat integration Send notifications about new topics and posts to your favorite chat provider
  • Checklist Add interactive checklists to your posts
  • Footnote Insert expandable footnotes into your posts
  • GitHub Assign badges to contributors, create permalinks, and create linkbacks for commits on GitHub
  • Graphviz Build your own custom graphs within posts
  • hCaptcha Integrate hCaptcha into the sign-up form
  • Math Display mathematical notation in posts using LaTeX
  • Patreon Reward your patrons with Discourse access including group synchronization and Patreon Social Login
  • Reactions Enable multiple reactions that can be selected in addition to likes
  • Solved Great answer? Solved allows users to accept solutions to their topics
  • Spoiler alert Hide content in posts behind a spoiler tag
  • Subscriptions Sell recurring and one-time subscriptions that grant access to Discourse groups
  • Yearly review Create a topic summarizing the previous year’s community activity
  • Advertising Display ads on your site using Google Adsense, Google Ad Manager, Amazon Affiliates, and more
  • Assign Ensure topics are handled by assigning them to your staff
  • Automation Automate complex workflows with predefined scripts and triggers
  • Calendar Create and update a dynamic event calendar within a topic
  • Data explorer Run SQL queries against your database, allowing for instant stats reporting
  • Gamification Add points and leaderboards to your community
  • Policy Create policies and require members to accept them
  • Templates Create and save common replies for repeated use
  • Topic voting Let your community vote on their favorite topics
  • User notes Attach notes to users for all staff to see
  • Zendesk Integrate your community with Zendesk
  • Dedicated email support

Business

$500.00 monthly
  • Unlimited members
  • 15 staff
  • 500k monthly pageviews
  • 300k monthly emails
  • 100GB Storage
  • Secure web access
  • Mobile app
  • Chat Adds chat functionality so it can natively support both long-form and short-form communication
  • AI spam detection Fight spam with Discourse AI, a powerful tool that automatically detects and flags spam posts using advanced AI models
  • Global CDN
  • Custom themes and components
  • Custom domain
  • API and Webhook access
  • Local login
  • Discord
  • Facebook
  • GitHub
  • Twitter
  • Google
  • Apple Support user authentication via Sign in with Apple
  • DiscourseConnect (SSO) Integrate your community with Single Sign On (SSO)
  • Amazon Support user authentication via Amazon, LinkedIn, or Microsoft
  • Learning Management Systems Integration Support the LTI 1.3 standard for authentication, allowing integration with a number of learning management systems
  • LinkedIn Support user authentication via Amazon, LinkedIn, or Microsoft
  • Microsoft Support user authentication via Amazon, LinkedIn, or Microsoft
  • OAuth2 and OpenID Connect Support Support authentication with a custom external provider via OAuth 2.0 or OpenID Connect
  • SAML Integrate your community with SAML authentication
  • AI Full suite of AI features designed to enhance community engagement and management
  • Cakeday Show a birthday cake emoji beside the names of members on their join anniversary or birthday
  • Chat integration Send notifications about new topics and posts to your favorite chat provider
  • Checklist Add interactive checklists to your posts
  • Footnote Insert expandable footnotes into your posts
  • GitHub Assign badges to contributors, create permalinks, and create linkbacks for commits on GitHub
  • Graphviz Build your own custom graphs within posts
  • hCaptcha Integrate hCaptcha into the sign-up form
  • Math Display mathematical notation in posts using LaTeX
  • Patreon Reward your patrons with Discourse access including group synchronization and Patreon Social Login
  • Reactions Enable multiple reactions that can be selected in addition to likes
  • Solved Great answer? Solved allows users to accept solutions to their topics
  • Spoiler alert Hide content in posts behind a spoiler tag
  • Subscriptions Sell recurring and one-time subscriptions that grant access to Discourse groups
  • Yearly review Create a topic summarizing the previous year’s community activity
  • Advertising Display ads on your site using Google Adsense, Google Ad Manager, Amazon Affiliates, and more
  • Assign Ensure topics are handled by assigning them to your staff
  • Automation Automate complex workflows with predefined scripts and triggers
  • Calendar Create and update a dynamic event calendar within a topic
  • Data explorer Run SQL queries against your database, allowing for instant stats reporting
  • Gamification Add points and leaderboards to your community
  • Policy Create policies and require members to accept them
  • Templates Create and save common replies for repeated use
  • Topic voting Let your community vote on their favorite topics
  • User notes Attach notes to users for all staff to see
  • Zendesk Integrate your community with Zendesk
  • Priority support
  • Migration services
  • Priority email support Priority email support from a team spanning 13 timezones

Enterprise

Custom
  • Unlimited members
  • Unlimited staff
  • 1M+ monthly pageviews
  • 1.5M+ monthly emails
  • 200GB+ Storage
  • Secure web access
  • Mobile app
  • Chat Adds chat functionality so it can natively support both long-form and short-form communication
  • AI spam detection Fight spam with Discourse AI, a powerful tool that automatically detects and flags spam posts using advanced AI models
  • Global CDN
  • Custom themes and components
  • Custom domain
  • API and Webhook access
  • Local login
  • Discord
  • Facebook
  • GitHub
  • Twitter
  • Google
  • Apple Support user authentication via Sign in with Apple
  • DiscourseConnect (SSO) Integrate your community with Single Sign On (SSO)
  • Amazon Support user authentication via Amazon, LinkedIn, or Microsoft
  • Learning Management Systems Integration Support the LTI 1.3 standard for authentication, allowing integration with a number of learning management systems
  • LinkedIn Support user authentication via Amazon, LinkedIn, or Microsoft
  • Microsoft Support user authentication via Amazon, LinkedIn, or Microsoft
  • OAuth2 and OpenID Connect Support Support authentication with a custom external provider via OAuth 2.0 or OpenID Connect
  • SAML Integrate your community with SAML authentication
  • AI Full suite of AI features designed to enhance community engagement and management
  • Cakeday Show a birthday cake emoji beside the names of members on their join anniversary or birthday
  • Chat integration Send notifications about new topics and posts to your favorite chat provider
  • Checklist Add interactive checklists to your posts
  • Footnote Insert expandable footnotes into your posts
  • GitHub Assign badges to contributors, create permalinks, and create linkbacks for commits on GitHub
  • Graphviz Build your own custom graphs within posts
  • hCaptcha Integrate hCaptcha into the sign-up form
  • Math Display mathematical notation in posts using LaTeX
  • Patreon Reward your patrons with Discourse access including group synchronization and Patreon Social Login
  • Reactions Enable multiple reactions that can be selected in addition to likes
  • Solved Great answer? Solved allows users to accept solutions to their topics
  • Spoiler alert Hide content in posts behind a spoiler tag
  • Subscriptions Sell recurring and one-time subscriptions that grant access to Discourse groups
  • Yearly review Create a topic summarizing the previous year’s community activity
  • Advertising Display ads on your site using Google Adsense, Google Ad Manager, Amazon Affiliates, and more
  • Assign Ensure topics are handled by assigning them to your staff
  • Automation Automate complex workflows with predefined scripts and triggers
  • Calendar Create and update a dynamic event calendar within a topic
  • Data explorer Run SQL queries against your database, allowing for instant stats reporting
  • Gamification Add points and leaderboards to your community
  • Policy Create policies and require members to accept them
  • Templates Create and save common replies for repeated use
  • Topic voting Let your community vote on their favorite topics
  • User notes Attach notes to users for all staff to see
  • Zendesk Integrate your community with Zendesk
  • Priority support
  • Migration services
  • Design services
  • Custom development
Rationale

Discourse is a forum software designed for building online communities. While it offers robust features for discussion, moderation, and community management, it doesn't align perfectly with the 'online publishing platform' aspect of Medium. Specifically, it lacks a clear 'distribution & recommendation engine' for surfacing content to a broad audience beyond the community itself, and its monetization features are geared towards community subscriptions rather than writer-centric revenue based on reading time. However, it does provide a rich text editor, community feedback tools, user profiles, tags, email integration, mobile access, social sharing, and search capabilities.

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