- One-Click Sharing - Each event gets a unique, memorable URL. Share instantly via any platform or messaging app. - No Hassle, No Sign-Ups - Skip registrations and endless forms. Unlike other event platforms, you create and share instantly — no accounts, no barriers. - Effortless Simplicity - Designed to be instantly clear and easy. No learning curve — just open, create, and go.
But meetup was awesome for discoverability of small local niche groups.
Manual link sharing doesn't help with local groups.
The alternative was Facebook groups for free, but has awful discoverability and awful event calendars. But most people have Facebook, so thats the default now.
How does this benefit me as an organizer? How can local people find my event without me having to spam it on services(Facebook, etc) that they already have accounts on?
This is the big barrier to entry for anyone trying to replicate Meetup. It was never about the event organizing software (which really wasn’t that great) it was about connecting your group or event to enough interested, local people that you had a chance at actually getting off the ground.
Somewhere along the way wework bought them. It’s been spun off, but downhill since. A lot of group organizers passed the groups to others and some groups disappeared.
I’m still a member of a couple groups and meetup is really pushing members of groups to pay now (join meetup plus), and more adds to click through when you rsvp.
But people seem to like it.
But nowadays nobody is on Facebook anymore and there is just no replacement for that.
For that price, you get the normal stuff you'd expect and also:
- no ads
- ability to set each invitee as an adult, a child or an infant (useful when planning food and activities)
- ability to group invitees into families, so that any adult in the family can edit the RSVP for any/all family members
- single place to manage all messages with attendees
- easy to start this year's invitation as a copy of last year's
- app that displays the total 'yes' folks, split by adult, child, infant
It's totally worth the money for the time it saves and the ease of use for guests.
But I'm surprised that AFAIK there's no open source thing that's as easy to use, and that includes all the features I listed.
- ability to set each invitee as an adult, a child or an infant
- ability to group invitees into families, so that any adult in the family can edit the RSVP for any/all family membersAnd a poll wouldn't allow me to know which kid(s) and adult(s) from each family are coming.
I very recently started considering the options around and really wanna give a shot to the federated version called Mobilizon. It seems to be gaining quite some popularity according to the stats but it's mostly in Europe.
There is a US instance though with some decent amount of activity.
It's still a little rough around the edges but the devs (french nonprofit that made peertube) just got money to fix that up so I really hope they make good headway. I'm gonna start a group on there soon and hopefully that'll lead to some useful bug reports and feedback.
Upon seeing this mastodon popped in my head. If a service like this was federated it could let everyone run their own and depending on how it was managed, still be tied together?
We'll take Cactoide out for a spin for our September meetups! I'll open up some GitHub issues if any blockers show up.
Whenever someone sends me a luma or partiful link that asks me for personal info which will undoubtedly be bundled into some data broker when the VCs start putting pressure on the founders to cash out, I balk.
I would much, much rather see people just link me to a little no-signup widget without a platform attached <3
There's still no standards for Private Data though, so, pretty limited use at the moment.
Trying to do better than Meetup or Eventbrite is setting the bar so low you can hold a limbo contest. If you’re going to vibe code a competitor, I would at least aim to replicate the gold standard.
This actually sounds more similar to Partiful, which I like for one-off events. I would describe this as an open source Partiful, but not specifically geared towards parties.
I was wondering if Eventribe was actually a thing and was guessing that it really could be. (It seems that it is a thing, but small. Not even leaning into the “tribe” aspect of the name)
My first action after creating the event was to try to edit it and I realized I couldn't do that cuz I don't have an account or authorization to edit it.
Is editing in the works?
I’ve been working in silence but progress has been made and my work will surface soon.
No nonsense ads, vaporware, data brokers, nor VCs own me. I’m going to make something that threatens all those apps which started great and sold out.
Cactoide looks great for one-off events - nice work! But it doesn't replace Meetup for recurring groups that need subscriptions, notifications, member management, etc.
The best alternative I've found so far is https://guild.host. Just launched Svelte Chicago on it (shameless plug - come join us!) and our first event yesterday went smoothly. Guild has some rough edges but a smart founder with the right priorities.
What's still missing, as TheAdamist mentioned, is discoverability. I think we need to separate meetup discovery from event management - an event-platform-agnostic registry/search that works across Guild, Eventbrite, Facebook Events, whatever. Hmm... might have just found our next Svelte meetup hackathon project.
Little niche we conquered with duck tape data inputting and a nice UI Very open to feedback!
For guilds / groups / clubs / companies.. I was even thinking a decentralised SOLID database (cf Berners Lee) for futureproof(?) data ownership and interoperability
Welcome, I've seen a lot of projects in this space (and done a few)!
If I can make a suggestion, the first thing to look at is public API's and existing formats like iCal (for the listings information that can be public - obviously some information like attendee details should be private).
Making sure whatever platform you use to host your events has open data feeds is a great first step, and preferably in iCal. Before you even start working on a search site, your regular atendees can import your feed straight into their personal calendars (and I know from previous projects some people will).
ps. Hey OP, please add open data feeds to your project!
Please provide feedback, and let’s see what we can do.
Got some more ideas and devs interested if we spin this for real