Show HN: Meetup.com and eventribe alternative to small groups
14 comments
·August 27, 2025rahimnathwani
Every year I pay $39.99 for a one-month subscription for Punchbowl, which allows me to easily manage RSVP's for my son's birthday party.
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.
TheAdamist
Meetup was great until it became so expensive to run a glorified calendar+ email list. $180+ a year is silly for small groups.
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?
qgin
The reason Meetup worked was years of collecting contact info of people interested in specific topics and then blasting all of them when a new group started in a location. If 1% of people responded, that was still a decent turnout.
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.
abnercoimbre
This looks promising! I help run local meetups for systems programmers [0] in cities across the world. We've been looking for a self-hosted RSVP system for ages (and haven't had the time to build one.)
We'll take Cactoide out for a spin for our September meetups! I'll open up some GitHub issues if any blockers show up.
jauntywundrkind
There's https://smokesignal.events/ for event stuff on Bluesky / At Protocol too. IMO really sweet how your Personal Data Store can handle all different manners of data.
There's still no standards for Private Data though, so, pretty limited use at the moment.
stevage
Semi related, but has anyone else noticed a massive surge in Meetup comment spam in the last few months? All my local groups are pumping out spam, mostly offering work from home employment opportunities. I keep wondering what has changed.
qgin
Meetup was bought by Bending Spoons (after a winding path getting passed around after it being sold to WeWork). They’re basically just running it until the wheels fall off.
nabogh
Yep I have been in one group for years then in the last month I start getting spam emails from comments on the group
ElijahLynn
Yeah, every time I'm on Meetup I see those ads at the end of the sign up. The same thing happened with Poshmark now too. After I purchase something on Poshmark I get spammed with three ads. Like the same ad provider I mean, same deal.
ElijahLynn
Great start!
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?
j45
Great idea, congrats.
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?
cowpig
This is great, and really needed!
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
gabrielsroka
progforlyfe
Probably what they meant but -- Eventribe sounds like an awesome name =)
Mobile first open-source RSVP platform. Alternative for meetup.com / eventribe for small companies and groups. If you have a small group and don't want to pay for services you can easily selfhost this solution. Open for improvements and for feedback, ofc.
- 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.