# Discourse Reviews **Vendor:** Discourse **Category:** [Online Community Management Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/online-community-management) **Average Rating:** 4.0/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 68 ## About Discourse Discourse helps businesses build trusted online communities where engagement drives retention, support, and knowledge sharing. Designed to scale and easy to adapt, it offers full data control and powerful moderation. ## Discourse Pros & Cons **What users like:** - Users appreciate the **comprehensive features** of Discourse, enabling efficient collaboration and easy data retrieval. (3 reviews) - Users appreciate the **ease of use** of Discourse, finding data quickly and facilitating open discussions effortlessly. (2 reviews) - Users value the **knowledge-sharing capabilities** of Discourse, enabling insightful discussions and a wealth of information exchange. (2 reviews) - Users love the **user-friendly interaction** of Discourse, enhancing collaboration and facilitating engaging discussions seamlessly. (2 reviews) - Users appreciate the **Channels feature** of Discourse, facilitating seamless collaboration among team members. (1 reviews) - Users value the **extensive customization options** in Discourse, enhancing their forum experience and engagement tracking. (1 reviews) - Customization (1 reviews) - Helpful (1 reviews) - Users find Discourse **intuitive and user-friendly** , enhancing engagement and facilitating easy navigation in discussions. (1 reviews) - Knowledge Management (1 reviews) **What users dislike:** - Users face challenges with **duplicate content** and unreliable notifications, complicating their search for accurate information. (1 reviews) - Users face challenges with **data loss** due to duplicate content and unreliable notifications, hindering effective information retrieval. (1 reviews) - Users experience challenges with **irrelevant content** , including duplicates that hinder finding accurate or recent information. (1 reviews) - Users find the **limited customization** of Discourse confusing, with duplicated functionalities leading to frustration. (1 reviews) - Users experience **notification issues** that hinder effective communication and timely updates within Discourse. (1 reviews) - Poor Interface Design (1 reviews) - Poor Navigation (1 reviews) - Poor Notifications (1 reviews) - Time-Consumption (1 reviews) ## Discourse Reviews ### 1. Open Source and Customizable, Challenge the Installation **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Leonardo C. | Ceo, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 09, 2025 **What do you like best about Discourse?** I mainly use Discourse for forums to interact with my Discord server community, and I also find it useful for more official and informal announcements. I like that Discourse is open source and extremely customizable. I also appreciate the SAML SSO, which is very useful for authenticating users with Discord and synchronizing everything. **What do you dislike about Discourse?** Perhaps the fact that it is difficult to install on a server without help. **What problems is Discourse solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use Discourse mainly for forums and announcements. It solves the collection of feedback from players and offers excellent SAML SSO to authenticate users with Discord and synchronize everything. ### 2. Discourse makes it easy to collaborate on projects **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Vishal J. | Software Project Manager, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 10, 2025 **What do you like best about Discourse?** The best thing about Discourse is the Channels feature, where members of the project team can collaborate. On channels, users can create new posts, reply to others' posts, and upload attachments. It also has a feature of sending direct messages similar to email messages. The user interface is easy to use and quick to learn for beginners. **What do you dislike about Discourse?** Some functionality is duplicated and confusing. Like, when you click on "DMS" and select a group channel, it is the same as selecting the Group Channel directly. Hence, the feature of using DMS for group chats could be removed and retain DMS only for sending direct messages to individual users. **What problems is Discourse solving and how is that benefiting you?** Discourse is integral to daily project management activities. I can directly interact with each team member, send announcements to all at once, create a dedicated channel for sharing project resources, and send meeting, webinar invitations. Overall, Discourse increases productivity by solving communication needs of the project. ### 3. Comprehensive Platform with a Steep Learning Curve **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Marcella D. | Senior Process Executive, Telecommunications, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 10, 2025 **What do you like best about Discourse?** I like that Discourse is complete and does not need additional features. I enjoy how I can locate data easily by searching in the main bar and finding topics regarding the information I am looking for. **What do you dislike about Discourse?** It is sometimes too chaotic, it takes some time before I find what I need. **What problems is Discourse solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use Discourse for work chat and project updates. It acts like a general book where shared information is easy to find. I enjoy how I can locate data using the search bar. ### 4. my experience in using Discourse. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Aboelhassan A. | Doctor, Medical Practice, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 27, 2024 **What do you like best about Discourse?** It is an extensive database filled with valuable information. Discourse is user-friendly and facilitates open discussions in a forum-style format. It offers significant customization options, allowing the creation of various topics and categories, while also monitoring user engagement. **What do you dislike about Discourse?** Although tagging and searching typically lead me to the information I need, there often appears to be duplicate content, making it difficult to identify the 'newest' or 'validated' answers. Additionally, the notifications occasionally do not function correctly. **What problems is Discourse solving and how is that benefiting you?** respond to customer inquiries and maintain a record of responses similar to Stack Overflow. ### 5. Friendly user interface **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jerome H. | Photography Instructor, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 28, 2025 **What do you like best about Discourse?** a great platform to learn and share ideas about relevant topics **What do you dislike about Discourse?** i enjoy every single bit of using this platform **What problems is Discourse solving and how is that benefiting you?** assisting me with meeting new people who have vast knowledge about my contract with labelbox. ### 6. One of the best community and forum building app **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Prithvi H. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 08, 2024 **What do you like best about Discourse?** Discourse is very easy to use and very user friendly. One think I like the most about it is the batches and awards that can be assigned to top contributors. **What do you dislike about Discourse?** Nothing much to dislike here as I really love the product. Their enterprise plans can be a little pricey. **What problems is Discourse solving and how is that benefiting you?** Usually at our organisation we have one as internal users only and one open to the public. People can post their questions and queries and it will be answered by the experts in the market. ### 7. Truly a place to build civilized conversations- with lots of customizations! **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sarah L. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 14, 2023 **What do you like best about Discourse?** We chose Discourse about five years ago because we wanted to create a place for an in-depth conversation about new research that was coming out in occupational therapy. And it has delivered! I am consistently amazed by the quality of conversation that the platform fosters. The added bonus has been all of the customization options on the platform. This has allowed us to roll out new tools we did not anticipate initially. The best surprise was when they recently updated the layout to prioritze sidebar navigation-it gave the platform a freshness to rival other social platforms! **What do you dislike about Discourse?** One thing to be aware of with Discourse is that it gives a lot of flexibility, but we've had to leverage a developer to capitalize on creating our more advanced tools. Overall, we've been pleased with this tradeoff though! And, luckily, Discourse really does provide amazing support for more complex projects. **What problems is Discourse solving and how is that benefiting you?** Discourse helps us manage our private community for occupational therapists to discuss new research and earn their continuing education hours. **Official Response from André Sousa:** > Great to hear that Discourse has been delivering on your needs for the past five years, Sarah! We're thrilled that our platform has been able to facilitate meaningful and in-depth conversations among your community of occupational therapists. We understand that the flexibility and customization options that Discourse provides can be both a blessing and a challenge, especially when it comes to creating more advanced tools. However, we're glad to hear that you've been able to leverage the support of our amazing team to make the most of the platform's capabilities. Thank you for taking the time to share your positive experience with Discourse on G2. We appreciate your feedback and are committed to continuing to provide a platform that helps businesses like yours build and nurture thriving online communities. ### 8. Discourse- the community platform you never knew you would love so much! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sara L. | Customer Marketing- Community Leader , Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 08, 2023 **What do you like best about Discourse?** I have worked with a number of all inclusive, expensive, enterprise level community platforms. I was unaware of Discourse until my last job. I was really impressed by the flexibility and opensource nature of the product. The pricing is great which makes this a viable option for SMD level businesses. The leadership and support folks are amazing. They are very responsive and really do care about their customers. I really liked that support tries to resolve issues if they are simple instead of just pushing me to open a professional services ticket. **What do you dislike about Discourse?** The UX is pretty basic. If you want some really unique experience or functionality you need to go custom which can be a big project. There are limited out of the box plugins but I believe they are adding as they work on customizations so that makes integrations with your other systems more likely. **What problems is Discourse solving and how is that benefiting you?** Self-Service Support and Product Awareness. **Official Response from André Sousa:** > Dear Sara, Thank you for sharing your experience with Discourse. It's great to hear that you have found our platform to be flexible, open-source, and cost-effective for SMD level businesses. We appreciate your positive feedback about our support team and their responsiveness in resolving issues. Regarding your feedback on the UX and out-of-the-box plugins, we understand that customizing the platform to achieve a unique experience or functionality can be a big project. However, we are continually working on adding more features and integrations to help make it easier to achieve your goals. Thank you for trusting Discourse as your community platform and for your support. We look forward to working with you to help achieve your self-service support and product awareness objectives. ### 9. Great for community discussions and announcements **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Michael C. | Talent Acquisition Partner, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 03, 2023 **What do you like best about Discourse?** Discourse is really easy to use and allows an open discussion in a forum style platform. It's quite customizable where you can create different topics and categories, and also tracks user engagement. **What do you dislike about Discourse?** Discourse is quite a robust platform, and depending on how the company uses and organises it, it can be quite overwhelming. Fortunately, they have a fantastic bot that teaches you the basics and get you up-to-speed. **What problems is Discourse solving and how is that benefiting you?** We like to use Discourse for community discussion threads and company/team announcements. It's a way to help us seperate from our knowledge-base and have a simpler workflow. **Official Response from André Sousa:** > Hi Michael. Thank you for sharing your thoughts on Discourse. It's great to hear that you find the platform easy to use and customizable. The ability to create different topics and categories, as well as track user engagement, definitely makes it a useful tool for community discussions and announcements. We understand that the platform can be overwhelming at times, but we're glad to hear that the bot has been helpful in teaching you the basics and getting you up to speed. It's wonderful to know that Discourse has been a valuable tool for separating your knowledge base and simplifying your workflow. We hope that it continues to serve you well in your community discussions and company/team announcements. Thank you for your review and for choosing Discourse! ### 10. Well structured discussion forum **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Filippo S. | Multilingual Support Specialist, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 25, 2022 **What do you like best about Discourse?** main resource for internal communication and support outside of live channels **What do you dislike about Discourse?** interface is very minimal and flat, but not necessarily simple and intuitive **What problems is Discourse solving and how is that benefiting you?** Provides an online discussion platform to engage in product discussion **Official Response from André Sousa:** > Thank you for your feedback on Discourse, Filippo! We're glad to hear that it's your primary resource for communication and support. We also wanted to state that understand your concern about the interface and are continually working to improve it. We'd like to take this opportunity to let you know that Discourse recently launched its 3.0 version, with improved features such as an updated editor with better formatting options, improved image handling, keyboard shortcuts, and better moderation tools. Additionally, we've made it more accessible for visually impaired users and introduced a "Knowledge Explorer" feature to help you search for information more efficiently. We appreciate your support and hope these new features will make your experience even better. If you have any more feedback or suggestions, please let us know. ### 11. Discourse Review **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 17, 2022 **What do you like best about Discourse?** It is a huge database of valuable information. **What do you dislike about Discourse?** It's not the most intuitive tool to use. While tagging and searching usually get me to where I want to go, there seems to always be duplicate information and no way to determine which is the 'newest' or 'validated' answers. **What problems is Discourse solving and how is that benefiting you?** A repository for all technical questions/answers. **Official Response from André Sousa:** > Thank you for your feedback about Discourse. We're glad to hear that you find the platform to be a valuable database of information. We understand your concerns about the usability of Discourse, including duplicates and outdated information. We're continuously working on ways to improve the platform's organization and search features to make it easier for users to find the information they need. We also have a just-in-time feedback feature that screens for duplicate content and provides real-time notifications to users when they attempt to post content that already exists. Our community moderators regularly review and validate the information to ensure that it's accurate and up-to-date. We recommend that you use the "Latest" or "New" tabs to see the most recent posts and updates. We appreciate your feedback, which helps us improve the platform and provide a better user experience. If you have any further suggestions or concerns, please let us know. Thank you for choosing Discourse, and we hope to continue being a valuable resource for you. Regarding your concerns about duplicate content, you may find this post on the Discourse Meta forum helpful. It discusses how the platform handles duplicate content and offers suggestions for avoiding or reporting it. ### 12. Discourse **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Nanotechnology | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 17, 2022 **What do you like best about Discourse?** everything is very good. I have no suggestions. **What do you dislike about Discourse?** Sometimes the notifications do not work properly **What problems is Discourse solving and how is that benefiting you?** answer customer questions and have history of answers kind of like stack overflow **Official Response from André Sousa:** > Thank you for your positive feedback about Discourse! We're delighted to hear that you're satisfied with the platform and that you don't have any suggestions for improvement. Regarding your comment about notifications, we apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. We understand how important notifications are to keep you informed and up-to-date. We encourage you to check out our Discourse Meta forum, where you can find various posts discussing notification issues and how to resolve them. Our team is continually working to improve the notification system, and we appreciate your feedback, which helps us identify areas for improvement. If you have any further suggestions or concerns, please don't hesitate to let us know. Thank you for choosing Discourse as your preferred communication platform, and we hope to continue providing you with a positive experience. ### 13. Discourse Review **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Padraic R. | Community Manager, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 11, 2021 ### 14. Discourse - An amazing platform **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Teddy M. | Tech Administrator & Support Team, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 26, 2021 **What do you like best about Discourse?** Discourse was very straightforward to install, the Let's Encrypt integration is amazing. Discourse is an amazing platform with even more of an amazing design. My team enjoyed using it a lot. The cost of running is also very small. Overall it is a great experience. **What do you dislike about Discourse?** I didn't really like that you can't deploy Discourse without a domain. It was very hard for me to use Discourse with my mail server at first, although I quickly got around that by using the numerous Discoruse tutorials available. **Recommendations to others considering Discourse:** I highly recommend to use a one click installation, it is much more easier than the regular installation (both are supported by Disocurse as far as I am aware, so no need to worry for support). Also, be prepared to wait and retry. You more than likely won't nail it on the first try. I also recommend you get some extra RAM and run a mail server on your VPS/dedicated server (if you already haven't done so), as this quite literally saved my installation from failure, because without a mail server - your installation is broken and if you don't have MailChimp or other popular mail platforms but instead have your own mail server (which is not locally hosted), chances are - you might fail. **What problems is Discourse solving and how is that benefiting you?** Recently, communication within my department has went down. And it wasn't only there, it seemed like all platforms we tried were just like the other ones - non-customisable, costy, and way too simple. Discourse was simple, but the "simple" which actually was fine with us. **Official Response from André Sousa:** > Thank you for sharing your feedback on Discourse! We're delighted to hear that you found our platform easy to install and that your team enjoys using it. We're also glad to hear that our Let's Encrypt integration and cost-effective pricing have been helpful to you. We apologize for any difficulty you experienced in deploying Discourse without a domain. We're constantly working to improve our platform and appreciate your feedback. We're pleased that you found our tutorials useful in resolving the issue. We're grateful for your business and hope to continue providing you and your team with an exceptional experience. If you have any further feedback or questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to us. ### 15. Good forum app for open discussions **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Logistics and Supply Chain | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 14, 2022 **What do you like best about Discourse?** I like the searchability of Discourse. It gives us a way to find answers to previously answered questions asynchronously. **What do you dislike about Discourse?** I don't have anything I don't like about Discourse. **What problems is Discourse solving and how is that benefiting you?** In our company, we primarily used Discourse as a documentation tool, which I don't think is the right use case for it. **Official Response from André Sousa:** > Hello, We hope this message finds you well. We wanted to reach out regarding your recent review of Discourse on G2. While we appreciate your honest feedback, we noticed that you rated our platform 2.5 out of 5 despite not having any dislikes about our product. As a company, we take all feedback seriously, and we believe that honest and accurate reviews are important for potential customers to make informed decisions. However, we also understand that inaccurate or misleading reviews can unfairly impact our reputation and mislead other potential customers and for that reason, we would like to kindly ask if you would consider revising your review to reflect your positive experience with Discourse. Your review can help potential customers make informed decisions about our platform, and we want to ensure that they have an accurate understanding of its benefits. If you do decide to revise your review, we would be grateful for your support. Thank you again for your feedback, and we look forward to continuing to improve our platform to better meet your needs. ### 16. Discourse is the best there is - it has no competition **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** John G. | Senior Digital Programs Marketing Manager – Audience Acquisition & Engagement , Information Technology and Services, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 28, 2019 **What do you like best about Discourse?** Simple to use and read. It presents a simple list of discussions with suitable categories, as opposed to cluttered sub-forums that divide discussions. It provides a easy and effective way to highlight and pin topics and identify active discussions. Users can even hide certain categories they are not interested in. Creating and replying to topics is a great experience and has editor support. **What do you dislike about Discourse?** This might be a quibble, but at times the UI can be perceived as cluttered, disorganized. Also, one cannot hide categories that you don’t frequent, and you can’t block users that pester you. **Recommendations to others considering Discourse:** Just do it and tame a problem! **What problems is Discourse solving and how is that benefiting you?** We needed a way to distribute lots of content, embed videos, images, tweets, quotes, code, etc. Since our teams are geographically dispersed, and across multiple time zones, this way of keeping everyone updated is a simple exercise. Content can be pulled in and utilized based on time stamping. ### 17. Best for community solutions **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Kimberly A. | Mrs., Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 28, 2019 **What do you like best about Discourse?** It is a open source software, where the main topics can be discussed orderly. It doesn't matter how big or small the project is, you'll find the adequate tool to find a solution and talk about it within your community or the people you want to reach. For example, you'll be able to do surveys, bookmark, chat and keep track of your main interests. It's not only easy to host, but also easy to follow up. **What do you dislike about Discourse?** It's a relatively new forum, where people aren't used to the privacy terms, for example, private messages not being private to the admin. Also, constant updates means interface changes, you need to adapt. **Recommendations to others considering Discourse:** It's a helpful tool to organize your projects and give them a follow up. It doesn't matter if you are a business or not, give it a chance by adquiring the 14 day trial. Anyway, I do recommend to buy the licence as you will find this software the best for your community organization towards future and ongoing projects. **What problems is Discourse solving and how is that benefiting you?** Efficient organization between a whole group of people regarding an specific subject. Ease to contact other members and let them know what's going on at the moment. **Official Response from André Sousa:** > Thank you for your positive review of Discourse, Kimberly! We're thrilled to hear that you find our platform to be the best for community solutions, and that it's easy to use and follow up. We appreciate your feedback regarding privacy concerns and interface changes, and we're committed to continually improving our platform based on user feedback. We're glad to hear that Discourse has been a helpful tool for organizing your projects and facilitating efficient communication among group members. We believe that our platform is suitable for any type of community, whether it's a business or not, and we encourage everyone to give it a try by signing up for our 14-day trial. Thank you again for choosing Discourse, and we look forward to continuing to support your community organization efforts in the future! ### 18. By far the best (and most affordable!!) option for community software **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Religious Institutions | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 13, 2019 **What do you like best about Discourse?** Discourse is already amazing. Yet, the pace of development is staggering. You can interact directly with the co-founders, developers, and the rest of the Discourse community at meta.discourse.org. That's something you probably won't get with any other community software! As an open source project, the level of innovation and collaboration from multiple stakeholders appears to be well beyond what any private company could sustain. Discourse is fast, modern, and easy to use. It can handle a small community and scale to work with millions of people. It is incredibly simple to moderate and serve as the admin for a Discourse community. The ability to integrate Discourse with other platforms is advanced and convenient. You absolutely have to spin up a version of Discourse and try it out before making a decision. **What do you dislike about Discourse?** Whenever I have a complaint, I can bring it to the Discourse community at meta.discourse.org and see if others agree. When the concern is shared, the Discourse team will work to improve the product within months. Any dislikes about Discourse get resolved in a relatively short time. **What problems is Discourse solving and how is that benefiting you?** It is enabling us to bring together a global community, provide customer service, offer paid access to content, develop niche groups, and even run our intranet. ### 19. My Discourse Review **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Chris N. | Graduate Research Assistant, Semiconductors, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 28, 2019 **What do you like best about Discourse?** Probably the best feature of this software is its being open source. Allows seamless integration into other platforms, and lets you customize it to fit your specific needs, which is a unique feature compared to other similar softwares. **What do you dislike about Discourse?** Sometimes managing the thread can lead to disarray and makes it a bit disorganized. The organization of the thread can use a better format. Additionally, some features require external integration to be added in order to function. **What problems is Discourse solving and how is that benefiting you?** When I was working with a dozen other people in a research lab, it naturally lead to many Google docs and hundreds of files and documents all over the place, but discourse helped us organize all of them into one single forum and it allowed us to keep track of where things were and what we were discussing without having to scramble to find the corresponding Google Doc! Saved us a lot of time and effort overall. **Official Response from André Sousa:** > Thank you for sharing your positive experience with Discourse, Chris! We appreciate your feedback about the software's open-source nature and how it allowed you to customize the platform to fit your specific needs. Your concerns about managing threads and thread organization are valuable feedback that we will consider as we continue to improve the platform. It's great to hear that Discourse was beneficial for you and your research lab by helping you organize all your files and documents into one single forum, and we're glad that we were able to save you time and effort. Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and experiences with Discourse! ### 20. Very organized -- good bang for your buck! **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 28, 2019 **What do you like best about Discourse?** We know discourse isn't the most robust forum software out there, but for the price, it does very well! Keeping things organized is incredibly easy - especially if you're wanting to have posts grouped by specific topics as well. The moderation customization is surprisingly robust though - you can assign key individuals specific roles that you want them to perform, and what abilities they'll be able to have while in the forum. **What do you dislike about Discourse?** Wish it was more robust. There are other forum solutions out there, but they were all at exorbitant prices and required dev-level setup. Discourse integrated with our CRM and our support software, which were two of the big things we needed. But I wish you could customize more around the posts and folders. Meaning, you could add up-votes/down-votes to certain tickets/bugs. Or assign a post to a specific moderator using logic. **Recommendations to others considering Discourse:** Nothing really, just make sure you're good with a basic forum instance. **What problems is Discourse solving and how is that benefiting you?** Help-center user-forum for both internal and external use. ### 21. Great for sharing news, ideas, and updates **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Chris B. | Songwriter and Recording Artist, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 28, 2019 **What do you like best about Discourse?** The Discourse UI is clean and intuitive and very easy to get the hang of. Having had no prior experience with it, I was able to pick it up in a relatively short timeframe. Makes communication a breeze , and the customization options are wonderful for adding brand specific content. **What do you dislike about Discourse?** Honestly not much, some of our computers are a bit older so it definitely took some browser updates to bring them up to speed, but after that, it was smooth sailing. I guess I would say I'm not as in love with the mobile version as I am with the desktop version, but that's more personal preference. **Recommendations to others considering Discourse:** Try the trial first to see if it's a good fit for your group! **What problems is Discourse solving and how is that benefiting you?** Discourse keeps us connected as an organization and makes it easy to update everyone on recent successes / useful tips for initiatives or programs we're all apart of. **Official Response from André Sousa:** > Thank you for sharing your positive experience with Discourse, Chris! It's great to hear that you find the UI clean and intuitive, making communication easy and customization options wonderful for adding brand-specific content. While you encountered some issues with older computers, it's good to know that once updated, Discourse was smooth sailing. It's also understandable that personal preferences may differ, such as with the mobile version. I agree that trying the trial first is a good way to determine if Discourse is a good fit for your group. It's great to hear that Discourse keeps your organization connected and makes it easy to update everyone on recent successes and useful tips. Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and experiences with Discourse! ### 22. Discourse is a great software! **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Collin K. | Tax Intern, Accounting, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 28, 2019 **What do you like best about Discourse?** One of the things that I like best is the ability to support other people in the same field of work. All of the discussion is useful, and anything negative is quickly corrected. All of the users seem to want to help one another in a friendly and helpful discourse. **What do you dislike about Discourse?** One thing that I dislike is that some user posts are completely deleted when a user is removed. **Recommendations to others considering Discourse:** I recommend that other users join today and start using it to reap the benefits and knowledge of others. It has been a great help to read the stories and suggestions of others in my accounting field. **What problems is Discourse solving and how is that benefiting you?** Discourse is solving the problem of community engagement within a niche. Users are able to post and help each other out within different industries. ### 23. Simply futuristic! A revolutionary way to manage your own virtual community! **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Hospital & Health Care | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 28, 2019 **What do you like best about Discourse?** It simply breaks with the way of carrying the virtual community traditionally, It is not just about asking questions and writing answers like StackOverFlow, StackExchange, but it is about getting social interaction, maintaining a coexistence and establishing links with the community. I like this a lot because it is about empowering the community to lead itself, being the only way to keep at bay those who, instead of contributing, start publishing spam or behave like a troll. **What do you dislike about Discourse?** Being free software, the company must be able to customize the software according to their needs. Obviously, each company is different, it does not make sense to apply a single solution. This power of personalization is only given by free software. Just as there are for WordPress, it is expected that for Discourse there will also soon be a wide variety of accessories, so that each organization can customize their installation to their liking. **Recommendations to others considering Discourse:** The categories created by the administrators help, on the one hand, to channel the conversations around the topics that interest from the point of view of the objectives of the company. On the other hand, they facilitate the search in the social network of both conversations and people. What is relevant ceases to be buried by the recent, as is the case with social software with timeline logic. **What problems is Discourse solving and how is that benefiting you?** A partner of our company requests a crisis management document in social media and obtains several examples of different real cases from our clients, it was very useful in that case. ### 24. The best forum software out there and open source too! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Entertainment | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 28, 2019 **What do you like best about Discourse?** Its very useful for replacing the old mailing list software with an open source and user friendly experience. It also helps for users to choose and use forum threads without the user interface by subscribing via mailing list mode. It's also good for open communication for the whole organization too. **What do you dislike about Discourse?** At first, I wasn't sure how to use tags since everything was lowercase and it feels a bit messy for an user-centric experience. Also, private messages can be seen by administrators which sometimes it might not be clear enough to the public. **Recommendations to others considering Discourse:** Discourse is perfect for every community and possibly could be one of the best forum softwares out there too. It could make a difference for start-up companies or small businesses in order to move forward on a slow pace. **What problems is Discourse solving and how is that benefiting you?** It's an open source and configurable with many other add-ons in order to help with integration with other services. Also, every conversation are trackable easily without having the risk of being lost or disappear in a big storm of many many other messages too. ### 25. Great for online discussions **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Samridhi P. | Graduate Teaching Assistant, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 28, 2019 **What do you like best about Discourse?** Discourse is a simple yet great software for ANY sized online communities. I like the fact that it is easy to navigate, great design, simple layout and is FAST. This software definitely promotes productive online discussions. **What do you dislike about Discourse?** When I first started using it, it took me some time to navigate through it and get used to the features. However, once I got used to it I found it super user-friendly. **Recommendations to others considering Discourse:** It is definitely much better than other online discussion softwares. Installation and setup might be little complex compared to traditional forums but certainly worth the work. **What problems is Discourse solving and how is that benefiting you?** The fact that this software comes with user trust system makes moderation a lot easier. It runs well in all of my devices. ### 26. Excellent forum software **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jeremy A. | Project Engineer, Computer Software, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 22, 2018 **What do you like best about Discourse?** Ease of communication. This makes communication among our group of Experts really easy, and it provides a great place for our members to get help, ask questions, and interact with each other. It has helpful notification preferences with intelligent defaults that can be customized to your liking. There are ways to easily pick up where you left off and link to specific posts or content to easily share with others. **What do you dislike about Discourse?** The design and navigating around takes getting used to. Using the markup language for text editing is difficult to remember. **Recommendations to others considering Discourse:** This is definitely something to look at if you want modern forum software for communication, discussion, and community interaction and engagement. **What problems is Discourse solving and how is that benefiting you?** Communication with members, communication among community experts, providing troubleshooting help, linking to documentation, content access for groups that need different permission and editing levels. ### 27. Connect on a whole new level **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Individual & Family Services | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 28, 2019 **What do you like best about Discourse?** I like that someone who is looking for my niche services can inquire about them here. Not only can they ask about them, I get a place where I can talk about what I do and what I can offer them. It’s where supply meets demand and demand meets supply. It also helps me and people like me to cultivate fans of what we do. It’s Hollywood for everyone else. **What do you dislike about Discourse?** I wish it were a bit more colorful and eyegrabbing at first sight. It’s one thing to be searched but one wants to have the ability to really stand out from the rest. **Recommendations to others considering Discourse:** Discourse more than serves its purpose in getting you noticed and putting you in the right place to be noticed. It gives you an opportunity to be in your element. **What problems is Discourse solving and how is that benefiting you?** Reaching more clients has always been a huge issue for me. Discourse can help me with that by allowing a platform for me to say “Hey, this is what I do. Could this work for you?” So mainly for me it would be the networking aspect of Discourse that solves a lot of my problems. It also gives me a chance to outline exactly what I do and don’t do. I don’t always get to do that with a basic website or just a pamphlet. **Official Response from André Sousa:** > It's great to hear that Discourse has helped you connect with potential clients and cultivate fans of your services. I'm sorry to hear that the platform's initial appearance isn't quite as eye-catching as you would like it to be. However, it's wonderful to hear that it serves its purpose well by getting you noticed and putting you in the right place to be noticed. Thank you so much for sharing your positive experience with us, and we hope to continue providing you with the tools to reach even more clients and network effectively. We appreciate your 5 out of 5 rating and look forward to serving you further in the future. ### 28. Open Source for Forums - Discourse **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Hospital & Health Care | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 28, 2019 **What do you like best about Discourse?** Frankly that it's open source and easy to use. Plus I don't know of any other software or cloud-base program to handle communications and data in large group settings or forums. This was very helpful with a previous job. There are also a lot of threads you can add to keep information organized. **What do you dislike about Discourse?** I never really understood the private message function. Not sure why I need it to contact administrators when I was handling a group meeting. Setting up mailing lists seemed to be too manual - not easy to upload IMO. **Recommendations to others considering Discourse:** It seems to have uses beyond group discussions and forums, which it is marketed as. I could see organizations using it as a communications tool much like Basecamp, Trello and others. But it does seem to be best use for communications and notes from events. **What problems is Discourse solving and how is that benefiting you?** We used it for client and group meetings to record data in an effective and efficient way. We did use in it in that way although then uploaded it over to Basecamp which was used on a more corporate level. **Official Response from André Sousa:** > Hello, Thank you for taking the time to write a review of Discourse. We're glad to hear that you find our platform easy to use and appreciate the benefits of an open-source forum software. Regarding your concern with the private message function and the mailing lists, we would like to thank you for bringing this to our attention. We are always looking for ways to improve our platform and your feedback is valuable to us. We will take your feedback into consideration as we continue to make updates and improvements to Discourse. We are thrilled to hear that you see the potential for Discourse as a communications tool beyond group discussions and forums. Indeed, many organizations have found our platform useful for organizing and sharing information. Thank you for choosing Discourse for your client and group meetings. We hope to continue to serve your communication and data recording needs in the future. ### 29. A great product for creating a forum **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Financial Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 28, 2019 **What do you like best about Discourse?** Discourse is easy to use and allows users to communicate easily and efficiently which is vital. Members can come together in one place and ask questions, answer questions, as well as get help and assistance when needed. **What do you dislike about Discourse?** It takes a bit getting used to and I don't think its as organized as it could be. It seems that questions can pile up quickly and it almost feels like I am swimming in unread emails. The navigation takes a bit of practice. **Recommendations to others considering Discourse:** Take the time to practice and learn the navigation and how the software flows and is organized. It will take some time getting used to but once properly implemented it can become a valuable tool for employees. **What problems is Discourse solving and how is that benefiting you?** This has helped our business come together and streamline communication between various business lines. It has also provided for a central place to ask questions and seek help and guidance which the employees find valuable. **Official Response from André Sousa:** > Hello, Thank you for taking the time to review Discourse. We're happy to hear that you find our platform easy to use and that it has provided a valuable tool for your employees to communicate efficiently. Regarding your feedback on navigation and organization, we understand that there may be a learning curve for some users when first using Discourse. However, we strive to make the platform as user-friendly as possible and are always looking for ways to improve it. We appreciate your input and will take it into consideration as we continue to make updates and improvements. We're thrilled to hear that Discourse has helped streamline communication and provided a central place for employees to ask questions and seek guidance. We're glad to be a part of your business success and look forward to continuing to serve your communication needs. Thank you for choosing Discourse as your forum platform. ### 30. Discourse is an excellent communication toolset for team projects. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** lsommer S. | B.A., Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 28, 2019 **What do you like best about Discourse?** A choice of seamless communication in the forms of a great messenger-type chat room, with conversation records, a mailing list platform, or discussion forum. **What do you dislike about Discourse?** Managed forum hosting is not free, it actually costs around $100 per month for a standard subscription. And for business scale traffic, it costs upwards of $300 a month. **What problems is Discourse solving and how is that benefiting you?** An easy solution to connect my ecommerce network of sales associates. With the mobile application's discussion chat room feature the whole team can stay connected, as long as there's internet access. At least, it would be great if it wasn't so expensive. ### 31. Discourse Review **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Entertainment | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 28, 2019 **What do you like best about Discourse?** Discourse is a great server for conversation, and it's functions are very user-friendly. I like that there are both public and private forums, so my conversations could be as transparent or private as I want. **What do you dislike about Discourse?** The tagging system is a little unclear, and at best semi-functional. The all lowercase tagging system makes things hard to find, and difficult to read. Additionally, mailing list mode is a bit tiresome to set up. **Recommendations to others considering Discourse:** Discourse is open-source and compatible with many other add-ons. If you or someone in your company is relatively tech-savvy, you can really boost the power of discourse fairly easily (and cheaply!) depending on your needs. **What problems is Discourse solving and how is that benefiting you?** Discourse is great for community interaction and some of the best open-source software I've seen. If you need a forum software, I would absolutely recommend Discourse. ### 32. Great Communication Software **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 28, 2019 **What do you like best about Discourse?** Discourse is a great plateforme for discussion among group members and professionals. The group members can be assigned certain roles which allows for good moderation and identification of leadership. Topics of discussion can be easily organized as well. The application is very flexible and allows customization of discussion forums. **What do you dislike about Discourse?** Sometimes the discussion can get easily disorganized because replies to conversation build up. So it can be hard to separate the topic of discussion and tangents. The application also takes used to navigating. **Recommendations to others considering Discourse:** Initially the software can be hard to navigate. But there are many useful features that make discussion and organizational topics flow easily. **What problems is Discourse solving and how is that benefiting you?** Discourse is being used as the main platform for discussion and communication among team members. A benefit is that everything is all in one place and very organized. ### 33. Easy setup, takes time to customize to your liking **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Non-Profit Organization Management | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 28, 2019 **What do you like best about Discourse?** My favorite part of the software is being able to tag things to search for them later. I also like that you can organize discussions and topics to your liking. **What do you dislike about Discourse?** It takes a while to get used to and customize to your liking. For example, you can assign trust levels to each user and organize things but you have to play with it a little bit before getting the hang of it. I suggest having a training day or a week so that everyone can get used to it. **Recommendations to others considering Discourse:** Take a week to get customized to it. Maybe have a training day. **What problems is Discourse solving and how is that benefiting you?** Whenever we have new training information or resources we use Discourse to ask questions, keep in contact with each other regarding future events, and learn more about our training material. ### 34. One of the best forum software out there **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Automotive | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 28, 2019 **What do you like best about Discourse?** 1. User Privileges : Teams, Trust Levels, Moderation, Private and Public Threads make it possible to have as much transparency, privacy or power decentralization as one wishes. 2.Mailing List mode: Users can choose to use forum threads without the User Interface by subscribing via mailing list mode. **What do you dislike about Discourse?** 1.Private Messages can be seen by Administrators, something which might not be clear to everybody. 2.Mailing List Mode is very powerful but it's a bit tiresome to set-up consistently compared to the experience of the Graphical User Interface. **What problems is Discourse solving and how is that benefiting you?** 1.Conversations can be tracked easier without the risk of being lost in a sea of messages as people tend to construct their posts more carefully than on any workspace messenger. 2.It's open source and configurable with many other add-ons to help integration with other services. ### 35. One of the best open source softwares to inet forums. **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Victor T. | Técnico Senior Tech Center, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 28, 2019 **What do you like best about Discourse?** Its strengths are that it innovates in the field of existing forums software by including features popularized recently by large social networks, such as infinite scrolling, live updates, link expansion, and drag-and-drop attachments. **What do you dislike about Discourse?** The truth is... I do not know what to put as dislike... Because both administration and the actual update are solid and improved in each version. Truthfully, I would say that your support could be better. But the tutorials and help in the app are gorgeous. **Recommendations to others considering Discourse:** Prove it. You will keep it. **What problems is Discourse solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use to test it only. **Official Response from André Sousa:** > Thank you for taking the time to share your review of Discourse, Victor! It's great to hear that you appreciate its innovative features, such as infinite scrolling, live updates, link expansion, and drag-and-drop attachments. These features provide a modern and user-friendly experience for forum users. Regarding your feedback on support, we are always looking for ways to improve and appreciate your input. We're glad to hear that you found the tutorials and help in the app to be helpful. It's good to know that you found Discourse to be a reliable software and that you continue to use it for testing. Thank you for recommending others to try it out as well. Thank you again for sharing your thoughts and experiences with Discourse! ### 36. Great online chat system **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Monali P. | Clinical Research Assistant, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 28, 2019 **What do you like best about Discourse?** The best thing about this online discussion forum is that there is a soft flagging system in which positive and constructive commenters are rewarded and those comments that are spam or junk are flagged and deleted **What do you dislike about Discourse?** Sometimes the forums can become unorganized and change topics quickly it would be nice if a new thread would be started by administrators to keep the organization **What problems is Discourse solving and how is that benefiting you?** solving issues with customer feedback and finding new ways to improve communications with consumer base **Official Response from André Sousa:** > Thank you for taking the time to share your positive experience with Discourse, Monali. It's great to hear that you appreciate the soft flagging system, which helps to maintain the quality of the forum by rewarding constructive comments and filtering out spam or junk. This is a valuable feature that sets Discourse apart from other online discussion forums. I understand your concerns about the organization of the forums and the potential for topics to change quickly. It's good feedback for the Discourse team to consider implementing new threads started by administrators to maintain organization and improve user experience. It's great to hear that Discourse is solving issues with customer feedback and helping to improve communication with your consumer base. This is an important aspect of any successful business and it's good to know that Discourse is providing a valuable solution. Thank you for your review and for recommending others to use Discourse. We appreciate your feedback and are glad to hear that the platform is meeting your needs. ### 37. Good service if you need another way to communicate... **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Entertainment | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 29, 2019 **What do you like best about Discourse?** It's a nicely organized way to communicate in a forum setting. And the ability to attach files is nice. It has a free trial which is great. It's nice that it switches automatically to a mobile layout for small screens. **What do you dislike about Discourse?** It seems redundant. I didn't feel it necessary to have ANOTHER way of communicating with people. It seems more social than technical. **Recommendations to others considering Discourse:** I would suggest trying it out if you feel you don't have a reliable way of managing projects and/or collaborating with coworkers already. It seemed redundant to me, but if you need a more organized way to keep information linked between users, this might be the solution for you. **What problems is Discourse solving and how is that benefiting you?** It was a nicely organized space to collaborate and it helped streamline discussions on a particular subject. **Official Response from André Sousa:** > Thank you for trying out Discourse and for sharing your thoughts with us. While Discourse is often used as a communication tool, it actually offers much more than that! In addition to providing a nicely organized forum setting for discussions, Discourse also has powerful search and categorization features, allows for file attachments and polls, and supports integration with various other tools and services. Discourse can also be used as a knowledge base for your team or community, and can be set up as a customer support platform, intranet, or even a paid membership site for monetizing content. We understand that it may seem redundant to have another communication tool, but Discourse's versatility makes it a valuable addition to any organization or community. Thank you again for your feedback, and please let us know if you have any further questions or suggestions for improving the platform! ### 38. Great Forum Software!!! **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Krys L. | Product Manager , Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 28, 2019 **What do you like best about Discourse?** The ability to have both private and public threads make it possible to have as much privacy as you would like. **What do you dislike about Discourse?** The tags are a bit confusing, could be more user friendly. Also, private messages are not private to admins. **What problems is Discourse solving and how is that benefiting you?** Open source is a huge plus. Speaking to the discussion side, community members are more prone to engage here as well. You can easily track conversations and not be bogged down with hundreds of messages since posts are written more fluidly here. ### 39. Excellent! **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sonya V. | mortgage broker , Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 28, 2019 **What do you like best about Discourse?** Ease of communication. This makes communication among our group of Experts really easy. The software is initiative and easy to access,. You can organize and customize messages, inbox, and the communication means to your standard. **What do you dislike about Discourse?** There is still a lot of understanding left, we are still struggling to understand the software. **Recommendations to others considering Discourse:** Inexpensive, using it for a month trial can be handy, you can see if it suits your needs. **What problems is Discourse solving and how is that benefiting you?** Discourse is not very expensive, turned out pretty handy for us, would recommend. ### 40. Great for commenting **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Online Media | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 28, 2019 **What do you like best about Discourse?** This software is great because it allows you to leave comments on whatever you feel and also interact with other users on any board or site that your on. It is very user friendly. **What do you dislike about Discourse?** It can be confusing for first time users starting out because it's not the easiest with the load time after writing a comment. **What problems is Discourse solving and how is that benefiting you?** You can see any feedback that customers, consumers or clients have about your uploads or products which is great for traffic. ### 41. Best for online forums **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sahil V. | Business System Analyst II, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 28, 2019 **What do you like best about Discourse?** It’s one of the easiest way to create forum online. The best part is we can assign n number of admins to any forum and The interface is very simple and modern. **What do you dislike about Discourse?** So far this software works fine for me but when it comes to customisations or to edit any existing forum. It doesn’t perform well **What problems is Discourse solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am using this in my organisation for taking opinions of my other colleagues. ### 42. Works Ok As A Mailing List **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Consumer Goods | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 28, 2019 **What do you like best about Discourse?** This worked ok as a mailing list and enjoyed the forum option for fans to get engaged. It offers a unique tool that is why we chose the platform, but wish it could have done more so we could use it as a platform for multiple efforts. **What do you dislike about Discourse?** ....but for it to compete with other platform options, it needed more tools and options for increased usability. I would rather have one platform that manages several things, then have to use 3 including Discourse. **Recommendations to others considering Discourse:** Need increase scale in terms of platform scope and capabilities. **What problems is Discourse solving and how is that benefiting you?** Simple way to send emails and liked the discussion forum options. ### 43. Basics of Discourse **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Matthew K. | Independent Business Owner, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 28, 2018 **What do you like best about Discourse?** It’s a very simple tool for keeping track is various sites that run on the discourse framework. Like a bookmarker, but for businesses. **What do you dislike about Discourse?** The app is very barebones. If you’re looking to manage more than a dozen sites, you’re better off with the desktop client. **Recommendations to others considering Discourse:** Tool should be used for mobile purposes only. The desktop client is much more attuned to editing needs. **What problems is Discourse solving and how is that benefiting you?** It helps me manage multiple discourse set-ups, giving me quick access to the info I need the most. It’s helpful in the communications department. ### 44. Collaboration+Communication **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 14, 2018 **What do you like best about Discourse?** Discourse is a streamlined discussion platform that has greatly improved our discussion workflow by providing a clean and consistent interface and a simple to use platform that everyone can get started with in an instant **What do you dislike about Discourse?** As the number of people scale up, Discourse can get very slow unless you have top of the line hardware that it can run on. Moments like those, you can't help but think of getting a cloud based solution **What problems is Discourse solving and how is that benefiting you?** We've moved our ideas and communication workflow to Discourse. This has helped us work on the move, on simple web apps that everyone can contribute to using just a cell phone. It's just increased our turn around time, and made it easier, and fun even, to communicate ### 45. Really great community! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Marketing and Advertising | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 28, 2019 **What do you like best about Discourse?** I love how professional the community on Discourse is. There’s a ton of great information and it’s a safe place for constructive conversation. **What do you dislike about Discourse?** Honestly I have no complaints although sometimes it can be difficult to find the threads I am looking to join. **What problems is Discourse solving and how is that benefiting you?** Discourse has allowed my business to gain insight and feedback from other professionals and customers ### 46. Perfect for forums **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Kensei K. | Service Desk analyst, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 28, 2019 **What do you like best about Discourse?** Easy to use and has the functionalities I need **What do you dislike about Discourse?** The minimum requirements to use are a bit high so if you have old devices it’s sometimes not comaptible **What problems is Discourse solving and how is that benefiting you?** We have been able to utilize the forum aspect very well and also make sure all our users can use the forums easily ### 47. Worth Your Exploration **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Briana Amirsharafi K. | Teacher , Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 28, 2019 **What do you like best about Discourse?** This platform,does as promised.It allows you to participate in online forums and discussions,with ease. **What do you dislike about Discourse?** I don’t have anything negative to say about the app. **What problems is Discourse solving and how is that benefiting you?** With access to various forums,I’m able to seek the input of other educators.It has put me in contact with those that I wouldn’t have met before. ### 48. Great way to connect **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Design | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 28, 2019 **What do you like best about Discourse?** Easy to use. My partners love this product because of it's accessibility and layout **What do you dislike about Discourse?** There is really not too much that we don't like. We enjoy this thoroughly. **What problems is Discourse solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are able to communicate easier within our community to talk about whatever issues arise. Good for quick communicate and feedback ### 49. Streamlined Modernized Software **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Apparel & Fashion | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 28, 2019 **What do you like best about Discourse?** Easy to log on, summarizes and condenses threads, blocks unwanted spam threats, is modern and versitile **What do you dislike about Discourse?** The pricing tiers are a tad on the expensive side **Recommendations to others considering Discourse:** Easy and friendly software in which streamlines various needs - all while at the office or on the go **What problems is Discourse solving and how is that benefiting you?** Streamlining our needs in Marketing; i.e.: Direct mailers, etc. all while satisfying the needs in other areas so that we can focus on other main criteria for business **Official Response from André Sousa:** > Thank you for your review and for sharing what you like best about Discourse. We're glad to hear that the software is easy to use, modern, and versatile. Regarding pricing, we understand that it may seem a tad on the expensive side, but we believe it is competitive with other similar software in the market. We also offer a range of pricing tiers to fit different needs and budgets. We're happy to hear that Discourse has been able to streamline your needs in marketing, such as direct mailers, while allowing you to focus on other main criteria for your business. Thank you for choosing Discourse and please let us know if you have any further feedback or suggestions. ### 50. open source discussion platform **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Government Administration | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 28, 2019 **What do you like best about Discourse?** Private and Public Threads make it possible to have as much transparency, privacy **What do you dislike about Discourse?** Mailing List Mode is very powerful but it's a bit tiresome to set-up consistently  **Recommendations to others considering Discourse:** Discourse is perfect for communities and basically the best forum software out there.  **What problems is Discourse solving and how is that benefiting you?** Conversations can be tracked easier without the risk of being lost in a sea of messages as people tend to construct their posts more carefully than on any workspace messenger. **Official Response from André Sousa:** > Thank you for sharing your thoughts and experiences with Discourse! It's great to hear that you appreciate the platform's ability to balance transparency and privacy through its private and public thread options. While setting up Mailing List Mode may be a bit tedious, it's good to know that the feature is still very powerful. Your recommendation to consider Discourse for communities is helpful, and it's great to hear that the platform has been beneficial for you in terms of easier conversation tracking and more thoughtful post-construction. Overall, it sounds like you have had a positive experience with Discourse, and we appreciate you taking the time to provide your feedback. ## Discourse Discussions - [How do I set up a forum discourse?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/how-do-i-set-up-a-forum-discourse) - 1 comment - [How much does Discourse cost?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/how-much-does-discourse-cost) - 1 comment - [What is a discourse server?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-a-discourse-server) - 1 comment - [What is discourse app?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-discourse-app) - 1 comment - [View Discourse pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/discourse/reviews?section=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-05-22+02%3A46%3A24+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=ce8117ee-b43b-4d40-97da-d1e45fc4bea3&secure%5Btoken%5D=f19520b264d4e3eaa71c389455dc6799dd19e389b8844620ff8789a3c7974fad&format=llm_user) ## Discourse Features **Account Options** - Single Sign-On (SSO) - Social Login - Reputation System - Topic Subscription - Bookmarking - History **Knowledge Pages** - In-Content Feedback - Versioning and Version History - Decision Trees - Duplicate Detection - Content Editor **Community Building** - Member Profiles - Email & Notifications - Member Discovery - Member Referrals - Community Spaces - Paid Memberships - Multimedia Sharing - Courses **Knowledge Base** - Q & A - Link Sharing - Searchable **Q&A Tools** - Tags - Commenting System - Notifications - Voting - Integrations - Knowledge Integrations - Formatting - Analytics **Knowledge Dissemination** - Page Analytics - Permissions - Knowledge Sharing - Notifications - Advanced Search - Organization - Other Integrations - Knowledge Integrations **Community Improvement** - Gamification - Polls & Questions - Automation Rules **Security** - Verification - Role-Based Permission - Public vs Private **Agentic AI - Knowledge Base** - Adaptive Learning - Natural Language Interaction - Proactive Assistance **Customer Analytics** - Community Insights - Community Engagement Analytics - Downloadable Reports - ROI Tracking **Content** - Trackable Analytics - Import - File Viewing - Update Notifications **Community Management** - Community Feeds & Discussions - Live Streaming - Chat & Messaging - Events Management - Admin Roles & Permissions **Communication** - Social Features - Tagging - Upload - Comments **Agentic AI - Online Community Management** - Autonomous Task Execution - Multi-step Planning - Cross-system Integration - Natural Language Interaction - Proactive Assistance - Decision Making ## Top Discourse Alternatives - [Bettermode](https://www.g2.com/products/bettermode/reviews) - 4.6/5.0 (115 reviews) - [Higher Logic Thrive](https://www.g2.com/products/higher-logic-thrive/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (427 reviews) - [Mighty Networks](https://www.g2.com/products/mighty-networks/reviews) - 4.6/5.0 (673 reviews)