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Discourse
Foster Vibrant Online Communities
4.0
(63)
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Discourse Reviews & Product Details

Discourse Overview
What is Discourse?

Discourse is a great tool for creating online forum experiences. The Discourse ecosystem is designed to be easy to use and user-friendly, with a range of features like spam blocking, moderation, and notifications. The open-source environment also integrates with tools like Slack, Zendesk, and WordPress. The platform supports convenient forum design and provides a range of native integrations, automatic trust systems, and a comprehensive reporting dashboard where users learn more forum trends to help them learn more about the audience and drive more insightful discussions.

Company Civilized Discourse Construction Kit, Inc.
Year founded 2013
Company size 11-50 employees
Headquarters New York, NY, USA
Social Media
Discourse Categories on Findstack
Ask Questions about Discourse
What Discourse is best for?
How does Discourse compare to Thinkific?
What are the pros and cons of Discourse?
Discourse Product Details
Capabilities
API
CLI
OSS
Segment
Small Business
Mid Market
Enterprise
Deployment Cloud / SaaS / Web-Based, On-Premise Linux
Training Documentation
Languages English
Discourse Pros and Cons
Pros
  • Open source environment gives users more control
  • Simple user interface for creators and forum users
  • Automatic trust system minimizes spam
Cons
  • Limited to only forum functionality
  • Open source environment requires coding knowledge.
Discourse Features
API Access
Activity Feed
Analytics and Reporting
Automated Workflows
Branding Customization
Content Library
Content Moderation
Content Scheduling
Customizable Profiles
Discussion Forums
Event Management
File Sharing
Gamification
Knowledge Base
Live Chat
Member Directory
Mobile Access
Multilingual Support
Notifications
Polls and Surveys
Private Messaging
Role-Based Permissions
SEO Tools
Search Functionality
Single Sign-On (SSO)
Subscription Management
Third-party Integrations
User Management
User Tagging
Video Conferencing
Discourse Media
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Discourse 1
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Discourse Screenshots
Disclaimer
Our research is curated from diverse authoritative sources and meant to offer general advice. We don’t guarantee that our suggestions will work best for each use-case, so consider your unique needs when choosing products and services. Feel free to share your feedback.
Last updated: October 11, 2024
Discourse Logo
63 Discourse Reviews
4.0 out of 5
Mid Market (51-1000 emp.)
Mar 08, 2023
 Source
Overall Rating:
5.0
Sara L. avatar
Sara L.
Founder
Share
"Discourse- the community platform you never knew you would love so much!"
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.

Small Business (50 or fewer emp.)
Jun 04, 2021
 Source
Overall Rating:
5.0
PR
Padraic R.
Community Manager
Share
"Discourse Review"
What do you like best about Discourse?

Not provided

What do you dislike about Discourse?

Not provided

What problems is Discourse solving and how is that benefiting you?

Not provided

Small Business (50 or fewer emp.)
May 26, 2021
 Source
Overall Rating:
5.0
TM
Teddy M.
Tech Administrator & Support Team
Share
"Discourse - An amazing platform"
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.

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.

Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)
Jan 31, 2019
 Source
Overall Rating:
5.0
KA
Kimberly A.
Mrs.
Share
"Best for community solutions"
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.

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.

Small Business (50 or fewer emp.)
Jan 28, 2019
 Source
Overall Rating:
5.0
MP
Monali P.
Clinical Research Assistant
Share
"Great online chat system"
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

Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)
Jan 28, 2019
 Source
Overall Rating:
5.0
JG
John G.
Senior Digital Programs Marketing Manager – Audience Acquisition & Engagement
Share
"Discourse is the best there is - it has no competition"
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.

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.

Small Business (50 or fewer emp.)
Mar 14, 2023
 Source
Overall Rating:
4.5
SL
Sarah L.
Founder
Share
"Truly a place to build civilized conversations- with lots of customizations!"
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.

Mid Market (51-1000 emp.)
Mar 03, 2023
 Source
Overall Rating:
4.5
MC
Michael C.
Talent Acquisition Partner
Share
"Great for community discussions and announcements"
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.

Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)
Sep 25, 2022
 Source
Overall Rating:
4.5
FS
Filippo S.
Multilingual Support Specialist
Share
"Well structured discussion forum"
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

Mid Market (51-1000 emp.)
Jan 28, 2019
 Source
Overall Rating:
4.5
CN
Chris N.
Graduate Research Assistant
Share
"My Discourse Review"
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.

Small Business (50 or fewer emp.)
Jan 28, 2019
 Source
Overall Rating:
4.5
CK
Collin K.
Tax Intern
Share
"Discourse is a great software! "
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.

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.

Mid Market (51-1000 emp.)
Sep 22, 2018
 Source
Overall Rating:
4.5
JA
Jeremy A.
Project Engineer
Share
"Excellent forum software"
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.

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.

Small Business (50 or fewer emp.)
Jan 28, 2019
 Source
Overall Rating:
4.0
LS
Lsommer S.
B.A.
Share
"Discourse is an excellent communication toolset for team projects."
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.

Mid Market (51-1000 emp.)
Jan 28, 2019
 Source
Overall Rating:
4.0
Chris B. avatar
Chris B.
Songwriter And Recording Artist
Share
"Great for sharing news, ideas, and updates"
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.

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.

Small Business (50 or fewer emp.)
Jan 19, 2018
 Source
Overall Rating:
4.0
Brian G. avatar
Brian G.
Content Producer And Art Manger
Share
"Discourse for document and information organization"
What do you like best about Discourse?

I really like the ability to tag (add categories) articles and easily search by and organize those tags. The ability to sort the page by newest posts versus a more traditional Category listing is also great. The badges you earn when doing things in Discourse don't do anything, but they are a fun touch.

What do you dislike about Discourse?

Haven't found a way to edit/remove tags/categories. For example, if you've misspelled something, even if you don't use that tag, it still shows up in the list.

What problems is Discourse solving and how is that benefiting you?

We had best practice documents in Dropbox, in Google docs, on various internal servers. Information was all over the place. Discourse was a good, inexpensive way to bring it all together in one centralized place that's easy to search and find.

Small Business (50 or fewer emp.)
Nov 09, 2017
 Source
Overall Rating:
4.0
LP
Luis P.
Partner And International Market Executive
Share
"Simples to setup and put into practice"
What do you like best about Discourse?

The process of setting it up and getting things started was very easy and practical. It has a modern approach to the interface and things are quite intuitive.

What do you dislike about Discourse?

Sometimes it feels quite disorganized. Items of discussion start to "pile up" in the main view. Gives that kind of feeling of having a lot of emails that you haven't responded to yet.

What problems is Discourse solving and how is that benefiting you?

We are using discourse as our main platform for internal discussions, in other words, a intranet forum. The main benefits are to provide an open and simples place for people to discuss ideas.

Mid Market (51-1000 emp.)
Jan 28, 2019
 Source
Overall Rating:
3.5
SV
Sahil V.
Business System Analyst Ii
Share
"Best for online forums "
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.

Mid Market (51-1000 emp.)
Jan 28, 2019
 Source
Overall Rating:
3.5
KL
Krys L.
Product Manager
Share
"Great Forum Software!!!"
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.

Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)
Jan 28, 2019
 Source
Overall Rating:
3.5
VT
Victor T.
Técnico Senior Tech Center
Share
"One of the best open source softwares to inet forums."
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.

What problems is Discourse solving and how is that benefiting you?

I use to test it only.

Mid Market (51-1000 emp.)
Jan 28, 2019
 Source
Overall Rating:
3.5
SV
Sonya V.
Mortgage Broker
Share
"Excellent!"
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.

What problems is Discourse solving and how is that benefiting you?

Discourse is not very expensive, turned out pretty handy for us, would recommend.