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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
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Crevio
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5.0

( 1 )

Free plan available
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Ask Questions about Discourse
What Discourse is best for?
How does Discourse compare to Skool?
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
Discourse 0
Discourse 1
Discourse 2
Discourse 3
Discourse Screenshots
Discourse screenshot 1
Discourse screenshot 2
Discourse screenshot 3
Discourse screenshot 4
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: December 09, 2025
Discourse Logo
63 Discourse Reviews
4.0 out of 5
Small Business (50 or fewer emp.)
Jan 28, 2019
 Source
Overall Rating:
4.5
AG
Verified Reviewer
Founder
Share
"Discourse is a from-scratch reboot, an attempt to reimagine what a modern Internet discussion forum "
What do you like best about Discourse?

Discourse pares all the complexity away and puts just the essential stuff on screen – the conversations you care most about, based on your participation.

What do you dislike about Discourse?

There is nothing I dislike about this product.

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

defend itself from trolls, bad actors, and spammers — and the most engaged forum members can assist in the governance of their community.

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.

Mid Market (51-1000 emp.)
May 17, 2022
 Source
Overall Rating:
4.0
AG
Verified Reviewer
Founder
Share
"Discourse"
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

Mid Market (51-1000 emp.)
Jan 28, 2019
 Source
Overall Rating:
4.0
AG
Verified Reviewer
Founder
Share
"Great Overall, Customization takes time"
What do you like best about Discourse?

There are several great things about this platform. You can assign TL (trust levels) to users, and you can use this system to onboard moderators, additional admins, and other people to help manage your community. You can organize topics, threads, and categories in nearly any way you want, and the system setup is pretty elaborate.

What do you dislike about Discourse?

The way the replies system is set up, the conversation can get convoluted easily, and can lead to quickly derailing conversations. Also, to add features like a "solved!" Button to threads that ask for help with something, has to be a external integration. The search function is highly indexed, and unless you have a keyword or know exactly what you are searching the forum for, you might get lost in the forum queue.

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

As a freelancer, I'm a professional moderator. I specialize in creating, managing, and maintaining forums and online communinities. I use discourse to help administrate users in a forum-style setting. The discourse design is optimized for discussion, which means that topics get old quickly - discourse makes sure those old topics get pushed to the back, and make space for the new topics.

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.

Mid Market (51-1000 emp.)
Jan 28, 2019
 Source
Overall Rating:
4.0
AG
Verified Reviewer
Founder
Share
"Simply futuristic! A revolutionary way to manage your own virtual community!"
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.

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.

Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)
Jan 28, 2019
 Source
Overall Rating:
4.0
AG
Verified Reviewer
Founder
Share
"Open Source for Forums - Discourse"
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.

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.

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
AG
Verified Reviewer
Founder
Share
"One of the best forum software out there"
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.

Small Business (50 or fewer emp.)
Jan 28, 2019
 Source
Overall Rating:
4.0
AG
Verified Reviewer
Founder
Share
"Discourse Review"
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.

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.