
Meetup Payment Changes - Xylakant
https://www.meetup.com/lp/paymentchanges?mpId=9038
======
andygrunwald
I am an organizer of a Web Engineering Meetup in Düsseldorf, Germany, for > 6
years ([https://www.meetup.com/Web-Engineering-
Duesseldorf/](https://www.meetup.com/Web-Engineering-Duesseldorf/)). We run
the event every month, with 50 up to 90 people. Indeed, our no-show rate is
something between 40% and 50%. This is heavy, but we know it and calculate it
in.

We run the complete meetup non-profit. Never put a euro in. Never got a euro
out — everything based on sponsors. Our motivation is to learn, share
knowledge, and have fun together. And we want to make it accessible for
everyone to learn about web engineering.

Switching to the new cost model will reduce the no-show rate, but makes it
1000% times less accessible. In my opinion, Meetup.com is creating a higher
barrier to enter a community. If we, the organizers, would pay for the
attendees, we would pay 100$ up to 180$ every month. We have no interest to
afford this.

Furthermore, what I don't get: Meetup is charging a lot of money for thousands
of groups. The web platform is stale for>2 years. The last major feature was a
facelift in design. But no feature that helps the organizers or users. The iOS
app had some releases, but the app is far from a great UX. Flaky everywhere. I
ask myself: What is this company doing? Where does all the money go?

Friends who run similar groups are thinking already to move away. Many people
from the US think the same.

I think this tweet sums it up:
[https://twitter.com/obfuscurity/status/1183831607821656068](https://twitter.com/obfuscurity/status/1183831607821656068)

~~~
tobiasgies
We have a hackathon coming up at work. I smell a project idea.

~~~
Xylakant
There’s [https://github.com/phoet/on_ruby](https://github.com/phoet/on_ruby)
which is the software used by a few ruby meetups in Berlin and other cities.
It’s a bit bare-bones but relatively simple to host.

------
mikece
While there is definite truth that paying even $1 to RSVP for an event cuts
RSVP no-shows significantly, I don't see this flying when members of meetups
are accustomed to paying exactly ZERO to attend events.

If there isn't an open source alternative to meetup.com now would be the time
to create one, and if you want to create The Winner then have your meetup
replacement able to federate with other (using ActivityPub?) to replace the
"members of this group also join these groups" network effect that makes
meetup.com so popular.

------
twic
I help run a discussion group that meets twice a month and gets about 30
people each time. We have no problem with no-shows (partly because some people
turn up without RSVPing!).

Charging attendees a fee will keep people away in droves, not because they
can't afford it, but because who can be bothered to go through a payment flow
just to go to a meetup?

If we choose the "cover members’ fees" option, that's an extra $120 a month in
fees. Which makes the "you'll be saving at least 80% annually on subscription
fees" particularly insulting.

Probably what we'll do is keep the Meetup page, and just tell people not to
bother RSVPing. We can always run a Google form for that if numbers are a
problem.

------
Geeflow
Thanks to all the people posting alternative / open source solutions!

What is often missed, though, is that Meetup provides more than the software.
The real killer feature of Meetup is the audience.

I know of no other place where it is so easy to gather people. Just post a new
event and people will notice and sign up.

If you switch to a self-hosted solution you will have to find an audience
through other channels. Which, for many Meetups, is quite the challenge.
Remember "build it and they will come"? Same applies to events. "Set a date
and they will come" \- doesn't work that way unless you have an existing
audience.

Personally I don't mind paying 2$ to attend a meetup. The old/existing pricing
model seemed much smarter for everyone involved though. Organizers pay to get
access to the audience. The audience pays nothing so that the audience, the
real value, can be maximized. I hope that they won't destroy their value with
this move...

------
generalseven
Buried at the bottom of their FAQ:

"This change won't affect a number of groups such as Pro Networks and Non-
Profits."

Assuming this means that most of the small community-driven groups will be
unaffected by the change.

Still, this is clearly a communication fail, as well as a cardinal sin for
usability:

By charging users to RSVP yes, they are literally putting a tax directly on a
key engagement activity for the whole site.

I also agree with the comment that Meetup has done a poor job of improving
itself. The "design facelift" they did 2 years ago negatively affected the
growth of our group, and they haven't added much value since then.

A better approach would be to take 15% of ticket sales done through the site
in a way that could improve engagement and revenue.

Meetup may have a well-deserved PR hailstorm for this.

~~~
twic
I _think_ "non-profits" means something more specific than "community-driven"
\- if i look at what is included locally, it's stuff with a clear
charity/social focus:

[https://www.meetup.com/topics/nonprofit/gb/17/london/](https://www.meetup.com/topics/nonprofit/gb/17/london/)

------
enraged_camel
I run multiple local meetups.

This is a crazy change, and definitely bad.

The overwhelming majority of members I've spoken to say they are going to stop
RSVP'ing, which would basically kill the platform.

I know with WeWork circling the drain, Meetup is desperate for additional
revenue, but this seems like a bad move.

------
serial_dev
I'm organizing Flutter meetups in Munich, Germany, for almost a year now
([https://www.meetup.com/Flutter-Munich](https://www.meetup.com/Flutter-
Munich)). I was so excited about building the largest Flutter community in
Germany. We have plenty of upcoming events already in the pipeline. I didn't
even think about their organizers' fee, I just paid it and considered it a
small investment in my career and a fun experiment.

The events were always free for the attendees. I'd organize the event for
free, the hosting companies would provide dinner and free drinks. The speakers
talk for free and my co-organizers help me out for free. No money changes
hands ever. The hosting companies were never pushy about their team or
product.

My biggest fear with corporate moves like this isn't that people wouldn't be
able to afford the two dollars. It's less than a coffee in a cheap bakery. _My
fear is that users just stop using meetup because of the "micropayments UX",
then management decides one day that they shut down in 2 weeks._

It's not the two dollars. It's about potential attendees having to go through
the annoying payment process (and based on the current meetup.com user
experience and feature set on all platforms, I bet they won't get it right).
And no, I'm not going to pay 200 dollars/month from my pocket. Attendees will
stop visiting their website soon enough, anyway: I already received emails
from other meetup groups that they are shutting down. It's a spiral: fewer
groups want to deal with this, fewer users will register, fewer events will
get organized, the users who didn't mind paying originally will have less
events to choose from, they stop visiting the site and so on...

I'm not interested in running a self-hosted open-source clone. I don't want to
handle user data, run servers (even if it's just firing up a container). I'd
also miss out completely on the network effect. Nobody would find my clone
website.

The no-show rate was never an issue and I organized small study jams with 20
attendees to tech meetups with 80-100 people. You just count the number of
people that registered and that actually showed up, and use this number for
future events. You've got 100 registrations, you'll have between 50-70 people
showing up. Very easy to plan with it.

I also find it dishonest saying that it's going to actually save us money.
Yeah, because there will not be a group to lead, so yeah...

------
tckr
I've started to collect the open-source alternatives here:
[https://github.com/coderbyheart/open-source-meetup-
alternati...](https://github.com/coderbyheart/open-source-meetup-alternatives)

------
Xylakant
Making members of groups pay may have an unintended side effect on RSVPs:
organizers have payment info attached to their accts. However, as a user, even
if I’d be willing to pay, entering my CC data will make me much less likely to
go through.

------
Roritharr
Exciting, i miss the time when Meetup wasn't so dominant and you had small no
show rates there.

The new platforms that come up will bring new people in, always great!

------
andygrunwald
A friend of mine posted [https://kommunity.com/](https://kommunity.com/)

------
jbottoms
So, October 1, 2020? We use "years" here. That will be $2.

