The best free Meetup alternatives for organisers

Meetup is a great place to be discovered, but running a group there means paying an organiser subscription and sharing your members with a marketplace of other groups. If you would rather own your community, here are the main alternatives.

ClubCP

A free platform built for clubs: your own branded page, events with ticketing and check-in, memberships, and member messaging, with every feature included. Best if you want to run and grow your own community rather than rely on a marketplace.

Facebook Groups

Free and familiar, but you do not own the audience, there is no real ticketing or memberships, and members see ads and unrelated content. Fine for chat, weak for running events.

Eventbrite

Strong for one-off ticketed events, but it charges per-ticket fees and does not give you an ongoing club home. Better as a ticketing tool than a community platform.

Which should you pick?

If discovery in Meetup's marketplace is your whole model, stay on Meetup. If you want to own your members and run events without a subscription, a purpose-built free platform is the better home.