Talkyard — a Discourse alternative
Discourse (www.discourse.org) is discussion forum software, 100% open source (GitHub repo) and with many contributors, more features than Talkyard (see comparison below), more integrations, and a plugin ecosystem. It has better support and uptime guarantees than Talkyard. A bigger company, less risky.
Talkyard works better for larger discussions. That's because it's threaded, so when people start talking about slightly different things in the same main discussion, they still don't interfere with each other.
Talkyard is also, we think, better for discussing ideas and making decisions together: You can sort comments so the more insightful ones appear first (rather than the oldest ones). Then, everyone gets a better understanding of reasons for and against. Likewise, with Question-Answers: In Talkyard, the good answers surface to the top; they're the first you'll see.
There are also partly implemented anti-cognitive biases features that deal with things like group think, anchoring bias, appeal-to-authority. (This builds upon anonymous posts done "the right way" [1].)
Discourse can be, on the other hand, simpler to use, since it's flat (not threaded).
Both Discourse and Talkyard have chat channels, but Talkyard's chat is a bit unimplemented, and Discourse's chat isn't searchable (Jan 2025). Discourse has a nice sidebar where you can add custom links. Talkyard lets admins reconfigure everyone in a group, by editing the group — which is nice, if there're say 100 group members.
An analogy: You could say that Talkyard is more like having a subreddit or StackOverflow community at your website, while Discourse is more like having a thoughtful and slow paced chat at your website.
[1] Anon-posts-in-a-good-way could be a whole blog post, in itself.***
Discourse's prices below are from www.discourse.org,
Jan 2025. (Tell us if you find errors? support@talkyard.io)
There's also Communiteq
which provide Discourse hosting for $20 – $100, unlimited admins & members.
Price and Hosting
If on-premise. SaaS always auto upgrades.Yes
Authentication
Groups & Permissions
Configure everyone in a group at the same time, e.g. subscribe them to a category.€4/c$20
Grant read and write permissions on categories to user groups.€4/c$20
Teamworking
Post a question to a user group, without knowing who is the best person to ask.€4/c$20
Show e.g. events and team availability.–$500
Attach internal notes to users–$500
Save common replies for repeated use.–$500
Blog comments
Discussions & Content
Large Discussions
Q&A and Knowledge Base
Ideation
So you won't judge an idea based on who posted it.€4/c$20
Chat
Misc widgets
Gamification
Notifications
Integrations
Automate workflows with scripts and triggers.–$500
Custom themes
Analytics
Support
Security and Compliance
Monetize
Sell subscriptions that grant access to your forum.–$100