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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 still mostly 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.

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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.

TalkyardDiscourse

Price and Hosting

Price per month€4 – €12 per coworker ("/c")$20 – $500 in total
External usersUnmeteredUnmetered
Install on-premiseOpen source (open core)Open source
Custom domain4/c$100
Automatic upgrades
If on-premise. SaaS always auto upgrades.
Yes
One-click upgradesYes

Authentication

Password + email login4/c$20
Social login4/c$100
Social login, even more$100
Guest login4/c
OpenID Connect (OIDC)4/c$500
Microsoft ActiveDirectory4/c$500
Microsoft AD FSvia OIDC?$500
Oktavia OIDC$500
SAMLcontact sales
Require 2FA$20

Groups & Permissions

Private forum4/c$20
Public forum4/c$20
User groups4/c$20
Configure group
Configure everyone in a group at the same time, e.g. subscribe them to a category.
4/c$20
Self-managing groupsYes
Permission system
Grant read and write permissions on categories to user groups.
4/c$20

Teamworking

Assign tasks4/c$500
Ask a team
Post a question to a user group, without knowing who is the best person to ask.
4/c$20
Calendar
Show e.g. events and team availability.
$500
User notes
Attach internal notes to users
$500
Templates
Save common replies for repeated use.
$500

Blog comments

Blog comments4/c$20
Sort Best First4/c
Read More widgetyes?
Many comment areas, same page4/c
Search4/c$20

Discussions & Content

Tags4/c$20
Hierarchical tags$20
Tags with searchable values4/c
Categories4/c$20
Search4/c$20

Large Discussions

Sub threads4/c
Find latest comments4/c$20
Jump to parent comment & back4/c
Expand quotes and replies$20
Summarize large topics4/c (very basic)$20

Q&A and Knowledge Base

Questions and Answers4/c$100
Anonymous Questions4/c$20
Articles4/c$20
Wikify posts4/c$20

Ideation

Sort ideas by upvotes4/c$500
Anonymous ideas
So you won't judge an idea based on who posted it.
4/c$20

Chat

Basic chat4/c$20

Misc widgets

Link previews4/c (limited)$20
Load more on scroll$20
Hide spoilers$20
Embeddable polls$20
Reactions$20
Read More widgetyes?
Related content suggestions$20

Gamification

Gamification badges$20
Create your own gamification badges$20

Notifications

Email notifications4/c$20
Desktop notifications$20

Integrations

Read API4/c$100
Write API4/c$100
Slack$100
Microsoft Teams$500
GitHub$100
Webhooks4/c$100
Automations
Automate workflows with scripts and triggers.
$500

Custom themes

Custom colors and logos4/c (edit CSS)$20
Custom themes4/c (edit CSS)$100
Custom sidebar$20

Analytics

Usage and adoption metrics$20
Audience analytis$20

Support

Support via forum€0$0
Support within approx a business day4/c$20
Business hours support12/c min €300$500
On-call support, weekends & holidayscontact salescontact sales
Uptime SLAcontact salescontact sales
Customer Success Managercontact salescontact sales

Security and Compliance

SOC 2 Certificationyes?

Monetize

Subscriptions
Sell subscriptions that grant access to your forum.
$100
Make money via ads$100