Why I'm Moving My Meetups to OpenMeet

I'm moving my meetup groups from meetup.com to OpenMeet, a free, open-source alternative. If you're a member, you'll get the new links from me. The events themselves aren't changing.

This isn't a crusade. It's a personal decision about money and trust. I thought some people might be thinking through the same issues.

The bill

My last renewal, on September 2, was $178.99 for six months, plus tax: $191.52. That's $383.04 a year to host free hobby groups.

That's about an 81% increase on the same plan. Meetup now advertises lower "starting from" prices, but those are for new organizers. Long-time organizers renew at the higher rate. Loyalty, apparently, is a billable feature.

Who's sending the bill

Bending Spoons bought Meetup in January 2024. They aren't technically a private equity firm, and they've been publicly traded on Nasdaq since July. But they run a recognizable playbook: buy an established product with a loyal user base, cut staff, raise prices. Evernote, FiLMiC, WeTransfer, Vimeo, and now Eventbrite have all been through it. Meetup's first organizer price increase since 2019 arrived about five months after the deal closed.

To be fair, "new owner" doesn't automatically mean "higher prices." A large study of private equity buyouts of consumer products found prices barely moved (about 1%), and the growth came from new products instead. What predicts the squeeze isn't who owns the company; it's how stuck the customers are.

In my field guide to traps, Meetup is a hostage situation wearing a subscription trap. The members are there, so leaving is a collective-action problem, and the organizer pays the rent. Organizers are the most trapped people in the system: we can't leave without asking every member to follow us. That's exactly the situation where raising prices works.

The new terms

Meetup's updated terms take effect November 1. What changed is narrower than some posts online claim. The broad license to your content and the "you indemnify us" clause have been there for years. What's new is that the contract is now with an Italian company, Bending Spoons Operations S.p.A., and the arbitration rules make it more expensive to push back, especially as a group. There are new fee-shifting provisions, penalties for turning down a settlement offer, and a "bellwether" process that slows down mass claims.

None of that is a smoking gun. It's a direction, and the direction is "you'll pay more, and you'll have less recourse when you don't like it."

What I'm doing instead

OpenMeet is free for organizers, open source (Apache 2.0), and built by frustrated Meetup users. You can sign in with a Bluesky/AT Protocol identity, export your data, or even run your own instance.

But free things die too. OpenMeet runs on donations, and its hosting costs about $350 a month. So I'm putting part of what I used to pay Meetup toward OpenMeet instead. Paying a little to a tool I trust beats paying a lot to one I don't.

If you organize a group and Meetup works for you, keep using it. I'm not trying to convert anyone. But if you've been staring at your renewal notice and wincing, you have options.

Come join us

Both of my groups meet online, so you can join from anywhere. If either sounds like your kind of thing, come say hi:

• Virtual Nonfiction Book Club: we read and talk about nonfiction books.
• Virtual Board Games: we play board games online.

Sources