Discourse vs Invision Community

Discourse is community software for hosting discussions, with options to self-host or use managed hosting. It supports private spaces, event hosting, custom domains and moderation tools, and its codebase is freely available on GitHub. The free plan costs nothing and includes unlimited members, 2 staff seats, 500k monthly page views, 20k monthly emails, 10 categories and 5GB storage. Pro costs $100 a month and includes 5 staff seats, 500k monthly page views, 100k monthly emails, unlimited categories and 20GB storage. Business costs $500 a month, with 15 staff seats, priority support, standard migration services and 100GB storage. Enterprise pricing is custom; it includes unlimited staff seats, 1M+ monthly page views, 1.5M+ monthly emails and 200GB+ storage. Enterprise also includes SSO, SAML, enterprise authentication and a 99.9% uptime guarantee. Paid plans have a 14-day trial, and hosting plans require no credit card up front. Integrations include GitHub, chat providers, Zendesk and authentication providers. Support options range from community help to email support and professional services.

Invision Community combines discussion forums, publishing, event management, media galleries, webinars and other community tools. Its drag-and-drop page builder makes pages from prebuilt or custom content blocks without coding. Course features include lessons, progression paths, certificates, badges and quizzes. Administrators can use group permissions to control access to forums, clubs and pages, including paid membership tiers. Integrations include a REST API, real-time webhooks, a Zapier connection to 8,000+ apps and built-in options; developer documentation also describes GraphQL APIs with API key or OAuth authentication. The platform is available on the web, iOS, Android and as self-hosted software. Cloud customers can choose US or EU data storage depending on plan; cloud plans include TLS (HTTPS) and official support, though response times are not guaranteed. Self-hosted Classic requires a compatible server, secure PHP with GD and mbstring, and MySQL, which customers operate themselves. Classic costs $499, paid once, then 199.00 USD/year for updates. Invision Community is paid, has no free plan, and offers a 30-day trial.