Discourse vs Open Social

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.

Open Social is a community collaboration platform for organizations connecting and working across their communities. Its suite has six products: Community Management System, Cloud Platform, Gaia AI, Engagement Studio, Connection Hub and Lumina Insights. The Community Management System supports custom roles, permissions and organizational arrangements, including complex, multi-layered structures. Gaia AI assists with workflows, content moderation and advanced search. Connection Hub connects with external systems such as Salesforce and Snowflake, and supports GraphQL, webhooks, Kafka and no-code Zapier connections. An optional Document Collaboration Suite enables real-time co-editing of documents, spreadsheets, presentations and drawings in formats including docx, xlsx, pptx, odf and visio. A branded native app for iOS and Android is also available as an add-on, with push notifications. The core Community Management System is free in the Drupal community; its SaaS subscription adds hosting, other products and professional services. SaaS customers can receive enterprise services, and an on-premise hosting option is described for organizations with infrastructure requirements. The maker identifies Amsterdam as its base and says it is ISO 27001 certified.