Discourse vs Scoold
Discourse
discourse.orgScoold
scoold.comSide by side
| Figure | Discourse | Scoold |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $100/mo | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | — | Yes |
| API | — | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 5 | 3 |
| Spec score · Customer Community Software | 8.9 (#4) | 7.9 (#14) |
| Data ownership | Discourse says users own their community and data and can export everything anytime. | The maker describes Scoold as self-hosted and says users can keep their data on their own infrastructure. |
| Founded | 2013 | 2008 |
| Available integrations | Integrations include GitHub, chat providers, Zendesk, and authentication providers. | The maker lists Slack, Microsoft Teams, Mattermost, Zapier, and n8n integrations; chat integrations are marked Pro. |
Plans
Discourse
- FreeFree
- Pro$100 a month
- Business$500 a month
- EnterprisePriced on request
- Free planFree
In their own words
Discourse
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.
Scoold
Scoold is a self-hosted Q&A platform, forum, and knowledge base for teams. It can support team knowledge bases, community forums, developer hubs, support centers, Q&A platforms, and issue trackers. Members can ask and answer questions, vote on posts, earn badges and reputation, and review edit history. Full-text search covers indexed content, while posts can include Markdown, media, files, code snippets, and syntax highlighting.
Scoold provides a RESTful JSON API described with an OpenAPI specification. Listed integrations include Slack, Microsoft Teams, Mattermost, Zapier, and n8n; chat integrations are Pro features. Identity options include LDAP, social login, and two-factor authentication, while Pro adds SAML 2.0 SSO, SCIM, and custom authentication. It can be deployed as a JAR or Docker setup on an operating system with Java 21 or higher and a Para backend. The free plan allows up to 10 spaces, 1 admin, and 1 whitelisted identity domain. Scoold Pro is €499, paid once; Pro + Source is €1,999, paid once.