Discourse vs Sugester

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.

Sugester combines CRM, helpdesk, live chat, project management, knowledge base, forum, email, and VoIP features. Its CRM keeps customer profiles and interaction history, with recurring reminders, customer grouping, reports, and deal tracking. The helpdesk gathers email, phone calls, and other messages in a unified inbox where teams can assign tickets and use canned responses. Website chat can show visitors in real time, send push notifications, and collect offline messages. Teams can assign tasks, arrange them into projects and subprojects, and track completion time. The maker lists integrations including Shopify, WooCommerce, Gmail, Mailgun, Plivo, WordPress, eBay, GitHub, Dropbox, and Mailchimp, and links to API documentation. The cloud app runs in a browser without installation or setup; a self-hosted version is available by inquiry and requires at least 8 GB RAM, Ubuntu Server, nginx, and MySQL. The free plan is described as lasting indefinitely, and a 30-day trial requires no credit card. Paid plans start at $12 a month.