Discourse Pros and Cons

Discourse was very straightforward to install, the Let's Encrypt integration is amazing. Discourse is an amazing platform with even more of an amazing design. My team enjoyed using it a lot. The cost of running is also very small. Overall it is a great experience. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I didn't really like that you can't deploy Discourse without a domain. It was very hard for me to use Discourse with my mail server at first, although I quickly got around that by using the numerous Discoruse tutorials available. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like the searchability of Discourse. It gives us a way to find answers to previously answered questions asynchronously. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I don't have anything I don't like about Discourse. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Simple to use and read. It presents a simple list of discussions with suitable categories, as opposed to cluttered sub-forums that divide discussions. It provides a easy and effective way to highlight and pin topics and identify active discussions. Users can even hide certain categories they are not interested in.

Creating and replying to topics is a great experience and has editor support. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

This might be a quibble, but at times the UI can be perceived as cluttered, disorganized. Also, one cannot hide categories that you don’t frequent, and you can’t block users that pester you. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It is a open source software, where the main topics can be discussed orderly. It doesn't matter how big or small the project is, you'll find the adequate tool to find a solution and talk about it within your community or the people you want to reach. For example, you'll be able to do surveys, bookmark, chat and keep track of your main interests. It's not only easy to host, but also easy to follow up. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It's a relatively new forum, where people aren't used to the privacy terms, for example, private messages not being private to the admin. Also, constant updates means interface changes, you need to adapt. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Discourse is already amazing. Yet, the pace of development is staggering.

You can interact directly with the co-founders, developers, and the rest of the Discourse community at meta.discourse.org. That's something you probably won't get with any other community software!

As an open source project, the level of innovation and collaboration from multiple stakeholders appears to be well beyond what any private company could sustain.

Discourse is fast, modern, and easy to use. It can handle a small community and scale to work with millions of people.

It is incredibly simple to moderate and serve as the admin for a Discourse community.

The ability to integrate Discourse with other platforms is advanced and convenient.

You absolutely have to spin up a version of Discourse and try it out before making a decision. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Whenever I have a complaint, I can bring it to the Discourse community at meta.discourse.org and see if others agree. When the concern is shared, the Discourse team will work to improve the product within months. Any dislikes about Discourse get resolved in a relatively short time. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Probably the best feature of this software is its being open source. Allows seamless integration into other platforms, and lets you customize it to fit your specific needs, which is a unique feature compared to other similar softwares. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Sometimes managing the thread can lead to disarray and makes it a bit disorganized. The organization of the thread can use a better format.

Additionally, some features require external integration to be added in order to function. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

We know discourse isn't the most robust forum software out there, but for the price, it does very well! Keeping things organized is incredibly easy - especially if you're wanting to have posts grouped by specific topics as well. The moderation customization is surprisingly robust though - you can assign key individuals specific roles that you want them to perform, and what abilities they'll be able to have while in the forum. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Wish it was more robust. There are other forum solutions out there, but they were all at exorbitant prices and required dev-level setup. Discourse integrated with our CRM and our support software, which were two of the big things we needed. But I wish you could customize more around the posts and folders. Meaning, you could add up-votes/down-votes to certain tickets/bugs. Or assign a post to a specific moderator using logic. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There are several great things about this platform. You can assign TL (trust levels) to users, and you can use this system to onboard moderators, additional admins, and other people to help manage your community. You can organize topics, threads, and categories in nearly any way you want, and the system setup is pretty elaborate. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The way the replies system is set up, the conversation can get convoluted easily, and can lead to quickly derailing conversations. Also, to add features like a "solved!" Button to threads that ask for help with something, has to be a external integration. The search function is highly indexed, and unless you have a keyword or know exactly what you are searching the forum for, you might get lost in the forum queue. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The Discourse UI is clean and intuitive and very easy to get the hang of. Having had no prior experience with it, I was able to pick it up in a relatively short timeframe. Makes communication a breeze , and the customization options are wonderful for adding brand specific content. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Honestly not much, some of our computers are a bit older so it definitely took some browser updates to bring them up to speed, but after that, it was smooth sailing. I guess I would say I'm not as in love with the mobile version as I am with the desktop version, but that's more personal preference. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

One of the things that I like best is the ability to support other people in the same field of work. All of the discussion is useful, and anything negative is quickly corrected. All of the users seem to want to help one another in a friendly and helpful discourse. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

One thing that I dislike is that some user posts are completely deleted when a user is removed. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.