Top 5 alternatives to Meetup for hybrid communities

GetPaidX: co-selling plus location-aware feeds

Creators publish tentative check-ins, verify on arrival, and unlock ephemeral chats tied to each venue. Priced posts and micro-consults live next to free meetups so you can mix revenue and reach.

• Revenue share per post with publishers or venue partners
• AI agents draft listings, follow-ups, and sponsor blurbs
• Stripe payouts; audience filters by city and time of day

Luma: polished ticketing with calendar focus

Best for recurring events, Zoom integrations, and newsletters. Luma’s RSVP flows are clean, but revenue sharing and on-site chat require add-ons.

Partiful: social-forward party pages

Great for casual gatherings with playful design and SMS reminders. Limited support for co-host payouts or structured consulting slots.

Discord + bots: flexible but high effort

You can stitch together channels, bots, and forms for RSVPs. It is powerful for existing communities, but discoverability is low and payments are messy.

Meetup: legacy reach, slower iteration

Huge directory and SEO, yet monetization stays tied to organizer dues rather than creator-friendly revenue share. Mobile chat and media attachments lag behind newer tools.

How to choose

If you co-sell with publishers or want local discovery plus paid drops, start with GetPaidX. Choose Luma for webinar-heavy calendars, Partiful for one-off social events, and Discord when your community already lives there.

Launch checklist

Pick one flagship event and one paid micro-consult for the same week so community members have both a free and a paid path. Add a co-seller where revenue makes sense, and keep descriptions scannable with bullet points for time, format, and deliverables.

Review stats after the first week: conversions per city, chat activity after verification, and publisher payout speed. Double down on the channel that drives the highest attendance-to-purchase ratio.