Meetup group events, on a page the group owns Count the chairs, not the fees.
Set the rhythm once, put a cap on the room, and see who is coming to every date. The page belongs to the group, the RSVPs are free, and there is no organizer subscription to keep paying just so the group stays online.
Every other Thursday
Riverside JS Night
7pm · The Back Room, Mill Street
Thu 8 Oct
38 of 40 going
2 places left, then the waitlist opens.
Next dates
One recurring event. 4 dates, 4 separate headcounts.
The rhythm
A group is a habit. Set it once.
Most groups meet on a pattern people can remember without looking it up: every other Thursday, the first Tuesday, Saturday mornings in summer. Enter that pattern as one recurring event and every date appears on the page, in the feed and in members' calendars, without you posting each one.
- Every other week, or every third - Pick the day and how many weeks apart. The fortnightly night never drifts onto the wrong week.
- Monthly by weekday - The first Tuesday or the last Saturday of the month, which is how most monthly groups actually say it.
- Exceptions without breaking it - Skip the week the bar is shut for a private party, or add a one-off summer social, and the pattern carries on around it.
Free plan Recurring events and date exceptions are on the free plan, with no cap on how many you post.
What you fill in, once
1 eventThat is the whole year of meetups. Change the time once and every future date follows.
The door
Forty chairs means forty RSVPs.
The back room holds what it holds. A capacity on the event is how you stop promising a seat to the forty-first person, and it costs nothing, because nobody should have to pay to say they are coming to a free night.
A cap per date
Registration closes itself when the places are gone. Every date in the series has its own count, so the busy night and the quiet one never borrow from each other.
Free plan
A waitlist that fills the gap
When a full night gets a cancellation, the people waiting are told a place has opened, so it does not sit empty because nobody refreshed the page.
Free plan
Each guest by name
Someone bringing two friends can register all three, and each gets a confirmation and a QR code of their own, so the headcount is people, not bookings.
Free plan
At the door, if you want it
Most groups never scan anything. The ones that meet in an office building with a sign-in desk, or run a conference-sized annual night, can scan each RSVP's QR code from a phone. Scanning is free; the live check-in dashboard with a running count is part of Pro.
No limit you will hit
Free registration is unlimited, on every plan, and it never counts against anything. A group of fifteen and a group of fifteen hundred use exactly the same features for their regular nights.
Your page
The members are the group's.
On some platforms, a group exists only while an organizer keeps paying a subscription, and the members come with the account rather than with the group. Here the group page has its own link, the free plan is free forever, and the people who sign up are a list you can write to.
If you are weighing a move, the side-by-side is on the Meetup alternative page, and nothing about your nights has to change on the way over.
And if you ever want to leave
Event Schedule is open source. Export a backup of the schedule whenever you like, restore it, or selfhost the whole thing on a server the group controls. No group is stuck on a platform because of where its dates live.
Follow, or leave an email
Free planVisitors follow the group page, or give an email address from the sign-up panel without making an account. Both lists show on the followers tab.
A digest of new dates
Free planConfirmed email subscribers get a short digest when you publish new meetups, at most one every 72 hours, and it does not come out of your newsletter allowance.
Newsletters you write
Allowance by planFor the announcement with more in it than dates. The allowance counts recipients: 10 a month on the free plan, 100 on Pro and 1,000 on Enterprise.
A feed for their own calendar
Free planMembers who would rather not give an address can subscribe to the group calendar, and every new date lands in the calendar app they already check.
On the group website too
Free planPaste one embed into the site the group already runs and the calendar there is never out of date again.
The people up front
Speakers, hosts and the rest of the crew.
A meetup is more than its organizer. The person giving the lightning talk, the one leading the walk and the bar that gives you the room all deserve to be on the page, and to get something out of being there.
Speakers by name
Free planAdd this month's speaker to the event. If they already have a schedule, the date is offered to them to accept, and it shows on their own page too. If not, they get a page crediting your group, kept out of search engines until they claim it by signing in with the email address you entered.
The scene, pulled in
Free planA group that is really a guide to a local scene can list the venues and performers it follows as sources. Every event they publish is linked onto the group page automatically, beside your own meetups, so one link covers everything worth going to.
Co-organizers
EnterprisePlainly: a schedule has one team member on the free and Pro plans. Extra logins for co-organizers, as admins who run things or viewers who only scan at the door, are part of Enterprise. If the group changes hands, the whole schedule can be transferred to the new organizer on any plan.
Beyond the RSVP
What different groups reach for next.
Every group needs the rhythm and the headcount. After that it depends on what you do when you meet. Each one is marked with the plan it needs.
Online and hybrid nights
Paste the Zoom, Meet or stream link into the event. Registrants get the full link on their ticket while the public page shows only the domain.
Free plan
A page in two languages
Choose one other language and event names and descriptions are translated into it, with a switch on the page. Made for language exchanges.
Free plan
Photos from the night
Members add photos and comments with just a name and an email, held in a queue until you approve them. 25 photos on the free plan, no cap on Pro.
Free plan
Let members pick the topic
Put a poll on the next event to choose the talk, the trail or the game. Voting needs a signed-in account, so one person gets one vote.
Pro plan
Rides to the trailhead
Carpool lets members offer and ask for seats to an event, with the driver approving each rider and contact details shared only once they do.
Pro plan
The occasional paid night
A workshop with materials or the annual dinner: put a price on the ticket and the money lands in your own Stripe or PayPal account, with zero platform fees.
Pro plan
Who it is for
Any group that keeps showing up.
Rides between hikers are carpool, which is on the Pro plan. Everything else below runs on the free plan.
Tech Meetups
Monthly talks with a capped RSVP, speakers who get a page of their own and a join link for the people watching remotely.
Hiking & Outdoor Groups
A new trailhead every week with a group size limit, and rides between members for the ones that are hard to reach.
Language Exchanges
The same bar every other Thursday, set once, with the event page translated for members who read the other language.
Board Game Groups
Weekly game nights, a monthly tournament with a table limit and a digest to confirmed subscribers when new nights go up.
How it works
Ten minutes tonight, then just show up.
01
Make the group page
Name the group and pick its link. That link is what goes in the chat, on the flyer and in the bio from now on.
02
Set the rhythm
One recurring event for the regular night, with the venue, the time and any weeks you are skipping.
03
Open the RSVPs
Free registration with a cap per date. Members follow, subscribe by email or add the feed, and new dates reach them from there.
Key features
Free forever. Upgrade when you're ready.
Free registration for as many people as you like. When you start charging, zero platform fees on every plan - the only deduction is your payment processor's own.
Everything you need to publish a schedule and fill the room, for as long as you like.
- Unlimited events, sub-schedules and recurring dates
- Two-way Google, Outlook and CalDAV sync
- Unlimited free registration and RSVPs, scanned at the door
No expiry, and no card asked for.
Start charging, and the rest of the selling kit arrives with it.
- Sell paid tickets, with the live check-in dashboard
- Promo codes, add-ons, passes and gift cards
- The REST API, webhooks, and no Event Schedule branding
7-day free trial, cancel any time.
For a room with a seating chart, a team, and a domain of its own.
- Reserved seating, drawn once and reused every date
- Your own domain, and up to five team members
- Internal and unlisted events, and 1,000 newsletter recipients
Included free on every selfhosted install.
Related
Keep exploring
Meetup Alternative
Zero platform fees and custom domains, without a subscription.
Read moreMobilizon Alternative
Open source events with ticketing and calendar sync built in.
Read moreFor Curators
Run a festival or multi-artist bill across many schedules.
Read moreNewsletters
Write to members yourself, within an allowance counted per recipient.
Read moreQuestions
Asked at the organizers' table.
Does it cost anything to keep a group going?
No. The free plan is free forever and has no organizer subscription: the group page, recurring meetups, RSVPs with a capacity, the waitlist, calendar sync, the live feed and the embed all cost nothing, with no cap on how many events you post or how many people register. Pro, at $5 a month, is for the extras some groups want: putting a price on a ticket, polls, carpool and a larger newsletter allowance. Ticket sales carry zero platform fees either way.
How do I move an existing group over?
Create the group page, add your recurring meetup, and post the new link wherever your members already are. Members can follow the page, leave an email address to hear about new dates, or subscribe to the group calendar in their own calendar app. There is no way to import another platform's member list, and that is deliberate: everyone who joins has chosen to, so the list you build is one you can actually write to.
What happens when a meetup is full?
Give the event a capacity and registration stops when the places are gone. Each date keeps its own count, so a full October night does not touch November. The RSVP waitlist is free: when someone cancels, the people waiting hear that a place has opened, so the room fills without you swapping names around by hand.
Can more than one organizer run the group?
Each schedule has one team member on the free and Pro plans. Adding co-organizers with their own logins is an Enterprise feature, with two levels: an admin who runs the schedule day to day, and a viewer who can only look and scan tickets at the door. A schedule can also be handed over to someone else entirely if the group changes hands.
Do online and hybrid meetups work?
Yes, on every plan. Paste the join link into the event, whether it is Zoom, Google Meet, Jitsi or a YouTube stream. People who register get the whole link on their ticket, and the public page shows only the domain, so the link is not sitting on the open web for anyone to drop into. A hybrid night is one event with both a venue and a link.
What if the platform we use now shuts down or changes its prices?
Event Schedule is open source. You can export a backup of the group's schedule at any time and restore it, and if you would rather not depend on anyone, you can selfhost the whole thing on your own server. The calendar feed and the page link belong to the group, not to a paid account that lapses.
How do I set up a meetup that is not simply weekly?
Recurring events cover the patterns groups actually use: weekly on chosen days, every two or three weeks, monthly by date, or monthly by weekday such as the first Tuesday or the last Saturday. Date exceptions take out the week the venue is closed and add a one-off date, like a summer social, without breaking the pattern.
Can we charge for the occasional workshop or dinner?
Yes, with Pro. Putting a price on a ticket needs the Pro plan, and the money goes to your own Stripe or PayPal account, or through Invoice Ninja, a payment link or cash, with zero platform fees on top. The regular free nights stay free registration, so you only need Pro if the group starts charging.
Free forever
The next meetup, on a page you keep.
The group page, the recurring nights, capped RSVPs and the waitlist cost nothing, with no organizer subscription. Paid tickets, polls and carpool are the parts that need Pro.
No credit card required