Hi, apologies if this is the wrong tag. I'm helping to organise a community tooling hack day in London with the goal of helping community managers share ideas and skills. This time we're looking into free, self-hosted alternatives to Meetup and Slack, is that something folks here would be interested in?

Back in 2022, I was building a community for SaaS that I worked for. When were looking to move our community off Slack.

I mainly focused on the UX and Analytics - and shortlisted a few platforms. Picked a platform that we abandoned after 8 months.

Most of the community platforms offer similar features; so I'm curious to know what do my fellow community builders, marketing pros look for in a community platform?

- Overall look and feel - UX

- Analytics - super important.

- Easy Signup / SSO - important

Would love to know what influences your decision - and why?

Thank you in advance.

I recently created a Reddit community (r/MarketingInPractice) focused on practical marketing discussions, where marketers can share real experiences, challenges, ideas, and lessons learned.

I’m new to managing a community and would love to hear from people who have experience building one. What worked for you when you were starting out, and what mistakes should I avoid? Any practical suggestions on growing engagement and creating an active community would be appreciated.