Show HN: Radius – A Meetup.com alternative

Overall sentiment

• Many welcome a Meetup alternative and sign up out of frustration with Meetup’s pricing, bloat, UX, and reliability.
• Others are skeptical Radius can overcome network effects, avoid “enshittification,” or survive financially.

Perceived gaps in Meetup

• High and rising organizer fees, especially painful for small/non‑profit or free events.
• Poor performance, buggy apps, confusing UI, weak messaging, and unreliable notifications.
• Cluttered with spammy, commercial, or low‑quality events; lots of virtual events post‑pandemic.
• Limited or awkward features (e.g., repeating/copying events, data export, calendars, discoverability controls).

Radius product focus & rollout

• Creator states current focus is on organizers: simple RSVPs and event pages; discovery/search is not yet active.
• Plans for “land‑and‑expand” by focusing on specific cities, then broadening.
• Some users find the launch premature because they can’t browse events or groups yet.

Monetization, sustainability, and trust

• Strong concern about long‑term sustainability and avoiding Meetup‑style pricing shifts.
• Proposed model: always‑free tier for groups, plus paid “Pro” organizer features, future ticketing fees, and possibly promoted listings.
• Suggestions: publish a “pledge/goals” page, transparent pricing, “how we’re funded,” open‑startup financials, and optional donations/Patreon.
• Some request open‑sourcing the code if the project dies; others question trusting yet another closed platform.

Moderation & policy

• FAQ references guidelines that aren’t yet published; users want clear content and moderation policies.
• Anticipated issues: spam groups, commercial abuse, hate speech, dating use cases, and general UGC risks.
• Creator is considering AI‑assisted moderation but acknowledges it’s mostly unplanned so far.

Discovery & network effects

• Organizers say they mainly pay for Meetup’s discovery; replacing that is seen as critical.
• Ideas: city‑level calendars, aggregation/scraping from other platforms, event deduplication, recency/activity filters, and hiding low‑quality or irrelevant events.
• Legal uncertainty around scraping Meetup/Eventbrite is noted as a blocker.

UX and feature requests

• Friction points: “notify me” requiring full signup, mandatory signup to search, lack of Google auth.
• Desired features: maps (preferably OpenStreetMap), iCal feeds, better time‑zone handling, attendee curation, no‑show prediction, carpooling integration, and richer local “things to do” beyond traditional meetups.