You're invited to try the Discourse Free plan beta!

[rishabh]

From the very early days of Discourse, our mission has always been to empower communities of all sizes and budgets. Today, we are making it even easier to get started with Discourse on our brand new Free plan!

Getting started

We will outline the details on our website soon, but you can set up a Free site right now using this link → https://id.discourse.com/create-site

You’ll be prompted to create a Discourse ID account or login if you have one, and then enter a your site’s name and chosen domain. That’s it, your new free Discourse instance will be ready in under 2 minutes!

What are the features and limitations on Free?

On Free sites, you get:

• Unlimited topics, chat and members
• Social logins via Discourse ID
• Horizon Theme
• Same usage limits as our Starter plan, except that you can have:
  • Up to 10 categories
  • No custom groups or private categories
  • No tags
  • No digest emails or default notification levels
  • Support via public topics on Meta only

The Free tier also includes a Discourse Hosted LLM, pre-configured & ready to use. Designed to save you time and effort, so that you can focus on what matters most; your community

How can you help?

As an early adopter of our Free plan, we would love to hear about any feedback, questions or problems that you run into as a reply to this topic.

For general support with Free sites, please post on Support.

Pro tip: When posting for support, be sure to mention that your site is on our Free hosted tier and use the free-plan tag. This will help our Community tailor the advice they give to fit your experience.

[Canapin (Coin-coin le Canapin)]

@Canapin

10. Welcome to Discourse: it was never that easy

… Until now

[Moin]

@rishabh

For general support with Free sites, please post on Support.

And please mention that the question is about a site on the free plan. The fact that your access to features is limited might be relevant for those who try to help you.

[southpaw]

Excellent point, @Moin. I’ve incorporated it into the OP.

[darkpixlz (Pyx)]

This is pretty cool. Will https://free.discourse.group be updated to reflect this?

[NateDhaliwal]

Could there be a tag like #free-plan or something similar for related topics in support? Otherwise, it may get confused with https://free.discourse.group.

Thanks.

[ondrej]

This is great news for lots of people, Nice work !

However, I’m wondering the rationale behind the thinking as to why would a free community not need:

@rishabh

• No custom groups or private categories
• No tags

I know that since the self hosting process has been simplified recently and people could just opt for that using a cheap server on Hetzner for example if they wanted the full Discourse feature set.

---

@rishabh

Same usage limits as our Starter plan

So its free until you hit the limits then one must either upgrade to a hosted plan or seek their own hosting? So essentially its a ‘as long as you make it before hitting limits’ free evaluation of Discourse?

But again, if this happens, anyone can restore a backup on their own cheap vps.

[NateDhaliwal]

I’m curious: what happens if I disable the following setting? Are there any repercussions?

[mcwumbly (Dave McClure)]

@NateDhaliwal

I’m curious: what happens if I disable the following setting? Are there any repercussions?

Good question!

We should probably hide or disable that setting on the Free plan. The intent is for it to be always enabled.

[mcwumbly (Dave McClure)]

@ondrej

I’m wondering the rationale behind the thinking

@ondrej

So essentially its a ‘as long as you make it before hitting limits’

All of our plans have limits – Starter, Pro, and Business included.

In all cases, you could say the same thing. Once you hit the limits, you have a choice among:

• (a) Live within the limits
• (b) Upgrade
• (c) Migrate (to self hosting, another provider, or another platform)

All three options are valid.

In practice, we do see people live within their limits indefinitely on many plans, while others getting more value out of the product choose to upgrade.

But ideally, we’re defining the plans well enough such that we’re allowing people with limited means to live within their means, and providing sufficient value to people with greater means to upgrade.

The limits for the Free plan were chosen with the same rationale in mind.

[Moin]

The admin guide says you can contact the “@ team”

@system

Support resources:

• Ask our AI-powered assistant anything about Discourse.
• Browse the complete Discourse documentation.
• Reach out to us at team@discourse.org with any other questions.

I think, in this case, it should probably refer to the support category instead.

Is it also possible to hide

@system

or picking a new theme

On a plan that doesn’t allow you to select a theme, this doesn’t make sense either

[EricGT]

Instead of me guessing at how this works, just creating one.

Click triangle to see details

Check your email.

This showed up as a new topic a few minutes later

The link for support takes one here

https://meta.discourse.org/c/support/6?utm_medium=link&utm_source=free&utm_id=dashboard

To find topics related to the free plan use the tag: free plan

Topics tagged free-plan

[ondrej]

Ahh okay makes sense - thanks for the explanation . I think I’m going to start using Discourse as my personal site again now as I don’t need anything super special/custom for that .

I don’t mind the rest of the limits applied to the free plan as I understand that peoplw need an incentive to upgrade.

But I peronally still think the groups is a bit restrictive because a new small communuty may still need to create private categories/groups. But overall, its a great achivement to have a free plan.

[eisammy (Sammy)]

Any chance for in the future officials partners could sell auto-install on API? something like cPanel?

With Discord have some problems to keep his community this option to one tap to install it’s a perfect way to expand whole thing.

[eisammy (Sammy)]

I think that should be restrict still more because Discourse for self-hosted it’s free so this tier free is a taste I suppose?

Maybe in the future CDCK could be offer a regional price? no big deal for now of course just ideas.

[NateDhaliwal]

I wonder… is there much point having a Themes & components button in the Admin sidebar, if none are allowed?

[RGJ (Richard - Communiteq)]

You need to know what you’re missing out on?

Although the free plan is a generous offer, CDCK is not a charity and the end goal is to upsell to a paid plan.

[Duke_Hsu]

awesome, I can use it to create communities and run my own clubs!

[fuse (Geoff Hughes)]

Very selfishly wondering how to import my small community into the free plan while not wanting to take advantage.

[oshyan (Oshyan Greene)]

Oh wow, this is incredible! I’ve hoped for this for a long, long time. I’m so glad you were able to make it happen! I’ll be very curious to see how this works out, whether it brings in a lot of new folks, etc. Congrats on a huge milestone!