Tech Stack Insights: Meetup vs. Eventbrite

We analyzed over 600+ group events happening in New York City, from late-night dance parties to midweek language meetups, hoping to uncover patterns that could actually help community builders make better decisions. 

Our goal? We want to understand how organizers are designing for connection and what platforms, tools, and choices are supporting that. 

Meetup definitely isn’t the flashiest. Neither does it have deep integrations or robust branding options like Eventbrite does. But it does this one thing really well – it helps people gather, regularly, around something they care about through built-out groups. Which means: 

• Recurring events are easier to manage
• Attendees follow groups and get notified automatically
• Organic discovery within the app = free traffic 

• Paid workshops and ticketed events
• Analytics, integrations, and email marketing
• Branded landing pages

You could debate it lacks the long-term “community feel” that Meetup bakes in by default. 

Other patterns we noticed were

• Collaborations are a rising default. A huge number of events listed co-hosts—two, three, sometimes four names on a single gathering.
• Organizers are using hybrid stacks. Instagram handles are baked right into event names. Some use Linktree to route people to multiple ongoing communities. Others drop Discord links post-event to keep the energy going. 
• The best events are leveling moments. Whether it’s a casual game night or a well-facilitated panel where the expert asks the audience questions, the most magnetic events lower the ego bar. They turn hierarchy into shared ground.

We’re learning as we go too and always down to swap notes or share the full data breakdown.