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Show HN: Radius – A Meetup.com Alternative

by radius89 | 38 points | 19 comments | 2026-09-20 11:51:26 Central

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Post

Hello HN!I'm relaunching Radius [1] - far too long after
the original Show HN [2] (I'll blame the day job for
that).Radius started out from my frustration with not
knowing what was going on around me. The initial plan
was to "show all and every type of event" from big to
small, but over time I narrowed the focus to
communities, groups, events, and helping people connect
through them.The initial Show HN gave me 150+ comments
(surprising, looking back, given how terrible the plain
Bootstrap UI was...) with a huge amount of useful
feedback and feature requests. I've spent the time since
then working through that, along with additional
requests from groups using Radius, and it finally feels
ready for a proper relaunch.I've also recently added
"Activities" [3] - which are lightweight events,
independent of groups, intended to help people find
others to do things with - for example:> John is going
for a cycle and a coffee in New York at 10amPeople can
join and vote for a time that works for them.I've got a
bunch of ideas for where to go next with this, including
things like open sourcing and federation, but those are
for another day!Any feedback would be greatly
appreciated!P.S. it's built with Ruby on Rails, for
those interested. I highly suspect it would have taken
me 2 more years to get to this point without Rails![1]
https://radius.to/[2]
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40717398[3]
https://radius.to/documentation/activities/post-an-activ
ity

Comments

katspaugh
Meetup.com is terrible and we definitely need a replacement. But this is not it.

weitendorf
Please create a better UI and make it easier to view events / try posting one before signing in. Something card-based where I can quickly type in my location and see what events are nearby.This isn't just a complaint about the UI being "vibe-coded-coded" or incomplete, but the product itself not making the happy path very useful or confusing.For example why is the landing page trying to sell this like a b2b saas app or hit me with a bait and switch login wall, or why is the screenshot not just the actual directory/a search bar, why do I have to know to go to groups? (Also, why are you showing me activity feeds or funneling me into that when I'm on your website primarily to look at groups and events? Why would I go to your site to look at that) Then on the group page it would be very convenient if there were just an edit/post button that I can click to draft or actually make a group (and then maybe quickly group by / filter by location or region). Same thing with adding an event, you could have a + button with a modal to draft it and only hit me with the login wall when I try to post.The event/group UI actually looks decent but I really think you should need to prioritize the core UX off the landing page. Right now it makes activation, understanding what the product is, and doing the first thing I would want to do (look at groups or events) not obvious. I'm somewhat of a hypocrite on this but also speaking from experience - there's no point in spending time marketing a product with own-goals like that.Since this is a pretty conventional crud app the only reason people would really have to use it is UX (or an audience you don't have yet). Trying to be helpful here because I think you should keep working on it and it's something I'd want to use if there were more attention to detail, which you could prob fix in less than a day with a coding agent.

pelagicAustral
Somehow Radius seems like the perfect app to have in prison.

hamedb
I really appreciate the work and polish put into the project, but I would always think why would someone switch from direct communication (WhatsApp groups, Facebook groups..etc) to a dedicated platform. I know it has a lot of other features that might be useful to coordinate events, but in the age of AI and social media addiction people are already mentally statured to remember another less popular platform. going B2B I think would be smarter move to organize professional events.

> radius89
> social media addiction people are already mentally staturedYeah, I don't disagree! In a way, I'm trying to combat that by facilitating people actually getting together in the real world, through events, activities and shared interests. I've deliberately not allowed free-form text posts or DMs between users, so it doesn't just turn into another social media feed.> why would someone switch from direct communication (WhatsApp groups, Facebook groups..etc)Yup, I think it depends on the size and nature of the group. A meetup between friends probably doesn't need a web presence at all, and WhatsApp would be perfectly adequate.For larger clubs or public groups that want to attract new people, though, there's value in having somewhere discoverable with proper event pages, recurring events, RSVPs, waitlists, calendars, etc., so that's who this is for.

datadrivenangel
Congrats on the relaunch!why should I use this versus luma or something similar?

> radius89
Thanks very much!So I think Luma is mostly focused on beautiful event pages (which they do well) and event calendars rather than the community/group itself being the core unit. In that way, we're more of a competitor to Meetup.com. I don't think a local cycling club would use Luma to organise a weekly cycle, for example.Compared with Meetup, I'm trying to keep Radius a bit simpler and more flexible for organisers. Pricing is a flat £12/month for Pro groups, and things like our Events API [1], embeddable event widgets [2], calendar subscriptions, guest RSVPs and waitlists are all available for free groups as well.There's also the Activities [3] feature I mentioned - not super applicable to you if you're an organiser but regular users might find it useful. You don't need to create or run a group at all and can just say "I'm going cycling Saturday, anyone want to join?" and see who nearby is interested. AFAIK, I don't think Meetup or Luma etc have anything like this.[1] https://radius.to/documentation/api-reference/create-e vents[2] https://radius.to/documentation/organizer-tools/embed- widget[3] https://radius.to/documentation/activities/post-an-act ivity

sram1337
For an app called radius, it took longer than expected to find activities near me. Showed me a lot of info I wasn't interested in at all.

VeryGoodMorning
I think it makes it too complicated to post a meetup request.It should be as easy as here on HN:Hello! I think Hamburg in Germany needs a good solopreneur meetup. If anyone is interested, let me know!This is what I would have posted, but I got stuck somewhere along the long signup process.

> radius89
Thanks for the feedback! I see you did manage to post your activity in the end - nice.The sign-up form only asks for name, email, password and a pre-filled location - there's some quick "Interests" selection after that, but I felt it was fairly easy/quick to fill out. Maybe I could move that out of the sign-up.Which part specifically felt too complicated? I'll revisit it and see if there's anything else I can shave off or make it smoother!

> utopiah
Makes me wonder if an RSS feed with a namespace extension for a GPS coordinates field would be enough, with a basic Web page client with a radius limited with a reasonable default based on threshold of results and user adjustable.

rtvn83
congrats on the relaunch! I've never used meet up platform before, I usually use facebook groups to find my badminton play friends.

atmanactive
What's the point in showing me events half way across the country? Is there a narrow-down filter available?

> radius89
Are you on mobile? Click the filter and the "Nearby" button at the top under the location section :)

AIorNot
The problem with this is not technology- its the lack of interesting meetups i want to join in my cityEg meetup at least has critical mass of users and meetups

> radius89
> The problem with this is not technology- its the lack of interesting meetups i want to join in my cityMaybe! Or maybe there's more going on than you know about? A meetup I regularly attend now existed in my city for 9 years before I found out about it - they just had no good way to advertise themselves easily.> Eg meetup at least has critical mass of users and meetupsIt definitely does. That's part of why I've made the Activity [1] feature - to give individual users something useful to do even before we have that critical mass of established groups.[1] https://radius.to/documentation/activities/post-an-act ivity

foven
Really very cool, I've been using meetup and the website is just absolutely trash so any alternative is very welcome

yosh102
Seeing the activity flow made this click for me. I like that someone can just say "I'm cycling next week," let people join, and figure out the time afterwards instead of creating a fully formed event upfront.That feels meaningfully different from Meetup.Curious which has been the better wedge so far: bringing existing groups and their members over, or creating new local connections through individual activity posts?

> radius89
> Seeing the activity flow made this click for me. I like that someone can just say "I'm cycling next week," let people join, and figure out the time afterwards instead of creating a fully formed event upfront.Thank you! Nice to hear this makes sense to someone other than myself :)> Curious which has been the better wedge so far: bringing existing groups and their members over, or creating new local connections through individual activity posts?I'll have to get back to you on that hah! I've only launched the activities this week, so we shall see!