Open-source Skool alternatives

Discourse is a fully open-source platform for online community discussion. It is aimed at those who prefer to decide for themselves how and where their site runs, and it is written mainly in Ruby on Rails with a JavaScript front end and PostgreSQL. It is released under the GPL-2.0 license.

Discourse lets you start discussion topics, talk live through its integrated chat, change the look with official and community themes, and extend the site with plugins, ranging from chatbots powered by Discourse AI to the Data Explorer plugin for SQL analysis. Current stable versions of the major browsers are supported across desktops, tablets and phones.

You can self-host it on your own infrastructure by following the install guide, or choose the official Discourse hosting if you would rather skip setup and server management. Development setups use Docker or a VS Code dev container and need Ruby, PostgreSQL and Redis. It suits companies, open-source projects and groups running forums and support communities.

Forem is open-source software for building communities for peers, customers, fanbases, families, friends or any group that wants a shared space. It is the codebase behind dev.to, a community of software developers who write articles, discuss and build professional profiles. The project is written in Ruby on Rails and released under the AGPL-3.0 license.

The repository includes installation documentation, developer documentation and instructions for deploying with Kamal. Contributors are welcome to open pull requests on any issue, provided they include appropriate tests, with the maintainers currently focused on backend regression tests while frontend changes may need more user review. The project states that AI-assisted pull requests are welcome if they meet quality standards, and it points AI agents to an AGENTS.md file. A vulnerability disclosure process and acknowledgements are also documented.

Open Source Social Network, or OSSN, is a PHP application for creating a social networking website. It supports the typical building blocks of a community platform, including user registration, profiles, newsfeeds, photos, groups, blogs, notifications and chat, and it is intended for communities built around shared professional or personal interests.

The software is multilingual, with translations listed for languages such as English, French, Spanish, German, Japanese, Korean, Russian and Chinese, so a site can reach audiences in different regions. It is modular and can be extended with components, and the project website provides documentation and details. Screenshots show the landing page, newsfeed and profile pages.

OSSN is written in PHP and runs on your own web hosting. The README states that it is licensed under the Open Source Social Network License 4.0 and the Cryptographic Autonomy License 1.0, while repository metadata lists the licence as other. It suits individuals, organizations and communities that want to run an independent social site instead of relying on a large platform.