Facebook Groups alternatives? reddit / selfhosted ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SecretSinner · 2023-12-07 18:35 Hello friends! I lead and organize a handful of in-person groups of people for various reasons and am looking for a better way to keep things organized. For instance, I write and direct a play once a year and need a better way to wrangle my actors and crew. I also have a group of TTRPG players that occasionally get together for short campaigns. The biggest hurdle is that it's been impossible to get everyone onto the same platform. I have been using a Google Groups mailing list to communicate with the cast for my plays for years. However, I've discovered that young people don't check their email. Conversely, some of my older friends have been unwilling to adopt something like Telegram. Facebook Groups does most of what I want, but a few people would rather wear nothing but itchy wool socks the rest of their lives than use Facebook. The most important feature is a messaging platform that will allow me to send a message once and have it reach people on their platform of choice. At a minimum, I'd like it to send to email and SMS. If the SMS messages are simply a notification that they need to check their email, that would be ok, but I'd prefer something that would send the entire message as SMS. I'd prefer a system that also lets the end users choose other platforms like Telegram, Signal, Facebook Messenger, etc. I prefer 2 way communication. IE, I can send a message out, someone receives it via SMS or Telegram or whatever, and they're able to reply to the entire group. I can live with it if it's just one-way communication with me sending messages to the group. Other features I'd love to have: 1. Group calendar: I'd like to have a URL that shows a rehearsal calendar, for instance, as well as the ability for the end users to subscribe to the calendar using iCAL. 2. Scheduling: It would be great to have a scheduling feature where people can indicate their availability and I can build schedules from that. 3. Polling: I'd like to be able to poll my group on various topics. 4. Documents: Ability to store and share documents. 5. Tasks: I'd like a task list where I can assign tasks with due dates to specific people. 6. Side conversations: The ability to have separate conversations with specific members of the group. 7. Multiple groups: I'd like to have distinct groups that I can manage, IE the actors for the show or the TTRPG group. I'm figuring out how to setup NextCloud, Discourse, and Rocketchat to test those out. Those seemed to be the most promising options based on what I've seen so far. I thought I'd check in here to see what suggestions you guys may have. Thank you! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- adamshand · 2023-12-07 19:02 I have the same problem, and I think it's largely unsolvable. Everyone has their own tools they want to use (or don't want to use) and there is no common ground that I've found. Tragically, WhatsApp seems to be the most common compromise. 🤮 I was just looking at Mobilizon yesterday. It does a lot of what you want. The discussion part is fairly simple, but I really like the integrated calendar, events, etc. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SecretSinner · 2023-12-07 19:39 I hadn't even heard of that one. Thanks for the recommendation. I'll check it out. And yeah, there doesn't seem to be one good tool. Hopefully we can get close though! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- adamshand · 2023-12-08 01:30 Post again if you figure anything out!