Palapa.co
Modern Discussion Platform for Online Communities
We’ve been building online communities for over 10 years now.
Some of those communities have been pretty darn successful. Our most recent and biggest success is Fizzle, a community of independent entrepreneurs that started back in 2013.
Over the years, we tried just about every kind of community/discussion software we could find, in search of the perfect platform for our people. Forums, chat, social media, you name it. But we never really found what we were looking for.
Eventually we stopped looking, and started asking ourselves what the perfect community platform would look like, from the ground up. We knew we wanted something that was engaging, simple and well designed. We wanted the best of forums (long-term search-ability and content discovery), social feeds (engagement and focus on both content and people) and messaging apps (direct real-time / ephemeral conversations).
We knew building such a platform wouldn’t be easy, but we had the perfect proving ground, our own community of hundreds of entrepreneurs at Fizzle. We built Palapa first to satisfy Fizzle’s needs, then expanded on that vision to support other communities as well.
What you see today is the result of an enormous amount of testing and feedback from our community and others. Palapa has been powering the Fizzle community for over a year, and now it’s ready to become home for your online community too. Or maybe we should say it’s ready to become the palapa for your community…
11 Comments
This looks fantastic... really considering launching a community using the platform!
Great Josh, give me a shout if you have any questions! corbett@fizzle.co
What does the name Palapa stand for? or what does it mean?
Palapa (puh-lah-puh) is a Spanish word for an open-sided structure with a thatched roof made of dried palm leaves. They’re very common in Mexico. They also happen to be a great place to escape the elements and gather with people you care about. Sometimes they’re small and modest, other times they’re impressive and grand.
It also happens that while some friends and I were brainstorming names for the software platform, we were sitting under a palapa in Mexico. Sometimes you don’t have to look far for inspiration 😊
This comment was deleted 4 years ago
Also curious, sell me on the benefits of it compared to something like spectrum.chat :)
Thanks for the question Rosie!
Spectrum is a great platform, and we love what they've done for developers, especially.
Palapa is different because of a few things:
Spectrum was purchased by Microsoft, which also runs Microsoft Teams. This would concern me because because acquired products often tend to change or die. Of course, most of us face the same issue with GitHub, but I still use GitHub because it's a great product and everyone is there.
Spectrum (like Slack) is chat focused. Palapa is conversation focused. We love chat as much as anybody, but long-term value is built around organized conversations. That's why Palapa features structured, threaded conversations as the primary form of content, with real-time messaging available for quick side chats. It's really the best of both worlds: long-term organized conversations, PLUS real-time ephemeral messaging.
Spectrum groups are public. Palapa communities are private.
Spectrum users are part of the larger spectrum ecosystem. Palapa users belong to a single community.
Spectrum is free. Palapa is paid. Because Spectrum is free, you should expect that eventually some business person at Microsoft will force the team to either a) start charging for the product, or b) start advertising or selling user data or some other form of annoying or privacy violating monetization.
Like I said at the beginning, Spectrum is a great product. I'm not sure they're a direct comparison because of the points above, but I wouldn't fault someone for starting a community there if you want it to be public, if you prefer the chat-focused features, and if you don't mind the other lesser issues.
It's all good.
What I've been contemplating a while is how to build my personal network/community without relying on tools/services from those that seek to dominate (e.g. Facebook).
I made a commitment recently to only support indie hacker people, so this fill in the gap for me to explore ways to build by my own little personal community.
Thanks for the comments and feedback! Let us know if we can help you in getting something off the ground.
That looks nice.
Is it possible to map the domain?
It would be good to have an idea of what it would cost me if I had x amount of members registered. I know it varies and depends on engagement. But the per active user model fills me with fear that there will be too many active users and I get hit with a big bill.
Hey Rosie!
Yes, you can use a custom domain.
Regarding pricing and active members, I appreciate you sharing the concern. We decided to charge only for active members because it seems more fair than charging for all.
It's early so we don't have too much data to go on, but the average ratio of active to total registered users is around 1:7. In other words, around 15% of registered users are active in a given month, across communities. This will depend on how long a community is established, and how long user accounts have been registered for.
This comment was deleted 4 years ago
Thanks for the invite Jas!