Pros and Cons of Using Meetup.com

The following are some of my opinions based on having used Meetup as a event organizer and participant for years. I have nothing against the company itself and as of this writing don’t currently have any active Meetup groups.

Reasons to Use Meetup.com

After having used Meetup itself as an event organizer and participant where I’d attend Meetup group events and workshops for quite some time off and on, and of course teaching multiple types of workshops as single events or series events, I noticed several things taking place in my own personal uses.

No Shows

The first thing I noticed was that many people would sign up to attend events, or RSVP, and not appear. Now the reasons for no-showing could be numerous of course, from not feeling well, transportation issues (parking or public transportation or even traffic can be horrendous in some cities), scheduling, work, or some other issue.

On average, it seemed about at least half of those who signed up would not attend. But let’s dig a little deeper into what I observed….

So, what are the total downsides to using Meetup.com, in my humble opinion, and why does it seem that many people will join Meetup groups, never to attend a single event?

Should You Use Meetup?

It’s an important question as far as smart delegation of time and effort is concerned. No one wants to waste hours, weeks of time promoting an event or a series of events, or hundreds to thousands of dollars organizing and promoting events only to have them attract the wrong type of clientele or..worse…nobody at all, and certainly, trying to use Meetup to attract leads can lead to those things taking place. Out-of-pocket expense for hosting (or organizing) a Meetup group can cost anywhere from $25 (give or take some change) per month (back when I used it) to much more if you opt for their “pro” plan.

That expense can quickly add up over time, and  if you also intend to promote your group or groups using paid advertising.

I’ve actually hosted hundreds of Meetup events and groups over the years, teaching WordPress or digital marketing training bootcamps, SEO workshops, eCommerce classes, content marketing classes, startup workshops, and other types of workshops, often in coordination with nonprofit organizations and other individuals.

Some of the events I attended were focused on new client acquisition, while others were for general networking or business management, and some were meant just for fun – to practice Japanese, learn how to make better pizza, practice aikido, or whatever.

Overwhelmingly, in my opinion, the majority of times, fifty percent of those who register or RSVP do not show up, regardless of time of year, location, incentives, location, or issues such as parking.

 Honey Pot(s)

If I offered a very in-depth workshop, especially if it was free or very low priced compared to the value being offered, more people would show up – and even then only one time out of curiosity, so repeat events or a series of related events would have declining attendance each time, unless attendees were offered free giveaways, or if the event took place in a downtown area location, or offered other repeated incentives.

And again, offering free pizza, free sandwiches, or hosting an event at a beautiful downtown location is not free and usually not affordable for most entrepreneurs starting out.

So you should bear location in mind. If your event is online, in my opinion, attendance is even more spotty than if you hosted a physical in-person event.

Experiences with Meetup

I used to teach WordPress training bootcamps through Meetup and depending on if the event was scheduled on a weekend or not, the time of day, time of year, and if the price seemed at around $99 to $150 for a 4 hour bootcamp, you could potentially net 30–60 attendees. During holiday weekends I could usually pack a large conference room once I’d learned how to schedule and promote the events (and groups) and use appropriate local SEO.

Of those attendees, few would ever go on to do anything with the actual training and most would never be heard from again. How do I know this? From emailing and calling to check on attendee progress, offering free follow-up consultations, or even seeing the individuals in-person later at similar events. This is over the course of (at least) five years of teaching the workshops. Most if not all of the attendees would not take notes, and if questioned in pre-event or post-event conversations, would tell me they wanted the training to take a DIY approach toward growing a business, nonprofit, startup, retail venture, church or a random idea where long-term commitment was usually lagging.

If the Meetup was done in conjunction with a nonprofit organization, attendance typically would be even lower than if I promoted the event myself (possibly because the NPO would often want to control how the event was promoted, dictate what could or couldn’t be done, and usually have very minimal visibility online itself and employ very minimal marketing). This may have been due to many different factors; but typically nonprofits bring in the majority of their funds through deep-pocketed donors so actually “running a business like your life depends on it” is something I’ve never seen at any NPOs and would be very (pleasantly) surprised to see.

I once went to a networking Meetup and asked someone attending why so many people would never show up after RSVP-ing to events. He said that for himself personally, he would use Meetup as an outlet for his personal life. If he didn’t have a date that night, or couldn’t find anything good on TV, and if the event was easy to get to and free (or no more than the cost of bus fare), he might go. If he had a date, he’d RSVP anyway in case he got blown off and use it as a back up. That’s an off-putting perspective if you’re hosting a Meetup event.

It also suggests a level of passivity, where the group meetings are used as a back-up for more meaningful activities. In his particular case it was finding a date or even finding something mildly interesting to sit and passively watch on TV.

My experience with Meetup, overall has been mixed ultimately.

Meetup Attendance Issues

If you’re in a very large metropolitan city, you can get decent attendance….but again that’s knowing half won’t show. Many nonprofits would offer to pay for free pizza to encourage attendance when they’re selling something or trying to attract donors to some event. This, was in fact, a good way to tell if the organizers hosting the event were corporate sponsored or not.

For example, I knew of a lawyer who had a “post divorce” singles support group. He’d offer free pizza, free attendance, held it at a club, and of course he was there to help with divorce settlements. It was fairly smart on his part and a good way to “farm” for clients to represent in messy divorce cases. After a while he stopped doing it because he said the overhead was too much work, too costly compared to the returns, and fewer people showed up over time.

I think alot of if has to do with several factors:

• Meetup in my opinion doesn’t really help you in ways it could (such as better social media cross-posting, easier interfaces, allowing you to post video easier, and so forth) or provide direct help in my opinion. Last I checked it was not an option to design an attractive group on their basic paid plan as it once had been, so importing your own logo, designing pages or group layout with your own branded designs, adding images to group pages, were not available unless you paid much more beyond their introductory “basic” plan that is around $25 per month.
• Finding decent locations to host events can be a true pain as many businesses do not want small group meetings to occur on their premises – even if it means more customers and most public libraries are very much against opening up conference rooms to public gatherings or networking events unless they’re held by verified non-profit organizations. Some even permit only specific non-profits the ability to use conference rooms, even though they’re obviously paid for with taxpayer funds.
• Most people see Meetup as a hobbyist type of site as opposed to attending a Chamber of Commerce or BNI meeting in my opinion – so many of the people can commonly misrepresent themselves or run scams easier since most events are free. I’ve met many “startup founders” with no business at all, and many “small business owners” and “entrepreneurs” with literally no business at all except for an idea for something they aren’t committed to or invested in. To say that’s common for Meetup. com is an understatement. I’d actually met several people who told me they thought Meetup was a dating site due to the name so it never dawned on them to use the site to network or try to scale business outreach.
• Most Meetups take place at restaurants and bars in my opinion, based on what I saw. Now, while this does not necessarily mean that attendees will be disoriented, it does raise the possibility one or two attendees could become inebriated. At the very least sound quality could be lacking. Many Chambers of Commerce and other networking groups will also hold meetings at nearby restaurants (especially in morning hours to avoid the “I need a cocktail” scene and to also presumably catch members en route to their day job). However, by the same token, I’ve also been to Meetup groups where people were indeed intoxicated to the point of being incoherent. Some can take place at “sketchy” locations with poor lighting and parking or become more social than business-focused so it’s important to look for a specific level of deliberate organization to any business group that’s on the site. If you’re the one organizing the Meetup event, it’s incumbent upon you to screen attendees or charge, or both, while also stating group rules to make sure behavior issues are at a minimum.
• There are what I call “ghost” Meetups, that don’t have events or haven’t held events in months or even years. I know of several marketers who created Meetup groups solely to collect email addresses and never held a single meeting or held a few meetings and then just kept their organizer subscription paid and the groups actively soliciting membership. While this might pay off for some businesses, the ROI is quite minimal in most cases.
• Most events, even during COVID-19, are still in-person, with most networking events, business events, and workshops not offering online / remote attendance.
• Search for Meetup, as of this writing, is extremely limited in my opinion. My most pressing issue with using Meetup, from the perspective of a potential event organizer, especially during COVID, but also as an event organizer simply interested in optimal marketing, is that the site still requires that searching for events to attend is based on your local city and / or zip code. So this means if you’re thinking of creating an event, multiple events, or a series of events or workshops you’d best be aware that the only way most people will ever find it in Meetup is probably going to be only if it’s local to them. While there is an option to look for only online or remote events, it’s not immediately obvious and most non-tech users may not see it or know to use it. That’s pretty daunting if you a) don’t want to physically get face-to-face with others during a (still raging) global pandemic (in fact, the worst in recorded US history at this point in time), or just want to conduct workshops or seminars or meetings online. Nobody’s likely to find the event unless they already know about your organization  or event or the specific link well in advance. That’s really the equivalent of ignoring SEO and full search capability. For those reasons, when I search for events, or would consider hosting events, I’d never use Meetup in and of itself by itself. In hosting an event, I recommend using Meetup in coordination with EventBrite, Dabble, AirBnB Events, Facebook groups or event listings, local area Chamber event calendars wherever possible, Yelp Events (which similarly to Meetup does not show remote or online events right away) and as many other similar site cross-listings as possible where you can list online events. In fact, I’d even Google “online event calendars” or “XYZ type of event online” and be sure to list your upcoming event in as many similar site calendars as possible roughly one month in advance so that a) the event is not too far ahead in to the future as to seem too far ahead for most to plan, and b) so that the event is far enough in to the future for you to actively promote it daily or every other day through PPC and relevant social media channels.

My Closing Thoughts on Using Meetup

In summary, I’d have to say that the main issue in using Meetup as an Event Organizer would be its lack of search capability, in that your search results are limited by local offerings and category secondly.

Again, as an Event Organizer, this hobbles your ability to be found online through the Meetup website since the only way potential attendees can find you is only by local search, by group name specifically, or by chance.

If you’re a Meetup user and want to find events to attend, the same applies as your search results will only display local events and groups. Meanwhile, as we all know, there are online, remote, virtual events you could attend anywhere in the world, but Meetup won’t show you those unless you spend a great deal of time searching specific cities for specific types of events, and you then convert time zones yourself. This puts a restriction on who can find events or groups from both organizer and attendee perspective, in my opinion.

As far attendance and no-show RSVPs, I would not attend a meetup with less than 20 people whether in-person (which I wouldn’t do now, anyway) or online, simply because most sign ups won’t be there unless they have to pay to attend. This is based on my experiences with it, but conversely, I should add that I’ve seen others in large cities seem able to generate decent attendance.

As an Event Organizer, if you create and pay for an account, you’re still permitted to have up to three groups, but whereas technically it’s possible to translate time zones using event calendar such as Calendly, Meetup does not as of this writing, offer that service. So for example, let’s say you’d like to create three similarly themed groups in three different countries with three different time zones. You’ll have to organize those different time zone differences manually yourself, even though the technology to show your time zone to users and register events anywhere in the world is readily available elsewhere.

This makes it extremely difficult and time consuming to use Meetup to its full potential as an Event Organizer. In December of 2021, I tried creating an Organizer account, creating three WordPress groups, with one in London, one in LA, and one in Boston, just to see if Meetup would allow me to show users the right times and that option wasn’t there. I also couldn’t add videos to pages, images, change the colors to the overall group appearance, or add my logo, so visually all groups must look practically identical unless you pay more. Not being able to post groups in different states or countries, not being able to maximize SEO, and not being able to clean up group appearance or that of pages, made me wonder why I was paying when I could just as easily go to a free site that allowed even more customization such as EventBrite or Dabble. Yes, those sites had and have issues, too, but at least you’re not shelling out money for less features and less value that could be invested elsewhere.

In Summation

My advice in using or participating in Meetup events would be to employ Meetup cautiously as part of a larger social media and offline marketing “mix” where there are many other cross-pollinating sources of lead generation for a business and certainly never rely on it solely for any single specific use only. Use Meetup along with EventBrite, Chamber of Commerce event calendars, Facebook events, posting on LinkedIn and coordinating there if possible, and as many other outlets as possible, aware of each outlet’s limitations and strengths.

At the end of the day, hosting an event is all about offering valuable content, charging to make sure whomever signs up attends and values what you’re offering, and cross promoting aggressively and for at least a month in advance to promote repeatedly and with differing hashtags and search terms and descriptions. For attending events, it’ll be hit or miss, and to search effectively, you’ll need to explore as many global cities as possible, explore differing topics and topic combinations, and be ready to convert time zones, check advanced search options to find remote-only / online events, on top of checking groups for actual attendance and activity to ensure it’s not a “ghost” group.