Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Discourse VS Square

Compare Discourse VS Square and see what are their differences

Discourse logo Discourse

Discourse is an open source discussion platform built for the next decade of the Internet.

Square logo Square

Square helps millions of sellers run their business-from secure credit card processing to point of sale solutions. Get paid faster with Square. Sign up today!
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  • Discourse Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-06-13
  • Square Homepage
    Homepage //
    2024-05-06

Discourse videos

Why We Chose The Discourse Platform For Our Forums

More videos:

  • Review - Why Discourse is the Best Forum Software Out There (No, Really) | Location Rebel
  • Review - A Grammar Review for Discourse Analysis

Square videos

Square vs PayPal 2020: A Side by Side Comparison

More videos:

  • Demo - Square Mobile Credit Card Reader Review | Squareup Demo | Pros & Cons
  • Review - I switched from Square to Paymentech. IMO, Squareup merchant services is garbage.
  • Review - What is Square - Square Review - Square Pricing Plans Explained
  • Review - 6 days left to dump Square merchant services before they begin screwing small businesses
  • Review - Square Eftpos Terminal Review 2023

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Discourse and Square)
Forums
100 100%
0% 0
Payments Processing
0 0%
100% 100
Forums And Forum Software
Payment Platform
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using Discourse and Square. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Discourse and Square

Discourse Reviews

20 Telegram Alternatives to Chat With in 2024
Discourse is a basic forum function that could be an alternative to Telegram if you want to stick to text discussions. It's pretty analog, missing both video and livestreaming tools. Instead, Discourse is a basic community that lets you organize discussions--it feels a bit like having your own reddit or Quora.
18 Best Discord Alternatives 2020 | Expert Reviews
Discourse comes in a couple of flavours. You can self-host it yourself in which case the software is free, and you simply need to sign up for server space, or you can pay Discourse for a hosted-for-you option, though self-hosting is a lot cheaper the premium option takes care of the technical side.
IndieHackers: Best forum software
I used Flarum when trying to get a community set up for my product (ended up abandoning it to revisit when we have a larger customer base). It worked fairly well and I enjoyed it but it's definitely beta and unless you're fairly tech savvy it's not quite worth the setup / maintenance. Lots of config changes, crashes, huge issues with plugins, and some features missing. I'd...

Square Reviews

POS: Best Point of Sale System Software for Small businesses
It may be used on tablets, smartphones, and Apple and Android devices. It is applicable to all business types, including bakeries. The business offers Square POS support around-the-clock.
Source: qpe.co.in
The Best Retail Management Software of 2021
Square is a POS solution that enables businesses to manage their operations. The system allows users to accept payments on-the-go and at the counter via Android and iOS devices. It also features a real-time inventory and sales tracker and an item management platform.
Source: digital.com
2019 Top Salon Booking Apps
This platform is dedicated to help you build, save, and grow. One of Square’s highlighted features is their customer prioritization to develop long-lasting relationships and keep your clients coming back. All of your client’s personal information, such as appointment history, payment method, and purchases, is securely stored within a customer profile to make checkouts and...
17 of the Best Inventory Management Software Options For 2020
The Square dashboard or Point of Sale (POS) app helps you manage inventory details like names, prices, and quantities. More advanced inventory tools like Square for Retail allow you to manage inventory for multiple locations from a single dashboard.
Source: shanebarker.com
Australian Payment Gateways
What started with a little white card reader hasn't stopped there. Square lets you process online, phone and mail order payments which integrate beautifully with their flagship Point-of-Sale system. Offline orders can be processed through their terminal (hardware supplied) and most, if not all cards – even those underused and unpopular ones – can be accepted online.Pricing:...

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Square should be more popular than Discourse. It has been mentiond 41 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Discourse mentions (23)

  • Qilin: A Starter Project Template For Every Open Source Project
    GitHub Discussions can also be a great place for support as long as these are regularly monitored. Another option along the same lines is Discourse and the Open Source Matrix which is used by quite a few Open Source and community-based projects. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • Ask HN: How to run an old-school mailing list?
    A lot of communities use [Discourse ](https://discourse.org). [LPSF](https://forum lpsf.org) migrated to it when Yahoo Groups was discontinued. Some of the advantages are that it's open source, self-hostable, and can be configured to work as both a traditional mailing list and modern forum. - Source: Hacker News / 3 months ago
  • My Fediverse use – I'm hosting everything myself – PeerTube, Mastodon and Lemmy
    More like https://discourse.org/. You can run it yourself, but I can also just have them ding a credit card every month and not think about it again (I do this for a community). - Source: Hacker News / 7 months ago
  • Reddit faces content quality concerns after its Great Mod Purge
    Discourse perhaps? I've seen it in use in a few places; it has a modern look and feel to it at least. https://discourse.org/. - Source: Hacker News / 10 months ago
  • So Long, Twitter and Reddit
    I fully agree with you see my comment here[0] -- I think you may have misread my comment, it says "Discourse" (as in the forum software[1]), not Discord. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37245220. - Source: Hacker News / 10 months ago
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Square mentions (41)

  • Advertisement - Help Finding a Global Entry Appointment
    This is an advertisement and I want to provide all the details.. I am a software developer and avid traveler. I own this website and am the sole developer who wrote the entire software! This idea came about when I signed up for Global Entry and then couldn't get an enrollment interview. I offer a 100% Money Back Guarantee (https://globalentrytextalerts.com/moneyBack) if someone doesn't feel satisfied. The website... Source: 12 months ago
  • How common is card/contactless payment?
    And now with Square it's dirt simple to accept credit card transactions, and the software even integrates into the NFC transceiver in modern iPhones--so even street vendors and local artists accept contactless payment cards. Source: over 1 year ago
  • FREE GAME 💳💰💰
    Https://squareup.com/us/en - Better with aged account and/or verified business. Do custom amount charges on phone and type in card info manually. Source: over 1 year ago
  • Art Market Question: $$$
    I've seen this one quite a bit here: https://squareup.com/us/en. Source: over 1 year ago
  • Squarespace Tutorial: Learn How to Build a Squarespace Website in 2022
    Squarespace supports several payment gateways, including Stripe, PayPal Business, and Square (for US point of sale transactions). - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Discourse and Square, you can also consider the following products

Flarum - Flarum is the next-generation forum software that makes online discussion fun. It's simple, fast, and free.

Lightspeed - retail and restaurant point-of-sale, ecommerce, and omnichannel solution

phpBB - Raspberry Pi. The Raspberry Pi is a cheap, credit-card sized computer. The official website uses phpBB for their discussion forums. phpBB is not affiliated with nor responsible for any of the sites listed on the showcase.

Toast - Built to make restaurants better. Toast gives your restaurant the technology you need to succeed in today's fast-paced environment.

Vanilla Forums - Build an engaging community forum using Vanilla's modern cloud forum software.

Odoo Point of Sale - Odoo is an online point of sale solution for retail and restaurants.