Mobilizon vs GetTogether vs Eventonomy: Which Self-Hosted Event Tool in 2026?

Search for a free, open-source alternative to Facebook Events or Meetup and two names turn up fast: Mobilizon, the federated event tool built by the French nonprofit Framasoft, and GetTogether, a smaller community-run project aiming to be “feature-competitive with Meetup.com.” Both are genuinely free. Both are genuinely open source. And both ask you to do something a lot of WordPress site owners never budgeted for: stand up and run a second, separate web application, with its own server, its own database, its own updates, and its own uptime to babysit, completely apart from the WordPress site you already pay to host.

Last updated: 6 November 2026

Quick answer: Pick Mobilizon for a federated, privacy-first tool, if you are willing to run a separate server. Pick GetTogether for a Meetup-style community project, again as its own application. Pick Eventonomy if you already run WordPress and want events inside the site, database and login you maintain, with BuddyPress and BuddyNext integration.

Eventonomy starts from the opposite assumption. It is a WordPress plugin, so it installs into the site you already have, uses the database you already back up, and inherits the login system, the theme, and the SSL certificate you already maintain. This comparison is not about which product has the longer feature list, it is about where the server lives: do you want a second application to administer, or do you want your events running inside the WordPress install you are already responsible for? We checked Mobilizon’s and GetTogether’s own project pages and repositories, and Eventonomy’s current pricing and feature set directly against eventonomy.org, rather than carrying over old numbers.

Market snapshot

• The global event management software market (all vendors, not just WordPress plugins) was valued at USD 9.90 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach USD 32.62 billion by 2034, a 14.16% annual growth rate over 2026 to 2034, according to Fortune Business Insights.

Why Self-Hosting Is the Real Fork in the Road

That gap, between what a tool can do and what it takes to run it yourself, is the actual decision point in this comparison. Mobilizon and GetTogether are not watered down or feature-limited. They are complete, free, open-source event platforms built by people who care about data ownership and decentralization as much as any WordPress plugin developer does. The difference is infrastructure: both ship as standalone applications that expect their own server, their own domain, their own TLS certificate, and their own ongoing maintenance, completely separate from any WordPress site you might already be running. Eventonomy skips that step entirely by being a plugin instead of a platform, which is a real trade-off, not a free win: you give up native fediverse federation in exchange for zero new infrastructure.

1. Mobilizon

Mobilizon is free, open-source event planning and group management software released under the AGPLv3 license, built as “a free alternative to the platforms of GAFAM,” meaning Facebook Events, Meetup, and Eventbrite specifically. It was launched by Framasoft, the French digital-rights nonprofit, after a 2020 crowdfunding campaign that raised more than €58,000. In 2024, ongoing maintenance of the project transferred to Kaihuri, a French nonprofit that receives support from the NLnet Foundation, so Framasoft is no longer the sole steward, though the software and its license have not changed. The most recent stable release, version 5.1.0, shipped in December 2024.

Technically, Mobilizon is built on Elixir and the Phoenix framework for its backend, with a Vue.js frontend, and it federates over ActivityPub, the same open protocol that lets Mastodon servers talk to each other. That means a Mobilizon instance is not an island: events and groups can be discovered and followed from other Mobilizon instances and, to a degree, from other ActivityPub-speaking fediverse software, which is a genuinely different model from any WordPress plugin, since a WordPress events calendar is only ever as federated as your own site’s visitors. The cost of that federation is that you need a server to put it on. Mobilizon’s own installation documentation walks through setting up Elixir, Erlang, PostgreSQL, Nginx, and a systemd service, which is a standard Linux server admin task for someone who already runs infrastructure, and a genuine wall for someone whose only web presence is a managed WordPress host.

Key Strengths

• Completely free and AGPLv3 open source, with no paid tier, no account limits, and no vendor lock-in of any kind.
• True ActivityPub federation: events and groups can be followed and discovered across independent Mobilizon instances and the wider fediverse, something no centralized tool offers.
• Backed by an established nonprofit lineage, first Framasoft, now Kaihuri with NLnet Foundation support, rather than a single maintainer who could disappear.
• Privacy-respecting by design: no ad tracking, no data resale, and draft mode plus moderation tools for organizers.
• A real, measurable network already exists, 79 instances and nearly 4,200 groups as of early 2025, so you are not the first adopter on an empty platform.

Falls Short

• Self-hosting requires an Elixir/Phoenix/PostgreSQL stack, a genuinely different skill set from managing a WordPress site, and a separate server to patch, back up, and keep online.
• No native path into WordPress, BuddyPress, or any WordPress community plugin; a Mobilizon instance and a WordPress site are two completely separate systems with no shared login or shared database.
• Joining someone else’s existing instance instead of self-hosting means your group lives under another organization’s moderation policy and domain, not your own.
• The interface is built for event federation and group organizing specifically, not for RSVPs tied into a broader membership site, a forum, or a learning platform.
• Maintenance of the core project changed hands in 2024, which is a healthy transition for an open-source project but still worth knowing if long-term roadmap certainty matters to you.

2. GetTogether

GetTogether is a free, open-source event manager built by the GetTogetherComm organization, licensed under the permissive BSD-2-Clause license, and built with Django 2 and Python 3. Its stated goal is to be “feature-competitive with Meetup.com” while supporting federation between independently run instances, so community groups are not locked into one company’s hosted platform. You can either self-host your own GetTogether instance, with Docker and Docker Compose configurations provided to simplify the deployment, or use the community-run instance at gettogether.community at no cost.

On GitHub, the project shows 487 stars, 92 forks, and 430 commits in its history, with contributors actively sought across design, frontend, QA, API architecture, and DevOps, numbers that put it well behind Mobilizon’s Framasoft-backed scale but still represent a real, usable, free codebase rather than an abandoned experiment. The BSD-2-Clause license is notably more permissive than Mobilizon’s AGPLv3, which matters if you or your organization ever wants to fork or embed the code commercially without the copyleft obligations AGPL carries. Like Mobilizon, though, GetTogether is a standalone Django web application. It is not a WordPress plugin, has no WordPress integration, and expects its own hosting environment, its own Python dependencies, and its own database, separate from any WordPress site you run.

Key Strengths

• Completely free, open source, and BSD-2-Clause licensed, a more permissive license than Mobilizon’s AGPLv3 for anyone who wants to fork or redistribute the code.
• Built specifically to be “feature-competitive with Meetup.com,” so the feature set targets the exact gap a departing Meetup organizer is trying to fill.
• Docker and Docker Compose configurations are provided, which lowers the self-hosting bar somewhat compared to a from-scratch Elixir install.
• A free community-hosted instance exists at gettogether.community for groups that want to try it without standing up their own server.
• Supports federation between independent instances, following the same decentralized philosophy as Mobilizon rather than one company owning every group’s data.

Falls Short

• A much smaller project footprint than Mobilizon, under 500 GitHub stars and under 100 forks, with less visible evidence of nonprofit backing or long-term funding.
• Self-hosting still means running a Django/Python application with its own database and dependencies, a separate server from your WordPress install even with Docker simplifying the setup.
• No native WordPress, BuddyPress, or BuddyNext integration; there is no way to surface a GetTogether event inside a WordPress member’s activity feed or profile.
• Using the free community-hosted instance means your group’s events live under gettogether.community’s domain and moderation, not your own site’s brand.
• Smaller, less active-looking development pace than Mobilizon makes it a reasonable bet for a hobby project but a riskier one for an organization that needs guaranteed long-term support.

3. Eventonomy

Eventonomy is the free WordPress events plugin built at Wbcom Designs, and unlike Mobilizon or GetTogether it is not a separate application at all, it installs directly into a WordPress site you already own and run. The free plugin covers unlimited events and RSVPs with going, maybe, and waitlist statuses, Grid, List, Month, and Upcoming calendar views, daily, weekly, and monthly recurring series, custom RSVP questions with ten answer types, and guest RSVPs that work without creating an account through a magic link. It also ships an ICS feed with add-to-calendar links, a shared venue and organizer catalog, a My Events member dashboard, a frontend event submission form, CSV export, and branded confirmation emails, all included in the free tier rather than gated behind a trial.

Eventonomy Pro is priced at $99/year for one site, $199/year for five sites, or $249/year for unlimited sites, with lifetime licenses available from $249 to $629 if you would rather skip renewals entirely. Pro adds paid ticketing through Stripe, PayPal, or WooCommerce, with tax, booking fees, and coupon codes built in, Week and Day calendar grids, maps and geocoding, a door check-in scanner, organizer analytics and reporting, a discovery feed with follow and save functionality, SMS reminders through Twilio, and custom email templates. Running on WordPress 6.5+ and PHP 8.1+, with support for seven languages, Eventonomy holds a 4.8-out-of-5 Trustpilot rating across 96 reviews, which is a reasonable proxy for a plugin that has to work reliably across the wide range of themes and hosting setups a typical WordPress install runs on.

The infrastructure story is where Eventonomy diverges most sharply from Mobilizon and GetTogether. There is no separate server to provision, no new domain to point DNS at, no second TLS certificate to renew, and no second admin login to secure. Eventonomy’s events, RSVPs, and attendee data live in the same WordPress database your posts and pages already live in, covered by the same backups and the same security plugin you already run. On a BuddyX, BuddyPress, or BuddyNext community site specifically, Eventonomy Pro surfaces events directly in the activity feed, member profiles, and group pages, and adds a native Events tab to BuddyPress groups, something that is structurally impossible for a standalone federated app to do, since Mobilizon and GetTogether have no concept of a WordPress member profile at all.

Key Strengths

• No separate server, domain, or application to run; Eventonomy installs into the WordPress site and database you already maintain.
• Free tier is a complete events platform, not a trial: unlimited events, RSVPs, waitlists, recurring series, and member submissions all ship free.
• Native BuddyX, BuddyPress, and BuddyNext integration surfaces events in the feed, member profiles, and groups, which neither Mobilizon nor GetTogether can offer a WordPress site at any price.
• Guest RSVP via magic link removes signup friction for casual attendees who would otherwise need to create a fediverse account to RSVP.
• Paid ticketing through Stripe, PayPal, or WooCommerce with a flat annual license and no per-ticket platform fee, once you need to charge for an event.

Falls Short

• No ActivityPub federation; an Eventonomy event is visible to your site’s own visitors and search engines, not to other fediverse instances the way a Mobilizon or GetTogether event can be.
• Requires a WordPress site to begin with; it is not a standalone option for someone who does not want WordPress at all.
• Pro features, paid ticketing, maps, SMS reminders, sit behind a paid license, unlike Mobilizon and GetTogether which are entirely free regardless of feature.
• Younger in the market than Mobilizon’s five years of fediverse development, with a different philosophy (plugin, not platform) that will not suit organizers whose priority is decentralization itself.

What a Second Server Actually Costs You

“Free and open source” describes the license, not the total cost of ownership. Running your own Mobilizon or GetTogether instance means paying for a VPS or cloud server capable of running Elixir/Phoenix/PostgreSQL or Django/Python, typically somewhere from $5 to $40 a month depending on traffic and provider, plus a domain name, plus the time to apply security patches, run database backups, monitor uptime, and handle the inevitable dependency upgrade that breaks something. None of that shows up in either project’s pricing page because neither project is selling hosting, they are giving away software and leaving the infrastructure decision to you. For a solo developer or a technical nonprofit with sysadmin experience already on staff, that is a reasonable trade for full federation and zero license fees. For a typical WordPress site owner, a club organizer, a membership community manager, or a small business that pays a managed host to handle WordPress updates specifically so nobody has to think about server administration, standing up a second Linux application is a real, ongoing burden, not a one-time setup task.

The alternative to self-hosting either tool is joining an existing instance, Mobilizon’s network of 79 instances or GetTogether’s own community-hosted site, which removes the server problem but introduces a different one: your group’s events live under someone else’s domain, someone else’s moderation policy, and someone else’s long-term commitment to keep that instance running. Eventonomy sidesteps both problems by not being a separate application at all. There is no incremental server to size, patch, or monitor, because the plugin runs inside the hosting plan you are already paying for, and the uptime of your events calendar is exactly the uptime of your WordPress site, nothing more and nothing less.

A Real-World Scenario

Picture a city-based hobbyist club, a photography collective or a hiking group, currently organizing on Meetup and paying its monthly organizer fee, that wants to move somewhere free and self-sovereign. The club already runs a WordPress site on BuddyX for member profiles and a forum, built by a volunteer who is comfortable with WordPress but has never managed a Linux server.

If the club adopts Mobilizon, someone has to either find and join an existing instance run by a third party, accepting that instance’s rules and domain, or provision a new VPS and follow Mobilizon’s Elixir/Phoenix/PostgreSQL installation guide, a task well outside what the volunteer WordPress admin has ever done. Either path also leaves the club’s events sitting on a completely separate platform from the member site, with no shared login and no way for an event RSVP to show up next to a member’s forum posts. GetTogether presents the identical trade-off with a Django stack instead of Elixir, Docker configs making the self-hosted path somewhat friendlier, or the free community instance at gettogether.community as the no-infrastructure option, again on someone else’s domain. With Eventonomy, the volunteer installs the free plugin from the WordPress dashboard the same way they would install any other plugin, adds the events page, and within the hour members are RSVPing to the next hike from inside the same BuddyX site where they already post trip reports, with the event showing up in the same activity feed and the same member profile, no second server, no second login, no second thing to keep online.

Side-by-Side Comparison Table

Tool	Price	Hosting Model	License	Federation (ActivityPub)	WordPress / BuddyPress Integration	Best For
Mobilizon	Free, open source	Self-hosted (own server) or join an existing instance	AGPLv3	Yes, native	None	Technical teams who want true fediverse federation and can run an Elixir/Phoenix server
GetTogether	Free, open source	Self-hosted (own server, Docker provided) or community-hosted instance	BSD-2-Clause	Yes, between instances	None	Developers comfortable with Django who want a permissively licensed Meetup alternative
Eventonomy	Free / $99-$249/yr Pro	Inside your existing WordPress install, no separate server	GPL	No	Native BuddyX, BuddyPress, BuddyNext	WordPress site owners who want events, RSVPs, and ticketing without managing a second application

License terms, federation support, and self-hosting requirements can change as these projects evolve; check each project’s own documentation before you commit infrastructure time to any of them. The column that decides this comparison for most WordPress site owners is “Hosting Model”: Mobilizon and GetTogether both require either a second server you personally maintain or dependence on an instance someone else runs, while Eventonomy requires neither.

Which Should You Actually Pick

Match the tool to who is willing to run a server six months from now, not just how appealing the feature list looks on day one.

• A technical team or nonprofit that wants true fediverse federation and already runs Linux infrastructure: Mobilizon. AGPLv3, nonprofit-backed, and the largest federated network of the two open-source options, at the cost of an Elixir/Phoenix server you maintain yourself.
• A developer-led community that wants a permissively licensed, Django-based Meetup alternative: GetTogether. BSD-2-Clause licensing and Docker-simplified self-hosting, with a smaller project footprint than Mobilizon and the same separate-server requirement.
• A WordPress site owner, club, or membership community that wants events, RSVPs, and ticketing without standing up a second application: Eventonomy. The only option here that installs into infrastructure you already have, with BuddyX, BuddyPress, and BuddyNext integration neither fediverse tool offers.

For more on running events alongside a WordPress community specifically, see our guides on replacing The Events Calendar with Eventonomy on a community site and running a virtual summit on WordPress with Eventonomy.

Where to Start

If decentralization and fediverse federation are the priority and someone on your team is comfortable running a Linux server, Mobilizon is the most established of the two open-source options, with five years of development and a real nonprofit behind it. If you want the same philosophy with a more permissive license and are willing to self-host a Django app, GetTogether is worth evaluating, especially with its Docker setup lowering the bar somewhat. But if your actual situation is a WordPress site you already run, for a club, a membership community, a nonprofit, or a business, and the question is simply “how do I add events and RSVPs without taking on a second server,” install Eventonomy’s free plugin on a staging copy, add the calendar block to a page, and test an RSVP before touching the live site. The honest question across all three: are you trying to build a federated events network, or are you trying to add a calendar to the WordPress site that already exists? Different goals point to different tools, and most WordPress site owners already know which one they actually have.

Interesting Reads

• Replace The Events Calendar on Your Community Site with Eventonomy
• How to Run a Virtual Summit on WordPress with Eventonomy

FAQs

Is Mobilizon really free, with no paid tier at all?

Yes. Mobilizon is released under the AGPLv3 open-source license with no paid tier, no account limits, and no feature gating. The only cost is the infrastructure to run it yourself, or finding capacity on an existing instance run by someone else.

Can I use Mobilizon without running my own server?

Yes, by joining one of the existing instances in Mobilizon’s federated network, which numbered 79 instances hosting over 4,100 groups as of February 2025. Your group’s events and domain will live under that instance’s hosting, though, not infrastructure you control.

What’s the difference between Mobilizon’s and GetTogether’s licenses?

Mobilizon uses AGPLv3, a copyleft license that requires anyone who modifies and runs a public version to share their source code. GetTogether uses the more permissive BSD-2-Clause license, which allows forking, modifying, and even commercial redistribution without that obligation.

Does GetTogether have an official hosted version, like Mobilizon’s instances?

Yes, the project runs a free community instance at gettogether.community for groups that do not want to self-host. You can also self-host your own instance using the Docker and Docker Compose configuration the project provides.

Does Eventonomy support ActivityPub or fediverse federation?

No. Eventonomy is a WordPress plugin, not a federated application, so events are visible to your own site’s visitors and to search engines, not to other ActivityPub-speaking servers the way a Mobilizon or GetTogether event is.

Do I need a separate server to run Eventonomy?

No. Eventonomy installs like any other WordPress plugin into the site you already host, using the same database, backups, and SSL certificate. There is nothing new to provision, patch, or monitor beyond what your WordPress hosting already covers.

Which of the three works with BuddyPress or BuddyNext?

Eventonomy. It is tested against BuddyX, surfaces activity in the BuddyNext feed and member profiles with BuddyNext, and adds a native Events tab to BuddyPress groups with Eventonomy Pro. Neither Mobilizon nor GetTogether has any WordPress or BuddyPress integration.

Is Eventonomy’s free version actually usable, or is it a limited trial?

It is genuinely usable. The free plugin includes unlimited events and RSVPs, waitlists, recurring series, custom RSVP questions, guest RSVP via magic link, a member dashboard, and frontend event submission, with no cap. Paid ticketing, maps, SMS reminders, and analytics sit behind Pro.

Can I migrate events from Meetup to any of these three?

Mobilizon and GetTogether both expect events created directly in their own interfaces, with no official Meetup import tool from either project. Eventonomy ships a built-in importer for The Events Calendar, EventON, Events Manager, and WP Event Manager, but not from Meetup directly, so a Meetup migration on any of the three currently means recreating events by hand.

Which option is cheapest if I never need paid ticketing?

All three are free at that point: Mobilizon and GetTogether have no paid tier regardless of features used, and Eventonomy’s free plugin already covers unlimited events, RSVPs, and recurring series with no ticketing fee. The real cost difference shows up in infrastructure, server hosting for Mobilizon or GetTogether versus none for Eventonomy, not in the software license.

Is Mobilizon or GetTogether better than a WordPress events plugin?

Mobilizon and GetTogether are standalone open-source applications, so you host, secure and update a second server. A WordPress plugin such as Eventonomy runs inside the site, database and backups you already manage. Choose the standalone tools for federation or independence, and the plugin when you want fewer moving parts.

Sources

• Fortune Business Insights: Event Management Software Market