A free, French alternative to Meetup.
An event organizer myself for years, I see the frustration growing among the people who run communities, because of the tools they're stuck with. Meetup first of all: it charges organizers to run their own group, and keeps hold of their audience if they want to leave. Running a community is useful, demanding work. It deserves a tool that lives up to it. That's why I built The Playground.
Communities have already moved their events and members in. The Playground covers the essentials of what Meetup does, gets better every week, and it's built to last.
The problem
And it's not just Meetup. Whatever tool I've tried, I hit the same wall.
There's no tool that does community + events + free + good UX + audience ownership all at once.
Meetup
Good community model, but dated UX and organizer paywall.
Luma
Clean experience, beautiful event pages. But every event is an island — no retention.
DIY tools
Google Forms + Eventbrite + WhatsApp + spreadsheets. You get by, but you lose your audience.
The answer
The Playground starts from a simple idea.
- The community is the core entity — not the event.
- The event is a viral entry point.
- Joining an event automatically makes you a community member.
- The community persists between events.
Meetup's community model + Luma's experience + 100% free. No subscription, no platform commission.
And everything it takes to keep a community alive, day to day:
Persistent communities
The audience stays with the organizer, exportable anytime
Built-in ticketing
Stripe payments, 0% platform fee
Shareable events
A clean page per event, ready to share
Waitlist
A spot opens up, the next in line is promoted automatically
Automated notifications
Confirmations, reminders and cancellations, handled for you
Comments
One discussion per event, photos included
Explore
A public directory to get discovered
Event radar
Flags events that clash on the same time slot
About me
I'm Dragos Dreptate. Executive, entrepreneur and coach — 25 years in tech, based in Paris. I founded The Spark, a consulting firm specializing in AI, Product and Innovation.
Product conferences, masterclasses, internal events, agile community meetups: I've organized a bit of everything. That organizer experience is what's behind The Playground.
A question, an idea, want to connect? Find me on LinkedIn.
The stack
Entirely built with Claude Code (Anthropic). Hexagonal architecture, strict TypeScript, everything deployed in Europe.
Next.js 16
App Router, SSR/ISR
TypeScript
Strict, full-stack
PostgreSQL
Neon serverless (EU)
Prisma
ORM + migrations
Auth.js v5
Magic link + OAuth
Tailwind + shadcn
Design system
Stripe Connect
Secure payments
Resend
Transactional emails
Sentry
Error monitoring
Vercel
Edge deployment (EU)
PostHog
Product analytics
Claude Code
AI-powered dev
Anthropic SDK
Embedded AI (Radar)
By the numbers
2 500+
commits
520+
pull requests
87
use cases
1 560+
tests
The code
Curious about how it's built? The source code is on GitHub.
DragosDreptate / the-playground
github.com/DragosDreptate/the-playground