Are you serious? That sounds like a steal compared to Discourse’s official offerings! I want in! 
Yeah, I could hardly believe it myself when I first found out about them, but they are for real. They have made hosting a discourse forum affordable and completely hassle free. When new Discourse updates are released they just magically appear within a day or two for our forum. And having managed email servers before, I really appreciate that they take care of email. Even better, we have had virtually no problems with email deliverability.
I guess the one potential downside is that they only offer a limited subset of Discourse plug-ins, though I think you can pay extra if there is a plug-in you desperately need. We’ve been perfectly happy with the standard plug-ins they provide.
For $200/year I just don’t have to think at all about the mechanics of running a Discourse forum, that’s the bargain of the year in my opinion.
I think I found one of their affiliates.
Louisville guy here. Completely agree! Discourse is way better than trying to keep with the conversation in Discord. I wish more people used Discourse. First place I’ve used it is here on MPU and I love it. So great to keep up with topics and see what you’ve missed. Way better than some of the vbulletin sites I’ve used for years.
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I can relate, but also want to point out; large Telegram channels is even worse. I don’t even know why it’s a thing. 10 conversations happening at the same time, in a linear chat, at high pace. Discord at least has threading. But you’re right that Discourse is so much better for many purposes; Discord seems very good for a small og medium sized group of friends, not big online communities, for reason you mentioned.
I disagree actually 
I find threading to be more distracting than just the reply feature in discord.
Surely that depends entirely on the size of the channel. For few people, threading is an unnecessary complication. For larger groups, threading allows you to contain discussions to the relevant place. Imagine this discourse forum just unfolding as one linear conversation.
Even with 20-30 people I prefer replying over threads
Sure that number sounds reasonable, but the subtext in OG was Macstories going to Discord, and I sure hope they have more than 20-30 subscribers
I mean it’s in a server with ~2000 people. But there’s only ever 20-30 at a time talking in a channel.
I was not aware that was the subtext
It also matters whether the text can be mostly ephemeral
I don’t see how threading really a problem if implemented in a way that allows easy discovery. But I must admit I haven’t really used threading so much in Discord, mostly in Slack. While it could still be improved in Slack, I find it pretty easy to keep track of when you can have the main channel(s) in the center view and thread in the side view. What is means is that the conversations topics doesn’t force your brain to go topic A, B, C, A, D, E, B etc. But you can focus on one topic at a time. I wouldn’t like having to manually check for threads that could be relevant to me, but I trust people to repost out to main thread if they think it may be of interest. The usefulness of threading depends a lot on how it’s implemented though. I actually also kind of like the way they did threading in iMessage.
Agreed! It’s closer to replying in discord than threading (iMessage that is). I find slack threading to be a black hole I never remember to check
The way I see it, it’s up to other people to reply also send a reply in thread back to main channel if they think it could be relevant. It’s nobody’s job to remember to check threads. Sometimes I find a post that obviously invites to thread responses interested, but for which I have no contribution to make, in which case I follow the message for thread responses.
Other than that, for threads you’ve already been active in, it’s all in the Threads section. I think it’s just a question of having the right culture and conventions of using the tool, not necessarily a problem with threading itself perhaps.