Speaking as someone who's gone to hundreds of meetups for various groups and was an admin for a 1400 member (~200 active at its peak) meetup for a while, I don't necessarily think the problem is they didn't improve enough. I still find it functionally useful enough.
But their income model isn't that great. I was paying $90 out of pocket every 6 months to keep it going at the end (I think when I started being an admin I was paying around $45, so it doubled in only a few years), and I was having a hard time justifying paying them $180/year to keep our group, which was going through a bit of a rough patch anyway (especially when the pandemic hit and I didn't want to host any in-person meetups anymore). I know the admins of several other local groups and they also killed their groups for the same reason.
I also really don't like how you can't actually close the group, just leave as an admin. Technically our group is still around, just some random person swooped in to take over to only post paid speed dating events (the group was originally for geeky interests, like board games, movies, conventions, role playing, etc). It feels dirty to me the site allows and encourages that behavior (spamming emails to everyone in the group "Don't let this meetup group you're a member of go away! Pay to become an admin now!")
I still use them as a user, but I don't think I'd ever start a group on there ever again. I created a local board game playtester group and used word of mouth at game designer conventions to get to ~10 people and kept that going through a Facebook group chat and posted Facebook events, that seemed good enough.
I too am (well, was would be more accurate) a Meetup organizer. You're right that the fee is steep and the culture of the site is that no users want to pay for anything, even if it's just a buck. Thing is I think that Meetup could have justified that fee by providing a lot more value to organizers. Meetup really isn't very sophisticated; if you get rid of the forums that nobody actually uses, it's one of the most basic CRUD apps you could possibly make. And that's okay, except ~$20 a month (honestly I forget what I've been paying) hardly is justified by a junior dev CRUD app.
Here's all the things that Meetup could and probably should have been doing that they still aren't:
- Support an option allowing people who don't have a Meetup.com account to RSVP
- Likewise, support fungible tickets for events that people can share
- A group message/email composer that isn't a sack of garbage
- More effective event promotion that competes with Eventbrite
- Related to the last point, make events front and center on every page (like Eventbrite) instead of self-congratulation
- Slack and Discord integration
- Just admit that nobody wants to download the Meetup app
- Promote and incentivize in person events over online ones (Let's face it, COVID isn't that relevant anymore and turning meetup into Zoom meetings will kill it. Zoom isn't "meetups", and acting like everyone needs to still hunker down in fear will make Meetup totally irrelevant in the long term when being a coomer-doomer is no longer cool.)
- Allow locking in RSVPs within 24-48 hours before an event
- Allow automatically charging or banning users who are no-shows
- Do more to help organizers find and work with venues to host meetups
- Support the option for democratically-run groups
Last I remember, Meetup either has none of those things or does the in a way that is poorly supported or surfaced.
To top it off, the site is a bunch of wasted space. Compare it to Eventbrite where the events themselves are front and center. The top of the fold on Meetup.com for years has been occupied by useless copy, design elements, and maybe the search box if they feel like it. Right now the search box is below the fold.
So yes, it's not a good deal for organizers monetarily speaking, but both the user and organizer experience is anything but stellar. Meetup is perpetually stuck in the MVP phase; they've hardly gone beyond the basic CRUD app, and that doesn't cut the mustard anymore.
But their income model isn't that great. I was paying $90 out of pocket every 6 months to keep it going at the end (I think when I started being an admin I was paying around $45, so it doubled in only a few years), and I was having a hard time justifying paying them $180/year to keep our group, which was going through a bit of a rough patch anyway (especially when the pandemic hit and I didn't want to host any in-person meetups anymore). I know the admins of several other local groups and they also killed their groups for the same reason.
I also really don't like how you can't actually close the group, just leave as an admin. Technically our group is still around, just some random person swooped in to take over to only post paid speed dating events (the group was originally for geeky interests, like board games, movies, conventions, role playing, etc). It feels dirty to me the site allows and encourages that behavior (spamming emails to everyone in the group "Don't let this meetup group you're a member of go away! Pay to become an admin now!")
I still use them as a user, but I don't think I'd ever start a group on there ever again. I created a local board game playtester group and used word of mouth at game designer conventions to get to ~10 people and kept that going through a Facebook group chat and posted Facebook events, that seemed good enough.