In January 2024, a holding company called Bending Spoons bought Meetup. In March 2026, the same company bought Eventbrite. Two of the biggest names in community events now answer to the same owner, run on the same playbook.
If your community lives on either one, that is worth understanding, because the company behind your platform shapes everything about it: the price, the support, and where it is headed.
Who the new owner is, and why it matters
Bending Spoons is known for a specific pattern: buy established consumer apps, raise prices, and cut costs, including support. You do not have to take that on faith. Look at Meetup since the 2024 acquisition: organizer prices have gone up repeatedly, customer reviews have fallen toward roughly 1.3 stars on consumer review sites, and organizers report a buggy app and support that is hard to reach. That is the track record now pointed at Eventbrite too.
Four things this means for your community
Prices tend to go up
When the goal is returns for an acquirer, the price you pay is a lever. Meetup organizers have already seen repeated increases. You do not control that lever, and you rarely get a vote.
Support tends to go down
Support is a cost center to a company optimizing margin. The reviews tell the story: harder to reach a human, slower fixes, more friction exactly when you need help.
The roadmap is no longer yours
New features serve the owner’s returns, not your community’s needs. The direction of the product you depend on is now set in a boardroom you are not in.
Your community sits on rented land
And the landlord just changed. Everything you have built, your events, your audience, your history, now depends on decisions made by a company you did not choose.
Get the Platform Independence Checklist
Ten questions to gauge how exposed your community is to a platform you do not control, and what to do about it. Free, takes five minutes.
This is not anti-event-platform. It is pro-independence.
Eventbrite is still a genuinely strong event marketplace, and Meetup still has real interest-group discovery. The point is not that those tools are bad. The point is who controls them now, and where that kind of ownership tends to lead. Building the long-term home of your community on a platform that just changed hands is a risk worth naming.
When the platform your community lives on gets bought, your community gets bought with it.
Why independence is a feature
Kannect is independent and founder-run, and it is not built to be flipped to the holding-company circuit. That is not a slogan, it is the reason the things below can stay true over time.
- One home for events, members, messaging, resources, and payments, not just ticketing
- Plans from $15 a month with a 7-day free trial, and a 2% fee on paid plans versus Eventbrite’s roughly 10 to 14% all-in per ticket
- A verified, spam-free network, so members know your community and events are real
- You own your member data, and members stay connected in the Kannect Community Hub app
Check your exposure
Ten quick questions to see how much of your community depends on a platform you do not control. We’ll send the checklist now.