I didn't say it would have to be free.

I run some meetup groups, and still pay for it for now, but the price hikes and other charges they're adding are onerous. I know many groups who have shutdown, and I know of some other players wanting to get in to this space to take over from meetup.com. $10/month to run a smallish group is affordable for a lot of folks. $50/month is not. $300/year is just not worth it to many folks, but... $99/year would be. Meetup seems to be moving in to some weird 'hyper optimize for short term revenue' move, which makes me think they'll be gone or acquired/dismantled in the next 5 years.