GrowthHackers Went Invite-Only. Here Are 12 GrowthHackers Alternatives Worth Your Time

You type growthhackers.com out of habit.

Maybe you want the old feed back. The one where a teardown of some SaaS referral loop sat right next to a cold email test with real numbers attached, and the comments were half the value. What you get now is an application form and a promise that someone will review it within two business days.

That's usually the moment people start hunting for GrowthHackers alternatives. Fair enough. The community is still free, but it isn't the open, scroll-and-upvote place a lot of marketers remember, and the experiment software that carried its name is gone completely. Below you'll find what actually changed, a quick comparison table, and 12 alternatives sorted by the thing you're really missing.

GrowthHackers Alternatives at a Glance

How GrowthHackers Changed (The Short Version)

GrowthHackers was founded by Sean Ellis, the guy who coined "growth hacking" and ran growth at Dropbox and LogMeIn. For years it worked a lot like Hacker News for marketers: people shared links, the best ones got upvoted, and the comment threads turned into free consulting.

Then the ownership story got complicated.

In 2019 GrowthHackers merged with Contentools, a Brazilian content marketing company. In early 2024 the community and brand were reportedly bought by investor Peter Lang. And in March 2025, GrowthHackers announced a partnership with the agency GrowthRocks, with GrowthRocks' group CEO Theo Moulos joining as Chief Strategy Officer. Today the site sells certification courses and a new software suite called Growth OS alongside the invite-only community.

You'll also see wildly different member numbers floating around. The community page says 40,000+. The GrowthRocks announcement mentions a network of more than 80,000. Some roundups published this year still quote 150,000. They probably count different things, which is exactly why a big number on its own tells you very little about whether a community is any good.

And the software? Experiments (which went by Canvas, Projects, and NorthStar before that) was spun out as Growth Software around 2022, and by mid-2025 its site was gone. There's no migration path to anything sold under the GrowthHackers name now. That timeline comes from a detailed write-up by Growth Method, which sells a competing tool, so read it with that in mind. The core facts line up with what's visible on growthhackers.com, though.

What to Look For in a GrowthHackers Alternative

Before picking one, figure out what you actually used GrowthHackers for. Most people fall into one of four camps:

• The open feed. You liked reading real case studies without asking permission to get in.
• Peer questions. You wanted a quick answer from someone who'd already tried the thing.
• Structured learning. You were there for the playbooks, not the chatter.
• The software. Your team ran growth sprints inside Experiments.

Price and gatekeeping matter too. Honestly, a small paid room where people answer carefully often beats a free room of 50,000 where your question scrolls away in ten minutes. But not always. Keep that in mind as you read.

If You Miss the Open Discussion Feed

1. Indie Hackers

This is the closest thing to the old GrowthHackers feeling that's still wide open. Indie Hackers was started by Courtland Allen in 2016, sold to Stripe a year later, and bought back by Allen in 2023 so it could run independently again.

The forum is packed with founders posting revenue numbers, launches that flopped, and the marketing experiments that finally clicked. It's free, and you can read almost everything without an account.

The catch is that it skews founder, not marketer. Expect more "how I got my first 100 customers" than attribution debates. For plenty of growth people, that's the good stuff anyway.

2. r/growthhacking

Reddit's growth hacking subreddit is messy. Some days you get a thoughtful thread on onboarding emails. Other days it's somebody pitching the same LinkedIn automation tool for the fourth time that week.

Still worth bookmarking. It's free, fast, and anonymous, so people are sometimes more honest about what failed. Sort by top posts of the month instead of new and the quality jumps a lot.

3. Hacker News

This one surprises people. Hacker News, run by Y Combinator, isn't a marketing community, and its readers are famously allergic to anything that smells like marketing.

So why is it here? Because the format is the same one GrowthHackers used to have: links, upvotes, long comment threads. Startup postmortems and "Show HN" launches often contain brutally candid talk about distribution. Read. Learn. Just don't drop your blog post there expecting a warm welcome.

Free Slack Communities for Growth Marketers

4. Online Geniuses

If GrowthHackers felt too niche, Online Geniuses is the opposite. It's a Slack community for digital marketers, and its site says over 53,000 industry experts take part, from freelancers and agency owners to CMOs.

Joining is free after a short application, and there's a Pro community for people who want something more curated. The size cuts both ways. Post a PPC question on a Monday morning and you'll probably get answers fast. Post it on a Friday night and it might just sink.

5. Growth Marketing Pros

Growth Marketing Pros is smaller and tighter. The community says it has approved 2,500+ members since 2018, sees 90+ discussions a day, and gets more than 100 jobs and projects posted every month.

That approval step matters more than it sounds. It keeps out the drive-by self-promoters who make big free groups exhausting. Conversations lean toward startups and SaaS, so if you used GrowthHackers to talk funnels and experiments rather than general marketing, this will feel familiar.

6. RevGenius

RevGenius sits slightly outside pure growth marketing, and that's kind of the point. It's a B2B go-to-market community for sales, marketing, RevOps, and customer success people, and its homepage puts membership at 60k.

The core community is free, with a separate invite-only group for revenue leaders. If your growth work lives in the pipeline (demos booked, lead handoffs, sales and marketing arguing over attribution), RevGenius will be more useful than a room full of consumer app marketers. B2C folks can skip this one.

A quick word on Demand Curve, since it shows up on almost every list like this. Its free Slack used to be a strong pick. Right now, though, its community page says a new premium version is coming soon and only offers a waitlist. Join the waitlist if you liked it before, just don't expect a live room today.

Paid Communities That Pay You Back in Learning

Paying for a community sounds odd when GrowthHackers costs nothing. But paid rooms filter hard, and it shows in the conversations. Here's where the money actually goes.

7. Reforge

Reforge is more school than forum. According to its pricing FAQ, the Individual Plan costs $1,995 a year and includes the full content library, a members' Slack community, and one live course per season.

Look, that price only makes sense if you'll use the courses. Nobody should spend two grand just for a Slack. But if you want the structured thinking behind retention, acquisition loops, and monetization, it's one of the most respected places to get it.

8. Superpath Pro

Superpath is built for content marketers. Superpath Pro runs $50 a month or $500 a year with a free 30-day trial, and it's a deliberately small group of around 300 in-house, freelance, and agency content people.

Small is the selling point. Monthly 1:1 peer calls and group sessions mean you actually get to know people instead of shouting into a channel. If content is your main growth channel, this is your room. If it isn't, there's not much reason to be here.

9. Traffic Think Tank

Traffic Think Tank is an SEO community priced at $119 a month. That's steep for a chat room, and it isn't trying to be for everyone.

It earns its place when organic search drives a real chunk of your growth and you want to compare notes with other SEO practitioners in depth. If SEO is just one channel among many for you, the free SEO channels in Online Geniuses will cover most of your questions.

10. Exit Five

Exit Five is made for B2B marketers, and Exit Five Pro costs $49 a month. The pitch is simple: individual B2B marketers who are serious about getting better, in one place.

It's a strong fit if you want peers who deal with the same long sales cycles and buying committees you do. Consumer brand marketers will find a lot less here.

11. GrowthMentor

GrowthMentor isn't really a community first. It's a mentorship platform with 700+ vetted mentors you can book calls with.

Its pricing page shows $150 billed monthly, $75 a month billed quarterly, or $50 a month on the yearly plan. That changes the math compared to a forum. One good call with someone who has already scaled your exact channel can save weeks of guessing. The trade-off is obvious, though: you're paying for access to people, not a daily feed to scroll.

A Community Built for Social Media Marketers

12. MarketersClique

Full disclosure, this one's ours. MarketersClique is a free community for social media marketers, with 2,500+ marketers, 8,500+ conversations, and 2,000+ badges awarded so far.

It isn't trying to replace GrowthHackers for CRO teams running twenty experiments a sprint. The focus is social: what's working on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, and X, handling client accounts, and the daily headaches social media managers actually deal with. You can browse real threads in the MarketersClique community, and the leaderboard and member badges give people a reason to write helpful answers instead of lazy ones.

The honest downside? It's younger and smaller than Online Geniuses or RevGenius. If you want a huge established room, start there. If you want people who get social media marketing specifically, come say hi.

Alternatives to GrowthHackers Experiments Software

Some people searching for GrowthHackers alternatives don't want a community at all. They want the software back.

Quick recap: Experiments helped teams build an idea backlog, score and prioritize tests, and track results against a North Star metric. One software directory listed it at $849 a month back in 2018. It's no longer available, so if your team still runs growth sprints, the backlog needs a new home. Four realistic options:

• Growth Method: Built for lean B2B marketing teams, with analytics integrations that pull results in automatically. Its own comparison page lists pricing at £100 per user per month. Remember it's also the company that published the Experiments timeline above.
• Effective Experiments: Better suited to big CRO programs with lots of stakeholders. Plans start around £100 a month and move to custom contracts at the top.
• UpGrow: The budget pick, starting at €29 a month for up to five users according to Growth Method's review. Simple and clean, but it doesn't offer integrations.
• A Notion or Airtable tracker: Free or close to it. Columns for hypothesis, ICE score, owner, status, and result will cover most small teams. You lose the automation but keep the testing habit, and the habit is the part that grows things.

How to Pick the Right One Without Joining Six Communities

Don't join six. Join two: one broad room and one niche room.

• Bootstrapped founder: Indie Hackers as your home base, with r/growthhacking for quick sanity checks.
• Growth marketer at a startup or SaaS company: Growth Marketing Pros, plus Reforge only if your company is paying.
• B2B marketer: Exit Five if you sit in marketing, RevGenius if you work closely with sales.
• SEO or content lead: Traffic Think Tank or Superpath Pro, depending on your channel.
• Social media marketer or manager: MarketersClique for your niche, Online Geniuses for everything else.

Whichever you choose, post something in your first week. Communities reward people who show up, not the ones who lurk for six months and then ask for a favor. If social media is your world, you can start a discussion on MarketersClique once you've created a free account.

FAQ

Is GrowthHackers still free to join?

Yes, the community is still free. It's invite-only now, though, so you'll fill out an application and wait for approval, which the site says takes up to two business days. The company also sells courses and software separately.

Why did GrowthHackers become invite-only?

The site doesn't give one official reason. What's clear is that the brand went through several ownership changes, from the 2019 Contentools merger to the 2025 GrowthRocks partnership, and shifted toward training and services. Gated communities also tend to keep spam and self-promotion down, which open feeds struggle with.

What's the best free alternative to GrowthHackers?

It depends on what you miss. For an open feed of real founder and growth stories, go with Indie Hackers. For a free Slack full of growth marketers, try Growth Marketing Pros or Online Geniuses, and if you work in social media marketing, MarketersClique is free and built for that niche.

What can I use instead of GrowthHackers Experiments?

Growth Method and Effective Experiments are the closest dedicated tools, while UpGrow is a cheaper option for small teams. If budget is tight, a Notion or Airtable board with ICE scoring covers the basics of an experiment backlog.

Are paid growth communities worth it?

They're worth it when the community matches your specialty and you'll actually use what's included. Exit Five Pro at $49 a month is an easy test for B2B marketers, while Reforge at $1,995 a year only pays off if you take the courses. If you're unsure, spend a month in a free community first and see what you still can't get answered.