The real difference: one stack instead of two
Discourse is excellent software. The question is not whether it is good, it is whether you want to run a second platform alongside WordPress.
A Discourse community is a separate Ruby on Rails application. It needs its own server, its own database, its own email pipeline, and its own update cycle. It has its own user accounts, so you either ask members to register twice or build and maintain a single-sign-on bridge. It has its own theme, so the forum looks like Discourse, not like your site.
For a standalone community that has nothing to do with WordPress, that separation is fine. But most communities are attached to something: a SaaS product, a course, a membership, a store. When that something runs on WordPress, a separate Discourse install means two stacks to secure, two things to update, two logins to support, and two visual identities to reconcile.
Jetonomy collapses that into one. The community is a plugin in the WordPress site you already run. Members are WordPress users. The forum inherits your theme. There is no second server.
What you keep, and what you drop
You keep the things that made you consider Discourse: a modern forum with threaded replies and voting, trust levels that let the community moderate itself, and a clean reading experience. You add things Discourse needs plugins or custom work for: a Q&A space with accepted answers, an ideas board with a roadmap, and membership gating that ties spaces to your existing plans.
What you drop is the operational weight. No Docker host to patch. No SSO to debug at 2am. No “why does the forum look different from the rest of the site” conversation.
A fair word on scale
Discourse powers some of the largest public forums on the internet, and that pedigree is real. If you are building a massive standalone community and you have the infrastructure team to run it, Discourse is a strong pick.
For the far more common case, a community that belongs next to a WordPress site, the deciding factor is rarely raw scale. It is whether you want to operate one platform or two. Jetonomy is built for the teams who want one.