[15] Users of the platform have the ability to create personalized "courses," which consist of curated lists of words and phrases that can be accompanied by audio and pictures.

[21] Journalist Joshua Foer, in an attempt to communicate with the Pygmy peoples in the Congo Basin, was able to pick up Lingala, a language with scarce learning materials, by utilizing community courses.

[23] In the United States, indigenous nations have published courses on Memrise to support efforts to revitalize their heritage languages, including Cherokee,[24] Seneca,[25] Comanche,[26] Potawatomi,[27] and Choctaw.

[33] A research conducted by NEȾOLṈEW̱, a Canadian partnership working on indigenous language revitalization, praises the motivational effect of Memrise' leaderboard for learners,[34] but raises concerns about the issue of data sovereignty.

[35][36] In 2023, the successes of the Memrise projects for Ume Sámi and Kristang were cited as "inspiring stories" by the UNESCO publication Digital initiatives for indigenous languages.

[29] Apart from resources for language learning, the community has produced courses for other subject matters, including geography, history, mathematics, natural science, some designed for general interests and some for test preparation.

[39] Memrise used to have a function known as "mems," which are user-generated mnemonic devices or memory aids to help learners remember and retain new information more effectively.

[41] In 2013, Ben Whately and Ed Cooke discussed their team's approach to take advantage of the Intenet obsession with cats and "the relationship between cuteness and improved cognitive function" to create memorable mems.

Specific users had been using bots and non-intensive mechanisms, such as celebrity photo memory courses, to achieve atypical scores that were not reflective of actual learning.

[48] Over time, Memrise, initially established as a learning platform centered around crowdsourcing and community engagement, has undergone a noticeable transition by gradually phasing out significant features in favor of prioritizing their official content offerings.

[54] The CEO Steve Toy has made posts announcing and trying to explain the abovementioned change on the Memrise subreddit, under which many users have expressed concerns, frustrations, and even anger regarding the future of community courses.

[55][56] Regarding the future of community courses, Toy has clarified that he has no plan to take them down after 2024 or any date, but is "not prepared to put [his] name next to a promise about the site['s] longevity at this moment.