Slack’s free plan change is causing an exodus(blog.zulip.com)
blog.zulip.com
Slack’s free plan change is causing an exodus
https://blog.zulip.com/2022/08/26/why-slacks-free-plan-change-is-causing-an-exodus/
788 comments
Everybody understands this.
Here’s what companies don’t understand: if you promote your product through a loss leader — which is arguably how Slack became popular in the first place — changing your pricing at a later date will piss people off.
You’re trying to put the blame on the consumer here which never makes any sense from a business perspective. If your loss-leading pricing strategy was unsustainable from the start, that’s on you.
It doesn’t matter if the product is “worth it” because when you piss people off, they will gladly put in effort into migrating to another provider they can trust, because that’s what it’s all about: trust.
The latest Google Apps fiasco is a great example of this, where Google eventually had to backpedal due to the massive backlash.
It’s simply a consequence of just staring at the numbers, without properly understanding the psychological effect of taking something away from what is, despite the zero income but rather in a sense of trust, a customer. It’s just a customer you failed to get any revenue out of, and that’s your fault, not the customers.
Changing pricing pisses people off. Killing features pisses people off. Bad communication pisses people off. It’s really not that hard.
At the end of the day you’re making a deal with the devil with these overly optimistic loss-leaders, because you’re getting growth you never would have gotten otherwise. Failing to capitalize on that and then blaming the users while throwing features out the window is just not good business practice.
Here’s what companies don’t understand: if you promote your product through a loss leader — which is arguably how Slack became popular in the first place — changing your pricing at a later date will piss people off.
You’re trying to put the blame on the consumer here which never makes any sense from a business perspective. If your loss-leading pricing strategy was unsustainable from the start, that’s on you.
It doesn’t matter if the product is “worth it” because when you piss people off, they will gladly put in effort into migrating to another provider they can trust, because that’s what it’s all about: trust.
The latest Google Apps fiasco is a great example of this, where Google eventually had to backpedal due to the massive backlash.
It’s simply a consequence of just staring at the numbers, without properly understanding the psychological effect of taking something away from what is, despite the zero income but rather in a sense of trust, a customer. It’s just a customer you failed to get any revenue out of, and that’s your fault, not the customers.
Changing pricing pisses people off. Killing features pisses people off. Bad communication pisses people off. It’s really not that hard.
At the end of the day you’re making a deal with the devil with these overly optimistic loss-leaders, because you’re getting growth you never would have gotten otherwise. Failing to capitalize on that and then blaming the users while throwing features out the window is just not good business practice.
>Here’s what companies don’t understand: if you promote your product through a loss leader — which is arguably how Slack became popular in the first place — changing your pricing at a later date will piss people off.
I'd argue that most companies understand that perfectly well. They have a generous free tier to drive growth. Once that growth is attained and demand starts to level off, it's time to trim the resources devoted to free and force users (to greater or lesser degrees) to either start paying or go use someone else. There's great wailing and gnashing of teeth for some period of time on HN, Twitter, etc. but life moves on.
It's a pretty predictable playbook. See also Heroku of late. It should probably also come as no surprise we're seeing a number of examples of this going on at the moment.
I'd argue that most companies understand that perfectly well. They have a generous free tier to drive growth. Once that growth is attained and demand starts to level off, it's time to trim the resources devoted to free and force users (to greater or lesser degrees) to either start paying or go use someone else. There's great wailing and gnashing of teeth for some period of time on HN, Twitter, etc. but life moves on.
It's a pretty predictable playbook. See also Heroku of late. It should probably also come as no surprise we're seeing a number of examples of this going on at the moment.
Yup, and they think pissing people off is worth it (for their expected benefit). And... they're probably right. People have short term memories and other things to worry about.
They are right for now, but will start loosing clients soon. Zulip & Discord provide better plans without major feature set downgrade.
We tested Zulip not too long ago, in short - UI is not so good, but in general still useful: https://nixsanctuary.com/zulip-review-through-slack-glasses/
We tested Zulip not too long ago, in short - UI is not so good, but in general still useful: https://nixsanctuary.com/zulip-review-through-slack-glasses/
Zulip and Discord will charge more once their growth plateau, as every one else.
What's the cost of pissing free-tier people off? None of this has really impacted paying customers, right?
Some percentage of free tier people are also paying on other accounts, and some will be lost.
But it’s probably a small amount because SaaS has figured out to basically milk slacktivism. People will complain but pay.
But it’s probably a small amount because SaaS has figured out to basically milk slacktivism. People will complain but pay.
I'd think that's not the main problem -- it's instead fewer new users? Impacting future paying customers
Opportunity cost to an extent: instead of convincing them into becoming paying customers, and having them word-of-mouth promote you, they slip away to a competing service, which they may also indeed decide to pay for.
Same with Evernote. Massive ‘growth’ on the free plan. No good way to capitalize, so they just started deleting features and locking people’s content in. There is no regular export to get everything out and you need to jump through a lot of hoops. I wish I never updated that app…
Just curious (I'm using professional for a very long time, and plans page doesn't clarify), can't you just get the ENEX files per notebook and import it to something else?
It contains everything, incl. the files as far as I can see.
The file format is open, and there are many conversion tools out there.
It contains everything, incl. the files as far as I can see.
The file format is open, and there are many conversion tools out there.
Yes. But as someone that's been meaning to switch off of Evernote - never has a project bloated their own software with so many unasked for features / desperate attempts to grow valuation - it's a non-trivial project. One needs to have a high degree of trust in the import tool and new repository.
While it's not perfect, I like Evernote and its new incarnation. Feature parity between platforms is what saved it for me, and use almost all of the features they offer. I was getting ready to leave it for good. Nevertheless, I don't expect everyone to share the same sentiment.
On the other hand, you don't need to import anywhere at first. Just convert your files to Markdown, put the files aside and create your local knowledge base. You can import these Markdown files to somewhere new when you find the correct place, why not?
This is what keeps me at Evernote most. I can just move out in 2-3 hours, or in half day if I want.
On the other hand, you don't need to import anywhere at first. Just convert your files to Markdown, put the files aside and create your local knowledge base. You can import these Markdown files to somewhere new when you find the correct place, why not?
This is what keeps me at Evernote most. I can just move out in 2-3 hours, or in half day if I want.
Did they finally add exports bigger than 50 items to the new app? Last I checked, you still had to install the old one for a full export, and I don't expect it will work forever.
You can export a whole notebook by right clicking to notebook and selecting export.
I don't think they have note limits on exporting notebooks.
I don't think they have note limits on exporting notebooks.
The help doc says there's still a 50-note limit doing it from the note list, but they did finally add a full notebook export. Maybe I'll give it another try.
https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/209005557-Export...
The lack of a whole-account export is still an issue, but not as big as not being able to export notebooks.
https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/209005557-Export...
The lack of a whole-account export is still an issue, but not as big as not being able to export notebooks.
Not to mention 1Password
I wouldn't mention 1Password. It's a cornerstone for your digital security, if you're using it. As such, I don't want it free, I want to pay for it. My current family plan suits us very well and I'm very happy. Security is hard and I want it done right. Not to say that free tools are bad and paid tools are always good, but it certainly helps.
I also do want "easy" things to be free, like a note-taking app.
I also do want "easy" things to be free, like a note-taking app.
I think OP is talking about how 1Password stopped letting you use the one-time-purchase version and pushed everyone to the subscription.
Personally, I was pretty frustrated at that shift because I successfully and happily used old versions until it was “time” to update (2 then 4 (which was at the upgrade cost), then one more before I was pushed to the subscription). It always worked great. Tbh I’m still frustrated that their choice to self-host the syncing service became our costs (I used Dropbox just fine and that didn’t cost them anything), but now that I’m past the sticker shock (my costs easily went up 8X) I’m more comfortable with the stability of their company and breathing room they have to build the hard technology.
Thanks for bringing it up: 1Password is a necessary example for this debate.
Personally, I was pretty frustrated at that shift because I successfully and happily used old versions until it was “time” to update (2 then 4 (which was at the upgrade cost), then one more before I was pushed to the subscription). It always worked great. Tbh I’m still frustrated that their choice to self-host the syncing service became our costs (I used Dropbox just fine and that didn’t cost them anything), but now that I’m past the sticker shock (my costs easily went up 8X) I’m more comfortable with the stability of their company and breathing room they have to build the hard technology.
Thanks for bringing it up: 1Password is a necessary example for this debate.
I, too, have fond memories of the old one-time purchase modality of software vending, but I have to admit such an arrangement is largely untenable for any software company which wishes to maintain a high quality product across multiple platforms over the long haul.
Regarding building in their own sync, I think it’s actually a good thing. Naively syncing encrypted files can’t achieve the reliability of conflict resolution that a semantically aware app-level sync can.
On a side note, I moved away from Dropbox a couple years ago as their product became bloated as they seek growth with increased desperation. That is not a trait that I want in a company I allow to install kernel extensions on my machine.
Regarding building in their own sync, I think it’s actually a good thing. Naively syncing encrypted files can’t achieve the reliability of conflict resolution that a semantically aware app-level sync can.
On a side note, I moved away from Dropbox a couple years ago as their product became bloated as they seek growth with increased desperation. That is not a trait that I want in a company I allow to install kernel extensions on my machine.
The "naive" apps, like KeePassXC/Keepass2Android do have app-level syncing of conflicting files. Granted it's more cumbersome than it would be to use a cloud service, but works very well. I end up using it more often than I'd like to.
Pretty sure 1Password was always paid? And you had to pay for different platforms. I bought it a couple of timesand paid for a couple of major updates too.
I bet it was the App Store and the Mac Store where you couldn't pay for updates that started them thinking about a subscription model.
I bet it was the App Store and the Mac Store where you couldn't pay for updates that started them thinking about a subscription model.
I want a password manager to be paid.
Yeah grounds for a suit. Unless of course they don't fuck up, that's a different story, then no suit and payment will be forthcoming. Like a bank. Password managers are banks.
Subscriptions are highly fetishized by the current accounting system, because they seem more predictable basically, and plus there's a lag between no longer using a service and discountinuing the subscription, that's like four free months at the end with no support calls no use no opening the app, nothing. Not even electricity costs. For that user in those months you might as well have 0% uptime. It's cheap. Except billing because you keep getting paid! And when they leave it's generally not a chargeback, plus you can be a bitch to unsubscribe from to the narrowest extent permitted by the law, ask Google not to lead people to the answer to how to unsubscribe on the first try or SEO it, in some way, hey that's solid business plusses and minusses. Especially the plusses for the first-person, the business owner, the first-person in economics too, for whom the price and quantity axes on economics charts are switched. There's also the idea that for a business to be a business it has to be repeatable. It's a sound idea.
And there's tons of businesses that make sense as a subscription. If you want to reward a business for doing a great job, try to subscribe to it under some pretense because that revenue will go much farther in business terms to strengthen it. I've done that, I did that for Beorg. I already bought all their unlockables. Even the ones I didn't want. Tipped them (him? I think it's a one-man show) a bunch of times. Then I subscribed thinking of all the good that subscription would do for the startup, instead of eg tipping.
Then it broke and I couldn't use it, like the calendars got out of whack. Plus, it's a todo app, ie I nag myself with it. It's like an alarm clock. There's the alarm clock effect.
Alarm clock effect: no matter what song you choose for your alarm clock, Beethoven's 9th the Beatle's biggest hit ("Yesterday" I think it is), any song any any song: in a week you will hate it. If it's your alarm song you will hate it. Hatred. Somethings are beloved, this is behated. I think it takes one year of not hearing it in any context to recover from it for every single time it wakes you up early. It's all in the interest of not getting fired for 8 more hours or not getting denied from an institution. Protects against existential threat of sleeping in.
Agendas are similar. And password protectors are similar. Existential threats. But in the case of password protection, I don't want a subscription, then what happens when I can't pay? Basically lock me out of everything, either explicitly or with hexes or nags or giving me a longer and longer runaround every time, slowbanning me, that kinda shit. For password protection, it needs to be one-and-done or work for some long event horizon, like ten or twenty years.
Especially because of the intricate relationship between cryptography and torture, in the endgame. If your crypto is strong and the bad guys are still determined to get your information the only option is to torture you. Elite cryptographers talk about this all the time.
So any half-assed password manager has to be really strong in that scenario. And it was, I bought 1Password in 2008 I think and it worked great, I felt very secure despite getting hacked by amnestic interrogation, which I had no idea of for like a decade. 1Password of 2009 failed only under torture. That is the exact unique kind of next-level shit that is a legitimate situation for a password manager to fail.
1password is basically a bank. A password bank. They should act like a bank instead of acting like I don't know patreon dancer.
Subscriptions are highly fetishized by the current accounting system, because they seem more predictable basically, and plus there's a lag between no longer using a service and discountinuing the subscription, that's like four free months at the end with no support calls no use no opening the app, nothing. Not even electricity costs. For that user in those months you might as well have 0% uptime. It's cheap. Except billing because you keep getting paid! And when they leave it's generally not a chargeback, plus you can be a bitch to unsubscribe from to the narrowest extent permitted by the law, ask Google not to lead people to the answer to how to unsubscribe on the first try or SEO it, in some way, hey that's solid business plusses and minusses. Especially the plusses for the first-person, the business owner, the first-person in economics too, for whom the price and quantity axes on economics charts are switched. There's also the idea that for a business to be a business it has to be repeatable. It's a sound idea.
And there's tons of businesses that make sense as a subscription. If you want to reward a business for doing a great job, try to subscribe to it under some pretense because that revenue will go much farther in business terms to strengthen it. I've done that, I did that for Beorg. I already bought all their unlockables. Even the ones I didn't want. Tipped them (him? I think it's a one-man show) a bunch of times. Then I subscribed thinking of all the good that subscription would do for the startup, instead of eg tipping.
Then it broke and I couldn't use it, like the calendars got out of whack. Plus, it's a todo app, ie I nag myself with it. It's like an alarm clock. There's the alarm clock effect.
Alarm clock effect: no matter what song you choose for your alarm clock, Beethoven's 9th the Beatle's biggest hit ("Yesterday" I think it is), any song any any song: in a week you will hate it. If it's your alarm song you will hate it. Hatred. Somethings are beloved, this is behated. I think it takes one year of not hearing it in any context to recover from it for every single time it wakes you up early. It's all in the interest of not getting fired for 8 more hours or not getting denied from an institution. Protects against existential threat of sleeping in.
Agendas are similar. And password protectors are similar. Existential threats. But in the case of password protection, I don't want a subscription, then what happens when I can't pay? Basically lock me out of everything, either explicitly or with hexes or nags or giving me a longer and longer runaround every time, slowbanning me, that kinda shit. For password protection, it needs to be one-and-done or work for some long event horizon, like ten or twenty years.
Especially because of the intricate relationship between cryptography and torture, in the endgame. If your crypto is strong and the bad guys are still determined to get your information the only option is to torture you. Elite cryptographers talk about this all the time.
So any half-assed password manager has to be really strong in that scenario. And it was, I bought 1Password in 2008 I think and it worked great, I felt very secure despite getting hacked by amnestic interrogation, which I had no idea of for like a decade. 1Password of 2009 failed only under torture. That is the exact unique kind of next-level shit that is a legitimate situation for a password manager to fail.
1password is basically a bank. A password bank. They should act like a bank instead of acting like I don't know patreon dancer.
Yeah vendor lock-in starting with a capitalist subsidy provided by venture capital.
I think this should be outlawed. So many industries destroyed by cheap vc money, and then trying to raise prices once everyone else is gone. You can lose money doing research all you want, but the moment you start interacting with the market there should be a time limit until you can get your unit economics to work, or get out.
I agree - "free" should be anti-competitive. Today it is incredibly hard for any startup to compete with the "free" products of BigTech. And that is why in this industry, getting acquired by them is the only really viable exit option available for many startups.
This is why I’ll never use vscode.
How would this proposed law work? I am really curious how you would word a law to enforce this.
Isn't there already laws against established companies using their market position to price under cost to cut out competition?
There are laws against 'dumping', which is selling goods at a loss to drive out competitors, but those are fairly narrow in scope. It would be hard to enforce a more general restriction on not being profitable.
I really have no idea. Since the market values uber or a buy now pay later widget (or at least used to) at 50+ billion I'm not sure I understand much how things work. Maybe we need a reluctant philosopher king like in Plato's Republic.
So you're suggesting any startup that can't get its unit economics to work should have its founders sent to jail?
Not too jail, where did I mention jail? Stop selling and messing up the market, just shut it down and go do something else that creates value
> Here’s what companies don’t understand: if you promote your product through a loss leader — which is arguably how Slack became popular in the first place — changing your pricing at a later date will piss people off.
This is part of the game: 1) work hard to make something popular by offering a part of it for free, 2) once enough people get hooked, start tightening the terms, 3) most people will be pissed off but your profit is from those who stay (because they invested too much to just migrate away).
This is part of the game: 1) work hard to make something popular by offering a part of it for free, 2) once enough people get hooked, start tightening the terms, 3) most people will be pissed off but your profit is from those who stay (because they invested too much to just migrate away).
If those companies had a shred of integrity and respect for their customers, they would be upfront about such plans. Without a roadmap, user trust will eventually be shattered by step 2. Most people understand this shell game, and they will put up with it if they know what to expect.
I'm sorry, but are the plans not obvious?
Companies are not some altruistic group, and this pattern of "free to get you hooked then convert to a paying customer" is almost as old as computing itself.
What is odd here people depending on slack for search history and not creating a proper KB?
Companies are not some altruistic group, and this pattern of "free to get you hooked then convert to a paying customer" is almost as old as computing itself.
What is odd here people depending on slack for search history and not creating a proper KB?
> if you promote your product through a loss leader
To be fair, I don't think Slack ever actually did this. Slack has always been pretty terrible for semi-public communities, and I don't think they did anything to promote this. Free slack has always had pretty annoying retention and storage limits, and others like limits on how many integrations you can add.
I think Slack's problem has been that reasonably (at least in the beginning before Discord got popular and copied all of Slacks features), people liked Slack from their experience at using it for work. Indeed, Slack's advantage has/had been in appealing to the hundreds/thousands of employees making something they would want to use.
To be fair, I don't think Slack ever actually did this. Slack has always been pretty terrible for semi-public communities, and I don't think they did anything to promote this. Free slack has always had pretty annoying retention and storage limits, and others like limits on how many integrations you can add.
I think Slack's problem has been that reasonably (at least in the beginning before Discord got popular and copied all of Slacks features), people liked Slack from their experience at using it for work. Indeed, Slack's advantage has/had been in appealing to the hundreds/thousands of employees making something they would want to use.
I know many public communities that use slack. A major one is MacAdmins which is legendary. Some even get sponsored by them (get free access to all features). Like MacAdmins. But many don't.
The problem is that the per-user model is really crap for public communities.
The problem is that the per-user model is really crap for public communities.
Many use it in spite of Slack's attitude towards the free tier.
Very true. Reminds me of what Seth Godin wrote on how the internet has changed people's behaviour:
> Most people, most of the time, don't buy things if there's a free substitute available. A hundred million people hear a pop song on the radio and less than 1 percent will buy a copy. Millions will walk by a painting in a museum, but very few have prints, posters or even inexpensive original art in their homes. (In the former case, the purchased music is better–quality and convenience–than the free version, in the latter, the print is merely more accessible, but the math is the same–lots of visits, not a lot of conversion).
> We don't hesitate to ask a consultant or doctor or writer for free advice, but often hesitate when it involves a payment. ("Oh, I'm not asking for consulting, I just wanted you to answer a question…") And yes, I'm told that some people cut their own hair instead of paying someone a few bucks to do it. The bet a creator makes, then, is that when she gives away something for free, it will be discovered, attract attention, spread and then, as we saw in radio in 1969, lead to some portion of the masses actually buying something. What's easy to overlook is that a leap is necessary for the last step to occur. As we've made it easier for ideas to spread digitally, we've actually amplified the gap between free and paid. It turns out that there's a huge cohort that's just not going to pay for anything if they can possibly avoid it.
> As the free-only cohort grows, people start to feel foolish when they pay for something when the free substitute is easily available and perhaps more convenient. Think about that–buying things now makes some people feel foolish. Few felt foolish buying a Creedence album in the 1970s. They felt good about it, not stupid. This new default to free means that people with something to sell are going to have to push ever harder to invent things that can't possibly have a free substitute.
> Creators don't have to like it, but free culture is here and it's getting more pervasive. The brutal economics of discovery combined with no marginal cost create a relentless path toward free, which deepens the gap. Going forward, many things that can be free, will be.
Source: The game theory of discovery and the birth of the free-gap - https://seths.blog/2011/06/discovery-free-145/
> Most people, most of the time, don't buy things if there's a free substitute available. A hundred million people hear a pop song on the radio and less than 1 percent will buy a copy. Millions will walk by a painting in a museum, but very few have prints, posters or even inexpensive original art in their homes. (In the former case, the purchased music is better–quality and convenience–than the free version, in the latter, the print is merely more accessible, but the math is the same–lots of visits, not a lot of conversion).
> We don't hesitate to ask a consultant or doctor or writer for free advice, but often hesitate when it involves a payment. ("Oh, I'm not asking for consulting, I just wanted you to answer a question…") And yes, I'm told that some people cut their own hair instead of paying someone a few bucks to do it. The bet a creator makes, then, is that when she gives away something for free, it will be discovered, attract attention, spread and then, as we saw in radio in 1969, lead to some portion of the masses actually buying something. What's easy to overlook is that a leap is necessary for the last step to occur. As we've made it easier for ideas to spread digitally, we've actually amplified the gap between free and paid. It turns out that there's a huge cohort that's just not going to pay for anything if they can possibly avoid it.
> As the free-only cohort grows, people start to feel foolish when they pay for something when the free substitute is easily available and perhaps more convenient. Think about that–buying things now makes some people feel foolish. Few felt foolish buying a Creedence album in the 1970s. They felt good about it, not stupid. This new default to free means that people with something to sell are going to have to push ever harder to invent things that can't possibly have a free substitute.
> Creators don't have to like it, but free culture is here and it's getting more pervasive. The brutal economics of discovery combined with no marginal cost create a relentless path toward free, which deepens the gap. Going forward, many things that can be free, will be.
Source: The game theory of discovery and the birth of the free-gap - https://seths.blog/2011/06/discovery-free-145/
One obvious difference is that hairdressers don't run around yelling "free haircuts we will give you free haircuts look at us how we give away free haircuts".
What the companies are doing here is that they are trying to kill paid competition, hold on longer and raise prices once competitors don't exists. They really dont have a standing to complain about situation they themselves created in the hope that competition will die sooner and in the hope users will be locked too much without any chance.
> Millions will walk by a painting in a museum, but very few have prints, posters or even inexpensive original art in their homes.
Now, this analogy does not work at all, because going by the painting in the museum in no way implies you would want it at home. And that many people dont go to the museums in the first place ... and those who go are more likely to buy some serious art. The other reason it does not work is that people have tons of inexpensive art in their homes. It is ridiculously competitive market. Posters, cups bought only for their pictures, figurines, people buy all of that.
What the companies are doing here is that they are trying to kill paid competition, hold on longer and raise prices once competitors don't exists. They really dont have a standing to complain about situation they themselves created in the hope that competition will die sooner and in the hope users will be locked too much without any chance.
> Millions will walk by a painting in a museum, but very few have prints, posters or even inexpensive original art in their homes.
Now, this analogy does not work at all, because going by the painting in the museum in no way implies you would want it at home. And that many people dont go to the museums in the first place ... and those who go are more likely to buy some serious art. The other reason it does not work is that people have tons of inexpensive art in their homes. It is ridiculously competitive market. Posters, cups bought only for their pictures, figurines, people buy all of that.
> Now, this analogy does not work at all, because going by the painting in the museum in no way implies you would want it at home.
You are talking from a buyer's perspective (the museum visitor) whereas he is talking from the seller's perspective (the museum / artist). The seller hopes that by allowing you free or cheap access to the art, you may be tempted to buy a copy of it or some memento of it (which is one of the ways museums / artists make money).
You are talking from a buyer's perspective (the museum visitor) whereas he is talking from the seller's perspective (the museum / artist). The seller hopes that by allowing you free or cheap access to the art, you may be tempted to buy a copy of it or some memento of it (which is one of the ways museums / artists make money).
That’s not how marketing works for luxury products (such as fine art), the free/cheap access to see the art is to raise awareness so that they will be impressed by people who actually owns the art.
It increases prestige and pride of ownership for actual buyers.
It increases prestige and pride of ownership for actual buyers.
He was not talking about fine arts but citing one of the business models of some museum. Museums don't sell their historical artefacts. You can't buy the Mona Lisa, but you can buy a print of it. And this is how some museums try to make extra cash.
> The latest Google Apps fiasco is a great example of this, where Google eventually had to backpedal due to the massive backlash.
In what way have they back-pedalled? I'm affected by this and hadn't heard anything.
In what way have they back-pedalled? I'm affected by this and hadn't heard anything.
They delayed the cutover multiple times. They gave people 3 months free. They gave people a year at 1/2 off. And finally they gave anyone who declared themselves as personal/family use only back the free option, even after having migrated to a billed option.
(And, if you’re affected by Ukraine vs. Russia, deferred indefinitely.)
(And, if you’re affected by Ukraine vs. Russia, deferred indefinitely.)
I didn't know about the last option! They didn't exactly notify us about the option...
I have now selected it, thanks!
I have now selected it, thanks!
Yeah they were very good about announcing the paid version. The backpedal was quiet.
https://support.google.com/a/answer/2855120?hl=en
For those watching at home, if you signed up to pay you may still be able to switch back.
https://support.google.com/a/answer/2855120?hl=en
For those watching at home, if you signed up to pay you may still be able to switch back.
> You’re trying to put the blame on the consumer here which never makes any sense from a business perspective.
Consumer:
noun 1. a person who purchases goods and services for personal use.
It is sort of weird that people don't pay for a product, yet expect to be able to use it forever? It should be obvious that companies intend to convert "users" to "customers"?
You call them "consumers" but they are not given the have not paid for the services. Maybe "users" is more appropriate?
Do let us know what products you produce, and give away for free for years and dont want to monetize, it is just a charity thing for you even thought it costs you money to offer the service.
Consumer:
noun 1. a person who purchases goods and services for personal use.
It is sort of weird that people don't pay for a product, yet expect to be able to use it forever? It should be obvious that companies intend to convert "users" to "customers"?
You call them "consumers" but they are not given the have not paid for the services. Maybe "users" is more appropriate?
Do let us know what products you produce, and give away for free for years and dont want to monetize, it is just a charity thing for you even thought it costs you money to offer the service.
Users generally don't like surprises.
As a user or consumer, it an unpleasant surprise that feels like a bait and switch when the free product you used now requires payment without prior warning.
At least smaller apps are upfront about the duration of the free trial, and there are no surprises (or uproar) there.
As a user or consumer, it an unpleasant surprise that feels like a bait and switch when the free product you used now requires payment without prior warning.
At least smaller apps are upfront about the duration of the free trial, and there are no surprises (or uproar) there.
If those people wouldn’t have purchased the product, does it matter that they’re pissed off?
Who says they wouldn't have purchased the product? I've been hoping that Slack would provide communities like mine better plans or options to support them and access some of the improved features.
But, this move makes it pretty clear they're never going to, so I'm finally going to bite the bullet and set up Matrix.
[Just to add to this, I've had my users asking me why we're on Slack when everybody else is on Discord. (Most of us use Slack at work, so it's convenient in that sense.) I've been interacting with the company since Glitch/Tiny Speck. But, with pushback from users and from the company, at this point I just can't justify Slack for our particular use case.]
But, this move makes it pretty clear they're never going to, so I'm finally going to bite the bullet and set up Matrix.
[Just to add to this, I've had my users asking me why we're on Slack when everybody else is on Discord. (Most of us use Slack at work, so it's convenient in that sense.) I've been interacting with the company since Glitch/Tiny Speck. But, with pushback from users and from the company, at this point I just can't justify Slack for our particular use case.]
Using X at work is the specific reason I do NOT use X at home and instead use Y. Personal and work life separate!
> If your loss-leading pricing strategy was unsustainable from the start, that’s on you.
Yes, exactly. Companies can't tell consumers "it's free" and then be surprised people get upset when they change the terms. Do sufficiently sophisticated people know that free plans are always at risk? Yes. But clearly a pretty small percentage of people have fully internalized that, or there would be a lot fewer companies talking up their free plans in ways that suggest they're unlimited along important dimensions like time.
Yes, exactly. Companies can't tell consumers "it's free" and then be surprised people get upset when they change the terms. Do sufficiently sophisticated people know that free plans are always at risk? Yes. But clearly a pretty small percentage of people have fully internalized that, or there would be a lot fewer companies talking up their free plans in ways that suggest they're unlimited along important dimensions like time.
That makes sense. It was a race to the bottom. Now we're at the bottom.
It's like 2001 in a lot of ways. Spesh the terrible economics of websites, or apps, or call them almost whatever they want, platforms, anything.
Giveaways bring users. Free beer people show up.
Like there's no business here. No excludability. It was a prettification of IRC, which of course nobody pays one fuck of a cent for, and now they want to charge...well guess people will go to IRC directly. And maybe there'll be an FOSS prettification.
And that'll be it.
It's like 2001 in a lot of ways. Spesh the terrible economics of websites, or apps, or call them almost whatever they want, platforms, anything.
Giveaways bring users. Free beer people show up.
Like there's no business here. No excludability. It was a prettification of IRC, which of course nobody pays one fuck of a cent for, and now they want to charge...well guess people will go to IRC directly. And maybe there'll be an FOSS prettification.
And that'll be it.
>It was a prettification of IRC, which of course nobody pays one fuck of a cent for
It's a lot more than that. Addimg a persistent message history and multi-device identities to IRC is pretty huge, otherwise bouncers would never have existed.
And the number of paying customers shows that people are, in fact, very willing to pay for it. Slack just really sucks at b2b marketing, which is why Teams eclipsed them so quickly.
It's a lot more than that. Addimg a persistent message history and multi-device identities to IRC is pretty huge, otherwise bouncers would never have existed.
And the number of paying customers shows that people are, in fact, very willing to pay for it. Slack just really sucks at b2b marketing, which is why Teams eclipsed them so quickly.
Regardless of their B2B marketing strategy, it's hard to compete with "this Slack-like thing is included with the mega-expensive Microsoft license your company already pays for every year, around which you've built a Microsoft-specific IT group".
Teams eclipsed them, because they are by Microsoft. For business people who do make these decisions, they are serious product, they integrate with office, unlike weird things like slack or discord or what have you. And it is free, so.
It also works so much worse than Slack.
But I agree, in the eyes of the business suits this doesn't matter at all as long as it ticks boxes on a spec sheet.
But I agree, in the eyes of the business suits this doesn't matter at all as long as it ticks boxes on a spec sheet.
Well there's different market segments. Me on one market segment, I'm the guy (nice to meet you) basically the way a sow has a runt, on the off chance she can feed it, that's the same basis companies hire me. And only very fucked companies.
The basic reason is because I got tortured with an amnestic lobotomy. I had a very marketable curriculum until that point, and after that if for instance I was asked where I worked during April 2009, I would ask "are we talking about the Gregorian Calendar, that shit?"
So for me you have to provide amazing shit for me to subscribe to anything. And it can be done. Not often. I can't have 7000 apps draining me $5 a month. That is why I identified a natural limit to the number of web-app subscription-model startups there could be, the first limit was remembering all the credentials to use them, which 1Password and similar surpassed. One user here talked about having 800 web app username-password credentials on his 1Password, obviously doesn't pay any scratch for most of them. Veteran of the freemium model, like I became a veteran of the psych ward in my remarkably successful struggle under torture, including not caving to the torture.
I talk about this at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32620302
So my segment of the market, I'm gone. Neither feature you mentioned seems...wantable. And that goes for most web apps, like I predict their business model and then operate on that basis. So for instance most VPN's are, as a business, honeypots. Like yeah you can steal from the labels who steal music from the artists, that you can do, but for tricky nitty gritty, nah. It's just too obvious, it's just too instantaneous an erection the founder gets thinking of cutting deals with Kuwaiti Intelligence during the commercial of them going on TV saying "We never have and never will cut a deal with Kuwaiti Intelligence."
So with the paying users it's like ice on land, they need the ice on the sea in order to hold them back from falling into the sea. Non-paying users provide a lot of value to Slack, in that for instance you can do a trial release on them to debug your product for the paying users. For example.
"Slack just really sucks at b2b marketing" well compared to Microsoft yes. Slack sucks at marketing compared to Microsoft, for B2B. I buy that. The guy Butterfield (Stuart? Something) was busy getting on magazine covers like it is still the previous millennium, which for businesses loses credibility.
So I went to slack.com and tried finding what they charged, they wanted me to see all their flair first. So I went to the URL which said https://slack.com/features and replaced "features" with "pricing" and there it was, the chart with the numbers they want. So they want $8.00 USD a month for their product, and assumptively propose you buy it for the year at a pro rata price of $6.67 as the default. I looked for their asterisk at the bottom of the page, but it wasn't there. No this was a javascript asterkisk, no relation to asterisks in eg legal document. So $8.00 a month, per user.
So that right there is a turn-off to an informed buyer, which B2B is. There's typically a designated person in the office for this sort of purchase and she herds the company's users through the spam, the spear-fishing, the shitty deals like this one, every everything. Apparently Teams is in fact the better product, and that might be because the terms of service aren't demonic (though I vaguely recall them yes being demonic which is why I couldn't use it, but then from the dodginess in revealing the price I divine Slack's terms are demonic too).
But whatever. In for a penny, in for a pound, sell your soul, no reason to pray. Microsoft already has telemetry on like blood type in the first 18 minutes so it's not an additional leak to work with them.
And that's saying as someone conflicted about the company, I like the way they didn't fuck up github for instance. Didn't nix it. Like they never even bought it. It works better now, in fact, I can tell it has more integrity and reliability. Backend stuff.
The basic reason is because I got tortured with an amnestic lobotomy. I had a very marketable curriculum until that point, and after that if for instance I was asked where I worked during April 2009, I would ask "are we talking about the Gregorian Calendar, that shit?"
So for me you have to provide amazing shit for me to subscribe to anything. And it can be done. Not often. I can't have 7000 apps draining me $5 a month. That is why I identified a natural limit to the number of web-app subscription-model startups there could be, the first limit was remembering all the credentials to use them, which 1Password and similar surpassed. One user here talked about having 800 web app username-password credentials on his 1Password, obviously doesn't pay any scratch for most of them. Veteran of the freemium model, like I became a veteran of the psych ward in my remarkably successful struggle under torture, including not caving to the torture.
I talk about this at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32620302
So my segment of the market, I'm gone. Neither feature you mentioned seems...wantable. And that goes for most web apps, like I predict their business model and then operate on that basis. So for instance most VPN's are, as a business, honeypots. Like yeah you can steal from the labels who steal music from the artists, that you can do, but for tricky nitty gritty, nah. It's just too obvious, it's just too instantaneous an erection the founder gets thinking of cutting deals with Kuwaiti Intelligence during the commercial of them going on TV saying "We never have and never will cut a deal with Kuwaiti Intelligence."
So with the paying users it's like ice on land, they need the ice on the sea in order to hold them back from falling into the sea. Non-paying users provide a lot of value to Slack, in that for instance you can do a trial release on them to debug your product for the paying users. For example.
"Slack just really sucks at b2b marketing" well compared to Microsoft yes. Slack sucks at marketing compared to Microsoft, for B2B. I buy that. The guy Butterfield (Stuart? Something) was busy getting on magazine covers like it is still the previous millennium, which for businesses loses credibility.
So I went to slack.com and tried finding what they charged, they wanted me to see all their flair first. So I went to the URL which said https://slack.com/features and replaced "features" with "pricing" and there it was, the chart with the numbers they want. So they want $8.00 USD a month for their product, and assumptively propose you buy it for the year at a pro rata price of $6.67 as the default. I looked for their asterisk at the bottom of the page, but it wasn't there. No this was a javascript asterkisk, no relation to asterisks in eg legal document. So $8.00 a month, per user.
So that right there is a turn-off to an informed buyer, which B2B is. There's typically a designated person in the office for this sort of purchase and she herds the company's users through the spam, the spear-fishing, the shitty deals like this one, every everything. Apparently Teams is in fact the better product, and that might be because the terms of service aren't demonic (though I vaguely recall them yes being demonic which is why I couldn't use it, but then from the dodginess in revealing the price I divine Slack's terms are demonic too).
But whatever. In for a penny, in for a pound, sell your soul, no reason to pray. Microsoft already has telemetry on like blood type in the first 18 minutes so it's not an additional leak to work with them.
And that's saying as someone conflicted about the company, I like the way they didn't fuck up github for instance. Didn't nix it. Like they never even bought it. It works better now, in fact, I can tell it has more integrity and reliability. Backend stuff.
I think if you are on a free tier and your business depends on it, you should anticipate for changes in said free tier. If you want guarantees, you need to be a paying customer.
I agree, but what's happening here is largely not businesses behind the exodus, but loose organizations like open source communities.
You could argue that these are freeloaders and not Slack's problem, but I'd be wary about sending so many users running into the arms of their competition. Part of the appeal of Slack was that I could use one app for everything, which is increasingly not the case.
You could argue that these are freeloaders and not Slack's problem, but I'd be wary about sending so many users running into the arms of their competition. Part of the appeal of Slack was that I could use one app for everything, which is increasingly not the case.
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It's not trust they migrate for lmao, it's things that are "free". People are irrationally outraged when they have to pay for a product or service that was previously free.
Especially considering all of Google's products/services, people still cry about Youtube ads/having to get Youtube premium.
People are so freaking self-entitled.
Especially considering all of Google's products/services, people still cry about Youtube ads/having to get Youtube premium.
People are so freaking self-entitled.
> will piss people off
Well it pisses off the people who aren't paying you anything.
It probably pleases the people who were paying you, because now they don't have to subsidise the people who aren't.
Well it pisses off the people who aren't paying you anything.
It probably pleases the people who were paying you, because now they don't have to subsidise the people who aren't.
Most paying customers are businesses. Those businesses are definitely not going to be pleased because they have people who personally depend on Slack's free plan. So, they've probably pissed off a significant number of paying customers.
Yeah, people tend to forget that companies are just groups of people working together.
But the company was built on that user growth. They were reporting the numbers to the investors and claiming "2.???; 3. Profit" all along. Especially now, with recession coming (interests rise => expectations of profitability increase), it's unfortunately suddenly important to show real profits.
> But the company was built on that user growth.
Yeah… and now they’re grown to a size where everyone knows the product and they don’t need to get people interested from scratch in the same way.
Yeah… and now they’re grown to a size where everyone knows the product and they don’t need to get people interested from scratch in the same way.
If subsiding free users isn't attracting more paying customers, then slashing free tiers is a no brainer though.
>It probably pleases the people who were paying you, because now they don't have to subsidise the people who aren't.
Bullshit. It's unclear communication and indecisiveness that pisses people off. If you can't afford it, there is no reason for you to give something for free and then later take it away. People who are paying will feel that samething will happen to them in other ways. You want consistency.
Bullshit. It's unclear communication and indecisiveness that pisses people off. If you can't afford it, there is no reason for you to give something for free and then later take it away. People who are paying will feel that samething will happen to them in other ways. You want consistency.
You would prefer to never get a thing for free rather than have it at no cost for a brief period in time?
Having something for free but for a brief period of time is actually really inconvenient if you think about it. You are basically forced to move or find some alternative. You want consistency.
> Well it pisses off the people who aren't paying you anything.
These users will either move to on-premise systems or pay to a competitor now.
These users will either move to on-premise systems or pay to a competitor now.
If they’re willing to pay a competitor or self-host why wouldn’t they be willing to pay Slack?
Because self-hosting may be easier due to an in-house sysadmin who advocated this for a long time but turned down, or a competitor offer more value with a better price.
Not that the price will go down. Now they subsidize shareholders, which is quite worse in my book.
Same way my customers subsidize my dinner, I’m sure shareholders didn’t get in for free.
Does Slack even care if folks not planning to pay are pissed?
My understanding is this sort of strategy wants to archive some sort of network effect so business (which actually pay for services) start adopting a product.
It's meant to kickstart recurring revenue, not to last forever.
My understanding is this sort of strategy wants to archive some sort of network effect so business (which actually pay for services) start adopting a product.
It's meant to kickstart recurring revenue, not to last forever.
Don't know if it is their intention, but this is probably more of a cost-cutting measure than a revenue-increasing one (or maybe even a technical one, with their data strategy/partitioning it may be much easier to do everything time-based).
Many people expect free things to stay the same forever, which obviously isn't realistic, but this is still going to have a damaging effect on their brand. As well with the free tier, there are a ton of OSS projects, community groups, etc. that will no longer be using Slack, and the network effects will drop substantially. This has been seen a bit with Discord, so maybe they are going all-in on dropping these types of customers.
There can't be _that_ many people who are on the free plan that will now be migrating to paid with this change. If anything, it now incentivizes larger groups (which would generate more revenue) to use the free plan since data is gated by time, not by usage. A slack instance with a few thousand active users on the free plan was basically unusable, 10k messages can be eaten up rather quickly. Now if you only care about the last 90 days (which honestly, isn't a bad idea with Slack to not use it as permanent storage) you can have a much larger group on the free plan.
Many people expect free things to stay the same forever, which obviously isn't realistic, but this is still going to have a damaging effect on their brand. As well with the free tier, there are a ton of OSS projects, community groups, etc. that will no longer be using Slack, and the network effects will drop substantially. This has been seen a bit with Discord, so maybe they are going all-in on dropping these types of customers.
There can't be _that_ many people who are on the free plan that will now be migrating to paid with this change. If anything, it now incentivizes larger groups (which would generate more revenue) to use the free plan since data is gated by time, not by usage. A slack instance with a few thousand active users on the free plan was basically unusable, 10k messages can be eaten up rather quickly. Now if you only care about the last 90 days (which honestly, isn't a bad idea with Slack to not use it as permanent storage) you can have a much larger group on the free plan.
What's wrong with Discord? Most of the projects I want to follow have Discord server, often connected with an IRC channel. I miss a few features from Slack, but in general I'm happy with Discord. It's still free from what I can see. So, what happened to make "OSS projects" etc. to stop using Discord? (Honestly asking, I don't follow Discord itself at all)
Discord data mines their users to hell and back and even scans your computer. https://www.reddit.com/r/discordapp/comments/43lqyb/why_is_d...
It has no business being the default chat of open source projects. Especially when there's something amazing and fully free like Matrix.
It has no business being the default chat of open source projects. Especially when there's something amazing and fully free like Matrix.
>Does Slack even care if folks not planning to pay are pissed?
I think a fair amount of their actual sales come from non-tech companies reluctantly paying for it because their developers are pushy about wanting it. Those developers want it because they were exposed to it in some context where it was free.
Lacking that pressure, those companies will just tell their developers to use something they already have...MS Teams or whatever.
I think a fair amount of their actual sales come from non-tech companies reluctantly paying for it because their developers are pushy about wanting it. Those developers want it because they were exposed to it in some context where it was free.
Lacking that pressure, those companies will just tell their developers to use something they already have...MS Teams or whatever.
The people who use Slack for their weekend DnD group are the same people who bring it into the companies they work for during the week and ultimately suggest a paid plan. That's the entire idea behind freemium: just because someone doesn't get their own credit card out doesn't mean they don't influence the person who does.
That's exactly how I ended up having a paid slack subscription. It looks like discord is going to take over several companies exactly for this reason.
I mean.. it kinda does.
If a small opensource dev group gets pissed at slack, and those people have a say in a chat solution at their workplace (paid plans there of course), pissed people won't recommend slack but other alternatives.
If a small opensource dev group gets pissed at slack, and those people have a say in a chat solution at their workplace (paid plans there of course), pissed people won't recommend slack but other alternatives.
> The latest Google Apps fiasco
What did they do now?
What did they do now?
True, but there’s also something vital that does not show on the balance sheet (and can sink companies):
Excellent tools spread through the best kind of word of mouth. Excellent tools that are free spread even faster and further. There’s no way to know how many corporate plans were sold because a single team member relied on Slack outside of work, or how many pro user accounts exist because someone was visiting a Slack-fluent friend.
And because there’s no way to know; the cost-cutters look at the numbers and say “cut the free plan enough to stop the hemorrhage”. Worst part is the next quarter looks great. And maybe the one after that. But soon enough the income starts dropping and there’s no “clear reason why” and then it’s too late to recover it. It has to be built again by building trust from scratch.
Excellent tools spread through the best kind of word of mouth. Excellent tools that are free spread even faster and further. There’s no way to know how many corporate plans were sold because a single team member relied on Slack outside of work, or how many pro user accounts exist because someone was visiting a Slack-fluent friend.
And because there’s no way to know; the cost-cutters look at the numbers and say “cut the free plan enough to stop the hemorrhage”. Worst part is the next quarter looks great. And maybe the one after that. But soon enough the income starts dropping and there’s no “clear reason why” and then it’s too late to recover it. It has to be built again by building trust from scratch.
This is so important - if it’s not quantifiable, people have a tendency to ascribe no value to it…which can be a horrific mistake
It's very similar to Salesforce's Heroku move. They either just don't care about that sales funnel and they remove it completely or they will keep squeezing until they kill it.
I would say they are acutely aware of the sales funnel. They weren’t making any money from those users who were ‘happily using Slack’s free tier for years’ and neither was there any prospect of converting them into paid users in the coming years. Very little point in keeping users (and paying to maintain them) who are going to be perpetually at the top of the funnel.
I think it's complicated; the fact that I use a free slack instance for note taking / bots is one thing, but I'm on 2 company slacks right now (paid), 2 non-profits (1 paid 1 not) and a handful of open source communities. Am I a user who won't convert?
Everyone on a free slack instance is NOT using a competitor's product.
There's a tipping point where having to check multiple apps will push people towards consolidating in a single client if they possibly can, which (in the long term) may not be slack if it doesn't support "ad hoc" communities or personal use-cases at a reasonable price.
Everyone on a free slack instance is NOT using a competitor's product.
There's a tipping point where having to check multiple apps will push people towards consolidating in a single client if they possibly can, which (in the long term) may not be slack if it doesn't support "ad hoc" communities or personal use-cases at a reasonable price.
> I think it's complicated; the fact that I use a free slack instance for note taking / bots is one thing, but I'm on 2 company slacks right now (paid), 2 non-profits (1 paid 1 not) and a handful of open source communities. Am I a user who won't convert?
Everyone on a free slack instance is NOT using a competitor's product.
I’d suggest the answer to that is probably no - an open source community is by its very nature going to want costs and overheads down, and all but the largest non profits and NGOs are going to try to get by by stitching together free tools and services. The one that is paying in your example is the one in Slack’s target who is going to be most likely to pay. Does Slack care about a few open source communities potentially churning? Probably not. Does it care about lowering average Time to Revenue? Absolutely.
I’d suggest the answer to that is probably no - an open source community is by its very nature going to want costs and overheads down, and all but the largest non profits and NGOs are going to try to get by by stitching together free tools and services. The one that is paying in your example is the one in Slack’s target who is going to be most likely to pay. Does Slack care about a few open source communities potentially churning? Probably not. Does it care about lowering average Time to Revenue? Absolutely.
This. Companies should be charged, sure; but an upside of Slack is that I can use various tech community’s Slack, the union’s Slack, and the coworking’s Slack in the same app.
None of them can pay, and they should be sponsored by our usage of Slack for our main job.
None of them can pay, and they should be sponsored by our usage of Slack for our main job.
They can all better use Discord, whose model works on a per-user (not per-user-per-community) billing model. So less good at separating money from corporations but better aligned with non-commercial organisations as you don't need to pay $2k/month as none-profit just to keep chat history.
I guarantee you that the people making that call have thought about it and decided it's not worth it anyways.
> Everyone on a free slack instance is NOT using a competitor's product.
Arguably this is even worse from slaks POV, no? Everyone on free slack is on free slack because they aren't willing/able to pay and slack would indirectly benefit if those customers were freeloading (and incuring costs) for their competitors.
Arguably this is even worse from slaks POV, no? Everyone on free slack is on free slack because they aren't willing/able to pay and slack would indirectly benefit if those customers were freeloading (and incuring costs) for their competitors.
Not the OP but I think if free slack becomse unattractive enough people might start to look around. There are enough alternatives (self-hosted like Mattermost, Rocket.Chat or free tiers from other vendors e.g. Zulip, Discord). That presumably has two effects:
1. People are used to them and if the decision at the workplace comes up to choose a solution the other product is on the table. Or worse if Slack messes something up with the paid tier people might be more willing to switch to something else that they know already.
2. Every private group chat might involve people who never used something like it before. For these people the software they use first is the baseline. And they are more likly to recommend the solution they already know to a organistation that is willing/able to pay for a higher tier.
2. Every private group chat might involve people who never used something like it before. For these people the software they use first is the baseline. And they are more likly to recommend the solution they already know to a organistation that is willing/able to pay for a higher tier.
We can't assume someone who won't pay for Slack won't pay for the thing they move to. How many people do you think pay for Discord's paid features that never would have paid for the forums Discord killed? The almost $15 billion dollar valuation suggest a lot.
It's not that simple.
People who are used to slack will pressure their boss to buy slack for work.
The slack company will just see a boss reaching out and buying. They will not relate it to the fact that it's the employees requesting it.
Bosses want to use microsoft teams, because it's included in the company's subscription. They accept to use slack because of the employees.
But if the new employees will not even know slack exists… they will not be asking for it.
People who are used to slack will pressure their boss to buy slack for work.
The slack company will just see a boss reaching out and buying. They will not relate it to the fact that it's the employees requesting it.
Bosses want to use microsoft teams, because it's included in the company's subscription. They accept to use slack because of the employees.
But if the new employees will not even know slack exists… they will not be asking for it.
It is not that simple too. Tools used for reasons outside of work may not always be perceived as good tools for work. And tools used professionally are not always considered to be good for use for personal reasons. If someone have met Slack for the first time at their job, they may recommend it at their next job, because they associate it with work - this conversion channel is pretty clear and established. But the conversions work<->personal are not so obvious and may perform worse. I'm pretty sure Slack marketing team controls awareness part of the journey and they understand well their conversion funnel. Ditching some non-converting users is a bold move, but it may be worth it and it may fit well in whatever sales strategy Salesforce has in mind.
it's not that simple either:
tools used for reasons outside of work may be perceived as good tools for work;
and tools used professionally are sometimes considered to be good for use for personal reasons.
tl;dr it doesn't need to be true always, only sometimes, which it is
tools used for reasons outside of work may be perceived as good tools for work;
and tools used professionally are sometimes considered to be good for use for personal reasons.
tl;dr it doesn't need to be true always, only sometimes, which it is
Well, if I wasn't clear enough: the fact that someone have used a tool for personal reasons and may recommend it as a good tool for work is not enough to justify spending on those personal use cases. You need this to be a healthy conversion funnel and valuable brand awareness channel, otherwise you are wasting money. To make a call you need data from marketing research and I would assume that Slack marketing team knows more about it than HN crowd, simply because they are in position to have this data and HN crowd is not. It can be the case that they are not acting professionally, but I would not assume unprofessional behavior by default.
I respect your opinion of,
someone hav[ing] used a tool for personal reasons and may recommend it as a good tool for work is not enough to justify spending on those personal use cases
I am sharing that I have an equal and opposite opinion, which is that the someone having used a tool for personal reasons and may recommend it as a good tool for work sometimes IS enough to justify spending on those personal use cases
You are right that data can inform the decision, of course, keeping in mind that the benefits include intangibles like goodwill, which goes further in the techie community than in a layman community imo
someone hav[ing] used a tool for personal reasons and may recommend it as a good tool for work is not enough to justify spending on those personal use cases
I am sharing that I have an equal and opposite opinion, which is that the someone having used a tool for personal reasons and may recommend it as a good tool for work sometimes IS enough to justify spending on those personal use cases
You are right that data can inform the decision, of course, keeping in mind that the benefits include intangibles like goodwill, which goes further in the techie community than in a layman community imo
Salesforce doesn't even care about paying customers. Heroku has stagnated for years. Recent Heroku massive mistakes they've been making have been absolutely terribly handled by them.
They also own Tableau, which has stagnated as well and is pretty badly handled.
They also own Tableau, which has stagnated as well and is pretty badly handled.
They were saving them advertising money.
I think this, combined with Heroku, marks end of an era.
These tools built themselves on being free (as in beer) up to a certain extent, and now they're big enough, and trust their momentum, so they change their stance.
This will inevitably create some changes, both how they perceived and being developed, but we'll see...
However, web application development is much easier and scalable infrastructure is democratized now. Their moat may not be as robust as they imagine.
This will get interesting.
These tools built themselves on being free (as in beer) up to a certain extent, and now they're big enough, and trust their momentum, so they change their stance.
This will inevitably create some changes, both how they perceived and being developed, but we'll see...
However, web application development is much easier and scalable infrastructure is democratized now. Their moat may not be as robust as they imagine.
This will get interesting.
They may not immediately recognize it, but they are “cashing out the social capital”
Very..
Salesforce bought Slack in 2021.
Salesforce bought Slack in 2021.
They are doing something similar to Tableau. They have been actively rolling out features only available to subscription based customers - ie if you own perpetual licenses and only paying x% yearly for maintenance you are starting to get less product than their subscription customers. It is nuts and is driving us to actively consider PowerBI which is like Teams is included with the enterprise license.
In Heroku's case, it could be argued the free users were a net-negative liability, causing service outages, DNS issues, etc...
What? Those free users are practically providing free infrastructure testing. Those low-no profit margins are hiding a lot of stuff underneath. Intel and Cloudflare are famous for reaching scale by using cheap/free end of the market to expand and solidify their positions.
Speaking more to the torrent and zombie bot farms, and the abuse of free dynos.
For legit freemium users who to "try before they buy", indeed... it's a sad day for Heroku to lose this audience.
For legit freemium users who to "try before they buy", indeed... it's a sad day for Heroku to lose this audience.
I fail to see how letting crooks mine cryptos on Heroku’s free boxes would lead to improved sales. Slack is a different story, but all hosting/CI/etc providers have been pulling back free offerings as they get abused for crypto mining
But just think of the promotion opportunities!
Salesforce doesn't care. There about to roll out slack-first infrastructure that turns slack into the only chat-based CRM. Their core users aren't on the free model. They're paying a small fortune for Salesforce and see Slack's cost as a drop in the bucket.
Makes me wonder how long before Discord rolls out their enterprise tier. There are tons of Gen Z and Millenials using Discord who are likely in positions where they can make those kinds of decisions for the company. And it's a great and intuitive product too.
As a moderate user of both, they seem almost indistinguishable to me. Slack probably has more integration with productivity tools and a better auditing/compliance story, but it’s not at all obvious to me that Discord couldn’t become a drop in replacement.
How would you rate mattermost and zulip compared to slack and discord? I've only used slack, mattermost and skype. Of those I prefer mattermost by a fair margin, but I'm still not sure I like it. It seems like the ui could be better. Something about the way both it and slack handle channels or groups feels clunky.
I might get backlash for this, but IRC (what all these platforms are emulating) handled channels pretty terribly also.
Zulip is very “channels first” and once you get used to it it works pretty well. I constantly run into issues uploading files > 10Mb to Zulip though, it just sits there “Waiting” forever. I have to put things like screencasts somewhere else. Otherwise it’s pretty good though
Guilded over discord in my opinion. More features like forums in a channel. Long term, I only see discord and their company culture turning it into twitch or other zealot infested dumps.
Discord has forum channels already: https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/6208479917079-...
(they’re technically in beta but a bunch of popular discords use them)
(they’re technically in beta but a bunch of popular discords use them)
Discord has the worst ux of any chat software I have ever used, fwiw. There's a fascinating race to the bottom in this area.
I'm surprised to not see more comments like this. I think chat clients are a product which is used so frequently that after adapting, users become blind to defficiencies. I consider myself pretty technically literate and have used probably a dozen chat clients over years. Discord is the only one where I couldn't understand how to do the basics straight after installing it. I don't use it much, and when I come back to it there's always an element of guesswork. (fwiw I'm not a fan of Slack's UX either)
Because on the flipside, there are users like me who found Discord far more intuitive than anything else. I don't think your 'technical literacy' overcomes a difference in expectations and culture when many others feel it works just fine. It's not the best UI, but it is acceptable given the status quo.
Neither you nor GP are articulating or giving examples. Start there and we can have a proper discussion, otherwise it'll be just another case of 'he-said-she-said'.
Neither you nor GP are articulating or giving examples. Start there and we can have a proper discussion, otherwise it'll be just another case of 'he-said-she-said'.
What chat software do you use? I find Discord to be among the best when it comes to UX. Not perfect (and it is still an Electron app) but when you have atrocities like MS Teams, it passes off as good.
In case you are wondering, I don't consider the UX for IRC "good" (in a forum with "hacker" in its name, of course IRC will come up). It is good because it is open, simple and lightweight, but when you want a history and image/file transfer, and most people do, it breaks down and you need ad-hoc solutions.
In case you are wondering, I don't consider the UX for IRC "good" (in a forum with "hacker" in its name, of course IRC will come up). It is good because it is open, simple and lightweight, but when you want a history and image/file transfer, and most people do, it breaks down and you need ad-hoc solutions.
> IRC ... but when you want a history and image/file transfer, and most people do, it breaks down and you need ad-hoc solutions.
Which is exactly why the IRC clones (Slack, etc) have taken off
Which is exactly why the IRC clones (Slack, etc) have taken off
That’s surprising. In what way? I find it to be the most consistent and the most correct out of any chat software I’ve used, including IRC, Slack, Mattermost, and Microsoft Teams. They seem to just get a lot of stuff right.
The only thing that took me some time to adjust to was how overwhelming joining a new server can be. So many channels! Everything needs my attention! But after using it for a long time, I think this is actually a feature. I can mute channels and categories I’m uninterested in, but how many channels on Slack are never found due to poor discoverability?
We run both Slack and Discord at my work and the engineers vastly prefer Discord, for what it’s worth.
The only thing that took me some time to adjust to was how overwhelming joining a new server can be. So many channels! Everything needs my attention! But after using it for a long time, I think this is actually a feature. I can mute channels and categories I’m uninterested in, but how many channels on Slack are never found due to poor discoverability?
We run both Slack and Discord at my work and the engineers vastly prefer Discord, for what it’s worth.
I think I could be considered as a high openness, hacker-ish type keen to try new things, and my avoidance of discord isn’t that it’s complicated (hard to use), it’s that it’s complicated (unnecessary busy). From the notifications being a lot of noise by default to threads being so much work to catch up on after the fact, it’s just heavy and dense and complicated.
Caveat: It seems much more geared towards users who commit significant brain-space to the subjects they join (for example: catching up on threads is easier if you’re paying attention to realtime notifications), whereas I have a lot of interests and really just want the gems whenever I “sit down” to work with a particular interest.
Caveat: It seems much more geared towards users who commit significant brain-space to the subjects they join (for example: catching up on threads is easier if you’re paying attention to realtime notifications), whereas I have a lot of interests and really just want the gems whenever I “sit down” to work with a particular interest.
Discord's UI is seemly optimized for dopamine release, just like a game.
Some people like this kind of constant distraction, though.
Some people like this kind of constant distraction, though.
Nope, it's possible to control the notifications to a much better degree than any of the other options allows.
I could see Discord as made for power users where Slack and Teams would be aimed at casuals. But I do think that Discord does a pretty good job at being intuitive.
I could see Discord as made for power users where Slack and Teams would be aimed at casuals. But I do think that Discord does a pretty good job at being intuitive.
MS Teams? Skype 4 Business? IRC?
Discord is leaps and bounds above all of those, for very different reasons.
Discord is leaps and bounds above all of those, for very different reasons.
Okay, for the first two. I didn't think of those as actual non-joke options.
About IRC you're obviously wrong :)
About IRC you're obviously wrong :)
Discord seems like the best UX to me. Only things I can think of is some weird UX around new call features and search could be better compared to say gmail (although I generally have no problem finding things I want to find).
Thats crazy, ive used various voips, skype, teams ans discord is #1
I’ve been “chatting” on the web since the mid 90s when I used IRC.
Discord is the best thing I’ve found. My group and I love it.
Discord is the best thing I’ve found. My group and I love it.
Discord is way better than Slack for B2C if you're reaching that demographic.
I'm running my start-up via Discord and it's grown to a 60,000-member community. Incredible engagement. Fantastic way to find customers and business use cases, too.
For "enterprise", we run a separate instance for staff with lots of useful Github, Clickup, and other integrations.
I'm running my start-up via Discord and it's grown to a 60,000-member community. Incredible engagement. Fantastic way to find customers and business use cases, too.
For "enterprise", we run a separate instance for staff with lots of useful Github, Clickup, and other integrations.
While I understand that approach EF going Discord-forward, it's one that's prevented me from joining many circles now as I've pledged to take my data privacy more seriously and proprietary apps aren't it. I hope you offer at least one alternative (but if you're not targeting open-source users or privacy advocates, there likely wouldn't be a difference).
In this day and age that is simply not possible anymore.
Most apps have no good open source alternatives.
Most apps have no good open source alternatives.
Zulip is a pretty good open source alternative to Discord / Slack.
Despite the looming narratives that tell us to give up our data, it’s always possible.
There are dozens of products and countless open protocols to base new products on. We could even just use IRC again.
There are dozens of products and countless open protocols to base new products on. We could even just use IRC again.
One nice thing about IRC is it is sure to remain an alternative as services which purportedly lack alternatives build paywalls or become the center of scandals relating to mishandling user data.
My experience is that discord is basically just a vector for scammers to directly message me.
You can turn off random people messaging you for what it's worth.
If you join any cryptocurrency related Discords you can dial the random scammers up quite a bit.
Discord lacks features like SSO, auditing and security controls, making it impossible to adopt in many business environments.
I wish we used Discord for work.
It’s superior to Slack, MS Teams and googles chat thing by far.
How is Discord superior to Slack?
Discord is just way more polished. Everything works reliably every time.
The voice channels are flawless, even when there's people on shitty internet connections.
The client is always responsive and snappy.
Their design of how the server/chat/voice/videos/users is laid out is is clearer, easier to see what's going on at a glance and it manages to do that while it fits more information on screen.
Their dark mode is much better.
Their code display/highlighting is better.
The user groups/roles which is more like tags is much better than others.
It's way easier to find where notifications come from.
The voice channels are flawless, even when there's people on shitty internet connections.
The client is always responsive and snappy.
Their design of how the server/chat/voice/videos/users is laid out is is clearer, easier to see what's going on at a glance and it manages to do that while it fits more information on screen.
Their dark mode is much better.
Their code display/highlighting is better.
The user groups/roles which is more like tags is much better than others.
It's way easier to find where notifications come from.
I like that in Discord you can choose to spin off the conversation into a separate thread, or you can reply within the main chat and it quotes the comment you’re replying to (and the quote is clickable) in order to see context. You can’t do the latter in slack, and it’s easy to not realize that others have started a thread when it’s above the fold.
Isn't this like replying to a thread and clicking "Also post to channel" in Slack?
No, discord threads are siloed off into their own world. They're effectively more so temporary channels (and discord itself enforces the temporary nature - they get locked after disuse). Parent poster seems to like it, but for my use case I'd rather slack threads.
Auto-archiving != auto-locking
Auto-archived threads automatically unarchive themselves when you send a new message. Locked-threads, on the other hand, require explicit unlock.
Auto-archived threads automatically unarchive themselves when you send a new message. Locked-threads, on the other hand, require explicit unlock.
I wasn’t commenting about liking discord threads. My comment was focused on how you can “inline” reply in discord, while you can’t do that in slack (though someone mentioned that you can post your reply to the main channel in slack - a feature I’ve never noticed or seen used).
> they get locked after disuse
Yikes, here's hoping you mean "after a year" or something, because having to make a fake new thread just to comment on an existing locked thread would make me rage quit
Yikes, here's hoping you mean "after a year" or something, because having to make a fake new thread just to comment on an existing locked thread would make me rage quit
Nope, it's after 24 hours of inactivity.
Someone with the manage threads permission can unarchive it, but like the pinning thing that also comes with permission to delete it, so you can't just grant that to everyone in your server.
Someone with the manage threads permission can unarchive it, but like the pinning thing that also comes with permission to delete it, so you can't just grant that to everyone in your server.
Then that squares with my mental model of discord being for the gaming community, because imagine one's surprise about coming in to work on a Monday to have something to add to a thread made on Friday but unable to contribute to it. Or, what's this "vacation" stuff I keep hearing about?
Roles and channel permissions. I can't assign a role to someone and grant them granular permissions in slack like I can discord. I'm either a guest, user, admin or owner.
Slack does app integrations and bots pretty well.
Slack does app integrations and bots pretty well.
Example of granular permissions?
Think of it as "tagging" users. Instead of a user fitting a single pre-defined category, you can add tags to a user.
To give an example, let's say you have both a Discord channel and a Slack channel with the same 10 people working on a project, 7 of which are software developers. To mention the developers, your Slack option is either @everyone (including 3 non-developers) or individually. On Discord you can create @developers and add only those seven, not bothering the other 3.
You can really go buckwild with that basic concept: only admin can tag @everyone, only @talkers can join a voice channel, only @projectmanagers can run some bot, only @collaborators can post to #project, @watchers can read #project but not post, while those that are neither @collaborators nor @watchers don't even see the channel... And in #otherproject you can have those same people in totally different groups and with different roles.
Way more customizable than by just having public/private channels and @everyone at your disposal, as Slack does.
To give an example, let's say you have both a Discord channel and a Slack channel with the same 10 people working on a project, 7 of which are software developers. To mention the developers, your Slack option is either @everyone (including 3 non-developers) or individually. On Discord you can create @developers and add only those seven, not bothering the other 3.
You can really go buckwild with that basic concept: only admin can tag @everyone, only @talkers can join a voice channel, only @projectmanagers can run some bot, only @collaborators can post to #project, @watchers can read #project but not post, while those that are neither @collaborators nor @watchers don't even see the channel... And in #otherproject you can have those same people in totally different groups and with different roles.
Way more customizable than by just having public/private channels and @everyone at your disposal, as Slack does.
You can do that in Slack as well. They call it user groups: https://slack.com/help/articles/212906697-Create-a-user-grou...
Slack user groups are much less powerful than Discord roles. Slack user groups are _only_ a way of bulk notifying users. Discord roles control effectively both views of your server, and permissions (though why "Pin Messages" and "Delete Other User's Messages" are still combined into a single "Manage Messages" checkbox is a glaring flaw in that granularity).
And some other features like colours which are nice when you want mods to stand out for public servers, or teams for some sort of competitive event server.
And some other features like colours which are nice when you want mods to stand out for public servers, or teams for some sort of competitive event server.
Tagging users is also possible in slack. I don't know if permissions by tag is possible, but the basic concept of "@ these 7 people" has been there for a while.
User X is admin of channel Y but guest of all the other channels or something like that I imagine.
And it is even worse than losing your positive word of mouth, because people burned by this change will start recommending against using slack now.
GitHub is a good example of an enduringly useful (to the company) free tier.
Because devs use it for OSS/hobbies, they want to use it at work. Simple.
Because devs use it for OSS/hobbies, they want to use it at work. Simple.
That, and their paid-for subscriptions are natural extensions of the already super useful platform. Either more quantity (actions) or more useful features on top of an already fully useful feature set.
Users pay for convenience and for more, not just slightly better.
Users pay for convenience and for more, not just slightly better.
Slack's leadership likely think that Slack is already so ingrained in corporate settings that people will go for it by default, without word of mouth from people using a free plan. There is enough word of mouth from people who used it on a previous job. Sort of like Jira.
I started using Slack in 2015, and never in my life used a free Slack account.
I started using Slack in 2015, and never in my life used a free Slack account.
There’s no way to know how many corporate plans were sold because a single team member relied on Slack outside of work, or how many pro user accounts exist because someone was visiting a Slack-fluent friend.
So why assume it’s positive ROI? The people who make purchasing decisions in the organizations Salesforce plays in don’t typically make them based off recommendations of people happily using a free tier on outside projects but rather those made by massive sales teams.
So why assume it’s positive ROI? The people who make purchasing decisions in the organizations Salesforce plays in don’t typically make them based off recommendations of people happily using a free tier on outside projects but rather those made by massive sales teams.
This is not my experience. But don’t take my word for it.
Why else do you think students get software or checking accounts for free or much lower cost? The net LTV of getting users accustomed to your product who later evangelize it for free is priceless.
Why else do you think students get software or checking accounts for free or much lower cost? The net LTV of getting users accustomed to your product who later evangelize it for free is priceless.
Underneath both, they make those choices based on trust. If a massive sales teams gains their trust it means sales. If employees have gained their trust it means sales.
Not only that but there are decisionmakers in organizations that also use free tiers for stuff in their private lives. Piss one of them off enough and suddenly you can lose a big sale or existing customer.
So tinkering with free plans downwards can have unforeseen consequences.
And with the amount of data slack uses so low and costs of bandwidth and spinning rust approaching zero - the idea that free tier limitation are anything other than create a painpoint for people to upgrade is a joke.
So tinkering with free plans downwards can have unforeseen consequences.
And with the amount of data slack uses so low and costs of bandwidth and spinning rust approaching zero - the idea that free tier limitation are anything other than create a painpoint for people to upgrade is a joke.
I agree with the idea, at the same time I'm sure there's some income vs expense graph that shows expenses raising faster than income and at some point surpassing it.
I wonder when it will hit github. At the moment they offer free hosting for open source projects, including github actions. It seems pretty clear at some point they'll have to back off in some form or another. Maybe the "open source" part is enough of a filter?
I wonder when it will hit github. At the moment they offer free hosting for open source projects, including github actions. It seems pretty clear at some point they'll have to back off in some form or another. Maybe the "open source" part is enough of a filter?
Well I thought github was a "you are the product" sort of deal with Copilot?
How so?
They scraped all the code submitted to GitHub and used it to train the AI behind the now-paid Copilot product
In their FAQ [1], GitHub state: GitHub Copilot is powered by Codex, a generative pretrained AI model created by OpenAI. It has been trained on natural language text and source code from publicly available sources, including code in public repositories on GitHub.
Genuine question, has there been any evidence to substantiate your claim?
[1] https://github.com/features/copilot#what-data-has-github-cop...
Genuine question, has there been any evidence to substantiate your claim?
[1] https://github.com/features/copilot#what-data-has-github-cop...
> including code in public repositories on GitHub.
You just provided the evidence. I was incorrect to use the term "all the code", but they clearly and openly used GitHub code to train Copilot
You just provided the evidence. I was incorrect to use the term "all the code", but they clearly and openly used GitHub code to train Copilot
I think all of this is possible through sampling and customer interviews. Besides Slack has fairly high awareness. The marketing strategy changes as your product moves through the awareness curve.
After the Salesforce acquisition SF may believe they no longer need this funnel, since Slack now has access to all Salesforce customers and vice versa.
There's not many ways to know many things with 100% certainty, but you can have a decent probability of knowing the impact the free tier has.
> Excellent tools spread through the best kind of word of mouth.
They did that already. Years ago, they did that. Now everyone knows about slack.
They did that already. Years ago, they did that. Now everyone knows about slack.
dark ages of A/B driven blindness
By now, I'm pretty sure everyone who was going to use Slack has used Slack.
How can you possibly measure that?
This concept of market saturation is a well known concept, however, you forgot one important part, the next generation. It is well known under marketeers that is it is hard to change habits. An 80 year old is not suddenly going to change toothpaste brand because they saw an amazing ad on television. However, a rebellious teenager/young adult will want to pick their own toothpaste brand, and are susceptible to marketing campaigns. Personally I have been using a different toothpaste brand because my teenage children want it, and they offered bulk discount, so not worth buying my usual brand in addition.
This is the same with Slack/Discord. If I can attract bright individual to work for me if I offer them Discord, I don't really mind switching to Discord.
This is the same with Slack/Discord. If I can attract bright individual to work for me if I offer them Discord, I don't really mind switching to Discord.
There's something to me about this that smells like it leads to bad assumptions; especially on things that have unforseen effects. You could argue that the internet was saturated in the 80s based on being connected only by a few universities. I don't think this is a well known science by any means or a well known concept.
There’s an XKCD for that: https://xkcd.com/1053/
Micropayments! When will this happen?
Community needs hosting costs say $1k/y for all their needs. 1000 members pay $1 a year. But that is a lot of friction!
Probably a human problem. The activation energy from $0 to $0.01 online is huge compared to the monetary difference. Suddenly you need a credit card.
Whereas people would happily pay $3 instead of $1 for a drink because of convenience (convenience stores are an example!).
Maybe the solution is an in browser card-free micropayments system that you load up as a browser extension. Something like web3 without the cryptocurrency or blockchain! Chicken and egg problem though.
Community needs hosting costs say $1k/y for all their needs. 1000 members pay $1 a year. But that is a lot of friction!
Probably a human problem. The activation energy from $0 to $0.01 online is huge compared to the monetary difference. Suddenly you need a credit card.
Whereas people would happily pay $3 instead of $1 for a drink because of convenience (convenience stores are an example!).
Maybe the solution is an in browser card-free micropayments system that you load up as a browser extension. Something like web3 without the cryptocurrency or blockchain! Chicken and egg problem though.
This is such a hard problem. The very much not a secret secret of consumer payments is that all actions that people take are reversible.
Things that are not reversible tend to not be as consumer friendly. This means things like Bitcoin and wire transfers. The problem when things are not reversible is an account can get hacked or you can be given incorrect wire instructions and lose a bunch of money and have no way to get it back.
People love credit cards and similar products because there is a way to get your money back. In case you were defrauded in some way. Most systems have a chargeback mechanism of some kind.
If you start building a system that supports micro payments, the cost of running such a service scales with the number of payments going through it. Such a system needs ongoing support to deal with chargebacks and fraud. And the people running a system need a way to make money. They can't just lose money on the operational support that comes with dealing with chargebacks and fraud.
Things that are not reversible tend to not be as consumer friendly. This means things like Bitcoin and wire transfers. The problem when things are not reversible is an account can get hacked or you can be given incorrect wire instructions and lose a bunch of money and have no way to get it back.
People love credit cards and similar products because there is a way to get your money back. In case you were defrauded in some way. Most systems have a chargeback mechanism of some kind.
If you start building a system that supports micro payments, the cost of running such a service scales with the number of payments going through it. Such a system needs ongoing support to deal with chargebacks and fraud. And the people running a system need a way to make money. They can't just lose money on the operational support that comes with dealing with chargebacks and fraud.
You didn't fully read the post you responded to. They were not suggesting a non-reversible medium.
Oh, I read it. I'm saying that building a system that supports microtransactions that are reversible is cost prohibitive due to the customer service aspect required. If someone could pull it off, it would be a game changer. I believe many people want to do this, but no one has been successful yet.
I point out Bitcoin as it is non-reversible, and there is no central agency you can complain to if you get your bitcoins stolen. This prevent adoption from much of the public.
I point out Bitcoin as it is non-reversible, and there is no central agency you can complain to if you get your bitcoins stolen. This prevent adoption from much of the public.
That makes sense, it seems that I was the one who didn't properly read your comment.
Micropayments keep failing over and over again. I think it's because the friction of microdecisions of whether or not to pay for that individual transaction is tedious. "Should I click on that link? What if it's not what I want Hmm, better not for now." Biggest recent push was Blendle, which pivoted: https://www.niemanlab.org/2019/06/micropayments-for-news-pio...
And yet most people I know don't get microdecision fatigue every time they decide whether to turn on a light or use an appliance due to the electricity transactions.
I claim that--to the extent to which this was ever an issue--this is due to the notion of "micropayment" really being too large still: the industry has often used this term to describe transactions on the order $1-$10.
Instead, this discussion is about hosting fees for a chat app that will add up to almost nothing for light usage, not the $1 per article news companies keep wanting to charge. My company (Orchid) has been calling these fees for incremental hosting costs--which are on the order of $0.001-$0.10--"nanopayments".
I claim that--to the extent to which this was ever an issue--this is due to the notion of "micropayment" really being too large still: the industry has often used this term to describe transactions on the order $1-$10.
Instead, this discussion is about hosting fees for a chat app that will add up to almost nothing for light usage, not the $1 per article news companies keep wanting to charge. My company (Orchid) has been calling these fees for incremental hosting costs--which are on the order of $0.001-$0.10--"nanopayments".
But that's not the correct comparison right? It's not that you have to initiate a transfer for the flipping-on of the light. You pay integrated, at the end of the month (or really, the utility trusts you to not change your behaviour dramatically and you pay an expected usage, which is then corrected at the end of the year).
That's my main gripe with all those transactions. If you need to initialise a complex utility that involves the trust of multiple parties and the need to verify identities on multiple people. That kind of thing costs macroscopic amounts of money (the going rate seems to be O(20ct)). Unless your average transaction size is much above that, you'll loose to friction.
That's my main gripe with all those transactions. If you need to initialise a complex utility that involves the trust of multiple parties and the need to verify identities on multiple people. That kind of thing costs macroscopic amounts of money (the going rate seems to be O(20ct)). Unless your average transaction size is much above that, you'll loose to friction.
There isn't a price tag on my light switch. Also light is of course a must have, news articles or chatrooms aren't.
If I could use micropayments this way and be sure that the final price is
a) somewhat predicable
b) usually not ruinous
It would work better.
Cloud Services for companies like AWS are using this mode and it's working well for them.
But I have a feeling it's not easy/legal to do away with the immediate price tag for consumers. At the very least it would require the a constant price per "thing" and a hard spending limit.
If I could use micropayments this way and be sure that the final price is
a) somewhat predicable
b) usually not ruinous
It would work better.
Cloud Services for companies like AWS are using this mode and it's working well for them.
But I have a feeling it's not easy/legal to do away with the immediate price tag for consumers. At the very least it would require the a constant price per "thing" and a hard spending limit.
Look at tarsnap's pricing: https://www.tarsnap.com/
currently it says "250 picodollars / byte-month of encoded data"
currently it says "250 picodollars / byte-month of encoded data"
I can't tell what stance is being taken on Tarsnap here, but for the interested the background is worth a read.
https://www.daemonology.net/blog/2018-04-01-tarsnap-pricing-...
https://www.daemonology.net/blog/2018-04-01-tarsnap-pricing-...
They work well within ecosystems. See the any number of video games and gaming platforms that invent their own micro-currency. My kid plays roblox and every month or so asks for some of their allowance to go into their ecosystem. They spend pennies on different cosmetics with nearly no friction.
That said, I don't think even "Web Points" would work for links. Maybe something like buying "Member Status" with "Web Points" for a month on a site could work.
That said, I don't think even "Web Points" would work for links. Maybe something like buying "Member Status" with "Web Points" for a month on a site could work.
I think the only micropayment people are usually willing to make is watching an ad.
> I think it's because the friction of microdecisions of whether or not to pay for that individual transaction is tedious.
I think Brave has the right general idea.
Fund an account and then split that per month among the sites I visit, or according to a breakdown of my own preference.
I think Brave has the right general idea.
Fund an account and then split that per month among the sites I visit, or according to a breakdown of my own preference.
Google, Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, etc don't want a micro payment standard. Everyone dreams of not being the "dumb pipe" and wants a fat cut through their proprietary solution.
I really wish there were room for a "your margin is my opportunity" player in spaces like this, but the existing cast already executes the "dumb pipe" role too well.
Europe seems to be doing something on this front. SEPA Instant is... instant just like credit cards. All we need is an interface that's as easy to use as credit-cards (type number, money go) and the visa/mastercard monopoly is going to either get real cheap or real non-existent.
I am a little frustrated that there are services I would pay $1 per month for, but the floor for monthly services is usually $10, occasionally $5.
It's very expensive to charge someone $1. It wouldn't make much sense to charge $1 / month for a service like that; you'd want to charge $12 / year.
Makes me remember flattr. That was great and I still miss it.
In the EU at least, this is impossible because of invoicing and bookkeeping/accounting requirements.
Hmmm...Starbucks does this by charging me a lump sum in one transaction and then allowing me to spend it down over time in smaller chunks.
I doubt this is viable in general though, due to the cited support issues around reversibility.
I doubt this is viable in general though, due to the cited support issues around reversibility.
Oh, that is even worse! Only big corporations can afford to do this, as this borders on banking services and you need good legal grounding for this type of business.
I should probably clarify that by "impossible" I really meant "does not make business/economic sense". You can do microtransactions with individuals, but if you're spending €2 (rough estimate) per transaction for invoicing, accounting, VAT processing, etc, it no longer makes any sense. Thus "impossible".
I should probably clarify that by "impossible" I really meant "does not make business/economic sense". You can do microtransactions with individuals, but if you're spending €2 (rough estimate) per transaction for invoicing, accounting, VAT processing, etc, it no longer makes any sense. Thus "impossible".
Slack is $9/user/month :)
You know, I'm under the (possibly wrong) impression that it's $9 per workspace per month, and as a professor, if you include all the workspaces I was maintaining for my past classes, I have . . . or had . . . about 25 of them with hundreds of users. Maybe I wasn't using it the most efficient way, but I had no reason to think I needed to be strategic. And to think: I used to tell classes we were using Slack so their access would persist after they got kicked out of Canvas when they graduated!
It should have been possible for Slack to start the new limitations on new workspaces only. This term, because I started the change too late, I will continue to use Slack without enthusiasm while keeping a shadow archive (possibly in piazza but they have also begun to charge for larger classes). For next semester we will find and use a different service.
It should have been possible for Slack to start the new limitations on new workspaces only. This term, because I started the change too late, I will continue to use Slack without enthusiasm while keeping a shadow archive (possibly in piazza but they have also begun to charge for larger classes). For next semester we will find and use a different service.
> You know, I'm under the (possibly wrong) impression that it's $9 per workspace per month
It's per user sadly. Apparently $8/mo now if paying monthly. Of course if you go to their pricing page they lie and give you the price for paying yearly.
It's per user sadly. Apparently $8/mo now if paying monthly. Of course if you go to their pricing page they lie and give you the price for paying yearly.
> without the cryptocurrency or blockchain
If only we had a way to solve this problem using a solution other than the technology that already solves this problem.
If only we had a way to solve this problem using a solution other than the technology that already solves this problem.
That's just silly. We just need a web standard that hooks into the existing banking system. Put that into every browser.
Just like in 99% of the other use cases presented for it, crypto is useless here. Absolutely no need for it.
Just like in 99% of the other use cases presented for it, crypto is useless here. Absolutely no need for it.
Whose existing banking system? The Chinese one? The Japanese one? The Egyptian one? The Indian one?
The Ancient Roman one.
The one most people use. SWIFT.
And yeah, blah blah sanctions, Russia, Iran, like most of the world's business is happening there and like the crypto Ponzi schemers really care about the "under-banked".
The one most people use. SWIFT.
And yeah, blah blah sanctions, Russia, Iran, like most of the world's business is happening there and like the crypto Ponzi schemers really care about the "under-banked".
How's swift suitable for micropayments?
SWIFT isn't remotely suitable for micropayments. Most banks have to go through a correspondent bank that is going to charge at least $5 per transfer.
Ok, then use anything else or get banks to come up with another one.
How, pray tell, would a cryptocurrency help here? You have all the crypto disadvantages (either untested or slow or scams or boiling the planet...) plus the same issue with adoption. We already have banks and they already have bank accounts. We have SWIFT, SEPA, etc. They know how to talk to each other. Get them to modify an existing protocol or make a new one for microtransactions.
It's a super hard task but with crypto you still have that super hard task (adoption) plus crypto itself (a million drawbacks).
It's not scientific and it's not engineering.
You solve a problem with the simplest equivalent solution, no more.
Crypto is like God. It gets sprinkled over every discussion. There's a reason science doesn't go: "A equals B plus God" to prove anything.
How, pray tell, would a cryptocurrency help here? You have all the crypto disadvantages (either untested or slow or scams or boiling the planet...) plus the same issue with adoption. We already have banks and they already have bank accounts. We have SWIFT, SEPA, etc. They know how to talk to each other. Get them to modify an existing protocol or make a new one for microtransactions.
It's a super hard task but with crypto you still have that super hard task (adoption) plus crypto itself (a million drawbacks).
It's not scientific and it's not engineering.
You solve a problem with the simplest equivalent solution, no more.
Crypto is like God. It gets sprinkled over every discussion. There's a reason science doesn't go: "A equals B plus God" to prove anything.
The “ancient Roman one”? Enlighten me.
Any. Every. Whatever the user has. Banks already figure this out amongst each other - the browser just needs to convey an IBAN (or other format), currency and amount to the user's bank and let it be their problem.
Exactly. I proposed SWIFT and people latched onto to it to criticize when it was just a detail.
You put it better, just have any layer on top of IBANs. 0 need for crypto.
You put it better, just have any layer on top of IBANs. 0 need for crypto.
However, the API should also be able to support crypto payments, by getting a crypto address and then forwarding the request to e.g. a local instance of Metamask, instead of my bank.
Perhaps if the user has multiple bank accounts linked, they would have to choose one, to avoid leaking to my bank that I'm making a crypto payment.
Of course, a crypto transaction has a significantly lower chance of being compatible since there's no foreign currency team working at the bank - if the website wants a payment in BitWhatsits and my primary wallet is in DOGEMONEY 20000!!!!! then it's up to the user or at least the extension to figure out the routing. Probably, the website would offer a different button to pay with each supported cryptocurrency, so the user would choose. They'll be accustomed to that, being a cryptocurrency and all.
Perhaps if the user has multiple bank accounts linked, they would have to choose one, to avoid leaking to my bank that I'm making a crypto payment.
Of course, a crypto transaction has a significantly lower chance of being compatible since there's no foreign currency team working at the bank - if the website wants a payment in BitWhatsits and my primary wallet is in DOGEMONEY 20000!!!!! then it's up to the user or at least the extension to figure out the routing. Probably, the website would offer a different button to pay with each supported cryptocurrency, so the user would choose. They'll be accustomed to that, being a cryptocurrency and all.
I don't mind that. People should be allowed to shoot themselves in the foot with their favorite Dogecoin.
Different ones for different markets.
A working standard could simply define "seller endpoints", "buyers bank endpoint", "supported payment protocol" and a message passing system and let the parties figure it out.
Not global, but few things are in the world of finance.
A working standard could simply define "seller endpoints", "buyers bank endpoint", "supported payment protocol" and a message passing system and let the parties figure it out.
Not global, but few things are in the world of finance.
Not necessarily. I offer a free tier because I want to, as a service to hobbyists and makers. It is not intended to be temporary. It's also not an upselling tool: features are distinctly different and there is no paid plan that would make sense for hobbyists.
Not every business is a VC-funded growth-above-all meat grinder.
Not every business is a VC-funded growth-above-all meat grinder.
Admirable!
But there is still a profit incentive. Users who have been running a hobby or community on your SaaS today might be creating a startup or advising a corporate tomorrow.
So while the community might never need your paid product, the very same users might create separate, paying accounts.
But there is still a profit incentive. Users who have been running a hobby or community on your SaaS today might be creating a startup or advising a corporate tomorrow.
So while the community might never need your paid product, the very same users might create separate, paying accounts.
Thank you!
A free tier is a loss-leader, intended to support sales of the paid product.
Or to stop people moving to a competing product in order to stifle competitors.
Or to leverage a network effect to grow the user base to support investment.
Or because the company simply believes their product should be accessible for free.
Using a 'freemium' model is a common approach to revenue growth but it isn't the only reason for a free tier to exist.
Or to stop people moving to a competing product in order to stifle competitors.
Or to leverage a network effect to grow the user base to support investment.
Or because the company simply believes their product should be accessible for free.
Using a 'freemium' model is a common approach to revenue growth but it isn't the only reason for a free tier to exist.
The need to pay for storage is understandable, but in trying to turn free-plan users into paying customers, companies seem to misunderstand how seemingly small pricing and feature changes can make their product entirely unappealing. How many of Slack's free users would have been willing to sign up in the first place if they knew a 90-day-history limit would be implemented one day? How many would have signed up at all if they knew that at some point they'd be forced to go from paying nothing at all to paying $87 a year per user?
I understand that to some companies their free or low-priced tiers end up being more of hassle than it's worth. But an $87 jump in order to access essential, previously available features seems like a good way to chop off your long tail of low volume users. Such a change could be deadly to a service's popularity and long-term prospects. Or maybe not.
I understand that to some companies their free or low-priced tiers end up being more of hassle than it's worth. But an $87 jump in order to access essential, previously available features seems like a good way to chop off your long tail of low volume users. Such a change could be deadly to a service's popularity and long-term prospects. Or maybe not.
low volume users unprepared to pay anything to Slack ever are low value users.
There is an argument for a more granular pricing, but if I were Slack I would also want to jettison the "community" slacks
There is an argument for a more granular pricing, but if I were Slack I would also want to jettison the "community" slacks
I use Slack’s free version in a 2-person workspace with just my partner. We use it to message each other during the day. It probably costs Slack almost nothing, but now we’re getting somewhat cut-off.
I’ve also advocated for Slack at my company of several hundred employees, at multiple previous companies, and would’ve continued to at future companies. Mostly because they’ve had goodwill and been a joy to use in my personal life.
But now I’m mad at them, and going to move to a new chat platform, with my partner, on our tiny little instance.
Will me being mad at Slack affect their bottom line? Probably not today… but when more people like me have moved past Slack and see it as old annoying tech, maybe it’ll start to have an affect. We’ll see.
I’ve also advocated for Slack at my company of several hundred employees, at multiple previous companies, and would’ve continued to at future companies. Mostly because they’ve had goodwill and been a joy to use in my personal life.
But now I’m mad at them, and going to move to a new chat platform, with my partner, on our tiny little instance.
Will me being mad at Slack affect their bottom line? Probably not today… but when more people like me have moved past Slack and see it as old annoying tech, maybe it’ll start to have an affect. We’ll see.
Sure, I get the theory. My glib response is that I do not believe a business tool kicking out "freeloaders" (in the nicest sense of the term) is a factor to me using it for a business. Why would I care? I want a communication tool for a business! Having to pay for loss leading is annoying!
Free tiers exist to help with onboarding and testing, the existence of free plans that allow more or less indefinite usage is an obvious mistake for something like Slack IMO.
I think if Slack had shown up with a free plan at 90 days history (really, 90 days/5 GB would be the "reall" thing), then people wouldn't bat an eye. It feels obvious that the solution here would be to grandfather old workspaces into the old model but .. shrug.
Free tiers exist to help with onboarding and testing, the existence of free plans that allow more or less indefinite usage is an obvious mistake for something like Slack IMO.
I think if Slack had shown up with a free plan at 90 days history (really, 90 days/5 GB would be the "reall" thing), then people wouldn't bat an eye. It feels obvious that the solution here would be to grandfather old workspaces into the old model but .. shrug.
Low value users should be okay though, because they should also be low-cost users.
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The pricing step is crazy. There's no way it matches the expense from Slacks side, but I guess they're just saying "you're not our target market" by charging that much per user.
The weird thing is that if that's the case, their target market doesn't really need a free tier at all - maybe a time limited demo. So I expect more restrictions in the future.
The weird thing is that if that's the case, their target market doesn't really need a free tier at all - maybe a time limited demo. So I expect more restrictions in the future.
Saying we should expect companies to destroy the free tier is a bit of an insult. The internet was full of free things and companies have been shoving them in our faces for decades.
- "Free gigabytes of mail storage!"
- "Free communication with your teams"
- "Free internet hosting for hobby projects!"
The free tech offerings are just good enough to kill open source or entrenched alternatives. The goal is to suffocate them. Once the competition is gone or investors demand more money destroy the tier/raise prices.
FB is trying to do that to Craigslist with marketplaces, Uber and Lyft and doing that with Taxis, AirBnb with... etc etc etc
- "Free gigabytes of mail storage!"
- "Free communication with your teams"
- "Free internet hosting for hobby projects!"
The free tech offerings are just good enough to kill open source or entrenched alternatives. The goal is to suffocate them. Once the competition is gone or investors demand more money destroy the tier/raise prices.
FB is trying to do that to Craigslist with marketplaces, Uber and Lyft and doing that with Taxis, AirBnb with... etc etc etc
Yes, and I believe the model is as follows:
- infra costs sustainably decreases, exponentially;
- user signups almost-sustainably increases, exponentially;
- OpEx may increase, linearly;
- therefore, profit and scale almost-sustainably continues explosion to a rather enormous scale, landing founders with astronomical wealth.
- and this, by the way, is why charging users for actual costs is pointless. Harmful even! We’re offering values, not collecting fees. We’re going for the moon! Forget about gases for cars, we can pay out of the pocket. That’s irrelevant.
This actually worked for decades, hence the free tier. And the first two bullet points stopped working last midnight. And now Houston is working on a solution.
- infra costs sustainably decreases, exponentially;
- user signups almost-sustainably increases, exponentially;
- OpEx may increase, linearly;
- therefore, profit and scale almost-sustainably continues explosion to a rather enormous scale, landing founders with astronomical wealth.
- and this, by the way, is why charging users for actual costs is pointless. Harmful even! We’re offering values, not collecting fees. We’re going for the moon! Forget about gases for cars, we can pay out of the pocket. That’s irrelevant.
This actually worked for decades, hence the free tier. And the first two bullet points stopped working last midnight. And now Houston is working on a solution.
Don't forget how "free unlimited photo storage" ended too after competitors shifted their business model.
The free tier usecases don't themselves need to convert for this to work out long term. They do need to convert the same customers for other usecases though - usually work.
Keeping the free tier indefinite (in time, if not in storage) helps to keep the product used, therefore top of mind, therefore the default choice for the latter when those decisions come around. Or, even where the user is not the decision maker, they will likely still be an advocate / non-complaining user at the least.
Just directly trying to convert the free usecases by time-limiting them so as to make many of them unusable feels like more of a short term 'upcoming quarters' geared strategy. For sure they will convert some 'real work' usecases here who are able to function in the current space-limited free tier, as well as saving some costs on compute and storage, and it may boost numbers in the short term.
But long term, is it the best strategy? If all those free users now switch to, say, discord, guess which tool gets picked more for the 'real work' usecases by those same people in 5 years. Over that timeframe, will the savings in resources have been worth it? I guess this analysis must have been done, but it feels very possible the answer will turn out to be no.
Keeping the free tier indefinite (in time, if not in storage) helps to keep the product used, therefore top of mind, therefore the default choice for the latter when those decisions come around. Or, even where the user is not the decision maker, they will likely still be an advocate / non-complaining user at the least.
Just directly trying to convert the free usecases by time-limiting them so as to make many of them unusable feels like more of a short term 'upcoming quarters' geared strategy. For sure they will convert some 'real work' usecases here who are able to function in the current space-limited free tier, as well as saving some costs on compute and storage, and it may boost numbers in the short term.
But long term, is it the best strategy? If all those free users now switch to, say, discord, guess which tool gets picked more for the 'real work' usecases by those same people in 5 years. Over that timeframe, will the savings in resources have been worth it? I guess this analysis must have been done, but it feels very possible the answer will turn out to be no.
Long term, users learn not to trust cloud services that are based on taking the customer's data hostage: not only the loss leader free tiers that are too good to be true, but anything.
If Google had bought Slack, the free tier would almost certainly have stayed. Of course the compromise would be that you would be served ads and you would have to agree your Slack messages would be used to target those ads to your specific interests.
Salesforce is where products go to die. Slack will eventually get integrated in their Frankenstack and lose functionality. Salesforce can afford this strategy as long as they can keep charging $$$ for their CRM software that genuinely deserves its own circle in hell.
Salesforce is where products go to die. Slack will eventually get integrated in their Frankenstack and lose functionality. Salesforce can afford this strategy as long as they can keep charging $$$ for their CRM software that genuinely deserves its own circle in hell.
My family has been using Slack for several years to share/store odds and ends like recipes and bookmarks. When I heard about this change, I did a full data export. After 5+ years of not-infrequent use, the data blob was all of 1.5 MB. Virtually nothing.
There is an argument to be made that while it looks like a loss in a limited time frame, having all those new developers become advocates later on will pay itself back
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edit, I thought I was on the Heroku thread... though a similar argument might be made still
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edit, I thought I was on the Heroku thread... though a similar argument might be made still
That's not necessarily true.
I have several free Slack groups that I've used for years. I haven't paid a cent. But it means I've also have Slack installed by default. At every company I've worked, I've supported using Slack because I'm a happy user and these companies have shelled out for paid plans.
It feels similar to how MS Office is given out for free to students and sold to companies.
I have several free Slack groups that I've used for years. I haven't paid a cent. But it means I've also have Slack installed by default. At every company I've worked, I've supported using Slack because I'm a happy user and these companies have shelled out for paid plans.
It feels similar to how MS Office is given out for free to students and sold to companies.
The issue is that people are usually members of multiple organizations on Slack, most of them free but some paid. A change like this that retroactively impacts non-grandfathered chats (especially chats which are low usage and likely low infra cost) is going to alienate people who may at some point have decision-making power over an organization’s choice of paid chat service.
I agree with your comment, but most importantly, I hope (tho I know it won't happen) this helps people to open their eyes and realize the importance of self hosting their own stuff, I could understand that maybe 10 years ago it wasn't just as easy but now days if you are trully a small team or one with very low transit you can host your stuff even on a Raspberry PI and it would not be more expensive than permanently keeping a light bulb on besides granting you tons of flexibility. I mean, if you are less than 10 people you can even use that same hardware to keep a IM server and possibly a simple web page or some other application of interest, honestly that's what you get for being too cheap
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Doesn’t have to be reality. Even when a firm is profitable and has scale it can still act as a funnel for new business.
It also helps to keep some competitors out. One less toehold for newcomers to get traction in a market. Just look at the comments on the recent Heroku announcement - how many will now consider an alternative option.
More likely management have lost interest in growth and are looking to squeeze as much out of the existing customer base as possible. Not usually a good sign for investors or users.
It also helps to keep some competitors out. One less toehold for newcomers to get traction in a market. Just look at the comments on the recent Heroku announcement - how many will now consider an alternative option.
More likely management have lost interest in growth and are looking to squeeze as much out of the existing customer base as possible. Not usually a good sign for investors or users.
Yeah, but this is the equivalent of Costco raising food court prices to match real production costs. Costco would never do that, of course, because they understand how a loss leader works. The real solution is to reduce costs using vertical integration, so if AWS storage is your main cost driver then start building your own data centers. Instead, this move will harm their best customer acquisition channel, negatively affecting long-term growth.
Well, what you said applies even if you are paying for something, if the price is unsustainable for the service provider at scale.
The real question you have to ask is, "is my use of this service providing a sustainable benefit for the owner". If not, you can guarantee it will go away or change eventually. If it is, it's probably OK even if its free. For example, I don't expect Google search to go away, even though it's free.
The real question you have to ask is, "is my use of this service providing a sustainable benefit for the owner". If not, you can guarantee it will go away or change eventually. If it is, it's probably OK even if its free. For example, I don't expect Google search to go away, even though it's free.
They should make an exception for low volume/infrequent users. Yes free-tier power users should get incentive to level up. But if you have a slack with your spouse for house ideas where you post a few times a year, I think this is the type of user that gets the most pissed off by limits, because leveling up to the paid tier for a few messages a year seems like a ripoff/moneygrab.
The same is to be said to a company no? If you offer free tooling for too long, pulling the plug will upset a lot of people
On one hand that's true, on the other hand search is mostly about text data which has negligable storage size requirements (they could just say: we'll keep the search history for ever, but drop large binary blobs like images and videos after 90 days).
Well there was this episode of I think a16z, where initially they used the free accounts in their numbers (around, churn, etc). But later around those to marketing and cac instead.
All of a sudden everybody is happy, while nothing changed
All of a sudden everybody is happy, while nothing changed
I think they made a mistake disallowing single user upgrading to paid plan.
Non-corporate users will migrate to Discord, Slack will cut resources costs = more money without new users. Everyone happy, just allow us to export data ;)
Non-corporate users will migrate to Discord, Slack will cut resources costs = more money without new users. Everyone happy, just allow us to export data ;)
>but that it will gone in the relatively short term
I've had data stored by Google and Dropbox for free for over a decade. Even Discord has stored all my messages and files for over half a decade.
I've had data stored by Google and Dropbox for free for over a decade. Even Discord has stored all my messages and files for over half a decade.
They also have to understand, every single business outside computing, pays for they work tools, even if they got them at some flea market.
Would one say the same thing about GitHub?
> If you aren’t paying for it, it is definitely temporary
the reason big SV VC are shilling web3 so hard.
the reason big SV VC are shilling web3 so hard.
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It's interesting (and sad) how the forums of yesteryear have essentially gone away entirely, with no good solutions popping up to replace them. I know they were/are incredibly prone to security issues, but they were good at one thing and one thing only: community.
I recall spending a crazy amount of time refreshing the index on a site called TradeGamesNow (and to a lesser degree CheapAssGamer) waiting for new posts/comments. Now every site on the web either has a Subreddit (too much tertiary noise), Discord (I'm terrified of making a post on the wrong server by accident), or (to a lesser degree) Slack (limited features, as noted in the article).
As to the Slack announcement: I get that guests staying in your house for free eat not-free food. That being said, I have to imagine that Slack could offer a non-real-time updating experience (no polling, disable calls/video/file hosting) to cut down on costs (my assumption is that the active nature of the service is the biggest expense) and make it feasible for a free or $5/mo for X users & unlimited guests.
(I'm aware that Discourse was Supposed To Be The Chosen One, but at $100/mo and no self-hosting option (that I can see), I don't think it's even considered much. But I could be wrong.)
I recall spending a crazy amount of time refreshing the index on a site called TradeGamesNow (and to a lesser degree CheapAssGamer) waiting for new posts/comments. Now every site on the web either has a Subreddit (too much tertiary noise), Discord (I'm terrified of making a post on the wrong server by accident), or (to a lesser degree) Slack (limited features, as noted in the article).
As to the Slack announcement: I get that guests staying in your house for free eat not-free food. That being said, I have to imagine that Slack could offer a non-real-time updating experience (no polling, disable calls/video/file hosting) to cut down on costs (my assumption is that the active nature of the service is the biggest expense) and make it feasible for a free or $5/mo for X users & unlimited guests.
(I'm aware that Discourse was Supposed To Be The Chosen One, but at $100/mo and no self-hosting option (that I can see), I don't think it's even considered much. But I could be wrong.)
There is absolutely a self hosting option with Discourse, and in fact they encourage it. [0] Here is their install guide [1]
[0] https://github.com/discourse/discourse
[1] https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/main/docs/INSTAL...
[0] https://github.com/discourse/discourse
[1] https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/main/docs/INSTAL...
IMO Discourse is crap. I've never personally seen any discourse communities that are as thriving and active as the phpBB, SMF, VBulletin, forums they replaced
Something about the design of Discourse does not actually encourage discourse.
On top of that, discourse is a resource hog. You can run tens of twenties of phpBB forums on the hardware that's required to run one instance of discourse
Something about the design of Discourse does not actually encourage discourse.
On top of that, discourse is a resource hog. You can run tens of twenties of phpBB forums on the hardware that's required to run one instance of discourse
Thank you. I’ve been feeling really alone.
> Something about the design of Discourse does not actually encourage discourse.
The UI is just not dense enough for me. Most of the screen is either empty or garbage. The forums of yesteryear had a much higher content/ui ratio.
They’re also full of bullshit gamification and immediately start spamming you with reminders if you forgot to disable it. Discourse annoys me as soon as I need to interact with it.
> Something about the design of Discourse does not actually encourage discourse.
The UI is just not dense enough for me. Most of the screen is either empty or garbage. The forums of yesteryear had a much higher content/ui ratio.
They’re also full of bullshit gamification and immediately start spamming you with reminders if you forgot to disable it. Discourse annoys me as soon as I need to interact with it.
There's something /off/ about discourse that I can't put my finger on.
In the past (10-15 years ago) I remember using game forums (e.g., tribal wars, cs2d) and it didn't feel awful to use, even though I only had dial-up or 1mbps connection.
Today, some recent communities that I have visited using discourse are manjaro, elixir, purescript, and grim dawn. Across all of these I noticed that the initial time to render feels so slow, then the subsequent fetches using infinite scroll just sucks.
I've also visited some forums recently that do not use discourse, like the arch forum and some maplestory private server, and I don't feel the awfulness that discourse invokes.
In the past (10-15 years ago) I remember using game forums (e.g., tribal wars, cs2d) and it didn't feel awful to use, even though I only had dial-up or 1mbps connection.
Today, some recent communities that I have visited using discourse are manjaro, elixir, purescript, and grim dawn. Across all of these I noticed that the initial time to render feels so slow, then the subsequent fetches using infinite scroll just sucks.
I've also visited some forums recently that do not use discourse, like the arch forum and some maplestory private server, and I don't feel the awfulness that discourse invokes.
I also have the same bad vibe with discourse.
For me the issue is that there's too much white space. I find the website uncomfortable to look at because the screen is mostly white and very little anything is visible.
I would liken it to the effect of being in a room with a very tall ceiling, it feels intimidating. This is why they built churches with high ceilings.
The website also gives me vibes of being a question and answer site like stack exchange, rather than a community.
For me the issue is that there's too much white space. I find the website uncomfortable to look at because the screen is mostly white and very little anything is visible.
I would liken it to the effect of being in a room with a very tall ceiling, it feels intimidating. This is why they built churches with high ceilings.
The website also gives me vibes of being a question and answer site like stack exchange, rather than a community.
Do you know why it's a resource hog? Is it the nature of Ruby (that appears to be what they use) vs php, or is it because it tries to be an SPA that has no pagination?
It always appears to load significantly more data that it needs to, and does a horrible job at keeping your place. There's a reason books have page numbers and chapter numbers... without it, Discourse feels like a super long discussion that you just get lost in.
I do miss the old days of phpBB, SMF, and the others being everywhere all the time. It'd be nice to bring it back.
It always appears to load significantly more data that it needs to, and does a horrible job at keeping your place. There's a reason books have page numbers and chapter numbers... without it, Discourse feels like a super long discussion that you just get lost in.
I do miss the old days of phpBB, SMF, and the others being everywhere all the time. It'd be nice to bring it back.
> Do you know why it's a resource hog? Is it the nature of Ruby (that appears to be what they use) vs php, or is it because it tries to be an SPA that has no pagination?
Ruby dev for 15 years here. Ruby is definitely slow, but in 2022 it's "tens of milliseconds to answer an HTTP request" slow.
They chose a javascript framework that turned out to be outrageously slow.
Ruby dev for 15 years here. Ruby is definitely slow, but in 2022 it's "tens of milliseconds to answer an HTTP request" slow.
They chose a javascript framework that turned out to be outrageously slow.
I found that my Discourse instance consistently took ~250 milliseconds to display the forum post list (according to the little box at the top left corner). After getting annoyed with Discourse, I went back to Invision Forum and I see about ~95 ms for the same thing, including sending the response to my browser.
Those are both unreasonably slow in a way that has little to do with the language.
Optimizing responses has diminishing returns once you're below 100ms, but 250ms is far too slow.
Optimizing responses has diminishing returns once you're below 100ms, but 250ms is far too slow.
Ruby is not necessarily more resource hogging than PHP, but the way typical ruby webapps deployed (all workers processes started immediately and left idling to wait for requests) leads to higher memory usage compared to low traffic PHP webapp (worker processes only started when requests is coming and shutdown afterwards, so you can host a lot of small traffics sites in a small server). If PHP webapps are deployed with similar process lifecycle, I imagine it would consume similar resources.
For medium and high traffic webapps, the difference is moot because you're going to end up with a large amount of worker processes to handle all those traffics anyway regardless of how you initially spawn them.
For medium and high traffic webapps, the difference is moot because you're going to end up with a large amount of worker processes to handle all those traffics anyway regardless of how you initially spawn them.
I agree about the design, but disagree about thriving-ness. There are many Discourse sites that exist and serve their purposes well.
I do daydream about making some simpler forum software though.
I do daydream about making some simpler forum software though.
> I've never personally seen any discourse communities that are as thriving and active as the phpBB, SMF, VBulletin, forums they replaced
I think discoverability by search engines is very different from a forum. A better analogy to Discourse is IRC (or maybe Facebook groups). A better analogy to forums, is Reddit. Arguably the contemporaries are more feature rich, though becoming a little walled-in as time goes by.
I think discoverability by search engines is very different from a forum. A better analogy to Discourse is IRC (or maybe Facebook groups). A better analogy to forums, is Reddit. Arguably the contemporaries are more feature rich, though becoming a little walled-in as time goes by.
Are you perhaps conflating Discord and Discourse? Discourse is certainly a forum in my eyes.
I was :facepalm:
> I've never personally seen any discourse communities that are as thriving and active as the phpBB, SMF, VBulletin, forums they replaced
I can fix that! Click here: https://users.rust-lang.org/
I can fix that! Click here: https://users.rust-lang.org/
Those numbers are small, There are around 40k posts and 20k users
Vs these, orders of magnitude more users, multiple orders of magnitude more posts
https://www.forumrankings.net/
Also
https://www.neogaf.com/
Vs these, orders of magnitude more users, multiple orders of magnitude more posts
https://www.forumrankings.net/
Also
https://www.neogaf.com/
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Yeah I hate it as well :( maybe someone should write an open source forum as well
What about https://forem.dev? I think it powers Dev.to
I much prefer the rusty old phpBB UI over Discourse. It was clunky but usually it is an indicator of high quality community that's been run for many years and a bunch of gray beards hanging out having a good time. UI was just fine.
PhpBB is still alive and kicking: https://www.phpbb.com/
PhpBB is still alive and kicking: https://www.phpbb.com/
Some times I get confused at what I’m looking at with discourse. The scrolling timeline thing is super confusing . Much rather have paging.
Throughout my time developing a competitor to Discourse, I've found that opinions are generally split 50-50 for and against pagination.
You can't really pick one method without alienating the other, but it is possible to allow the end user to choose.
Part of the hate is that IS is associated with endless scrolling. It needn't be that way if appropriate navigational tools are also implemented alongside an IS setup.
You can't really pick one method without alienating the other, but it is possible to allow the end user to choose.
Part of the hate is that IS is associated with endless scrolling. It needn't be that way if appropriate navigational tools are also implemented alongside an IS setup.
The issue with discourse is it isn’t infinite scroll. They break up the timeline into the right side and if you have an exceptionally long timeline it will skip time periods thinking you just want the original post and the new stuff.
It makes it difficult to follow the conversations.
Pagination also makes copy pasting links easier.
It makes it difficult to follow the conversations.
Pagination also makes copy pasting links easier.
> Pagination also makes copy pasting links easier.
Not necessarily, pagination is often configurable, so either way you need a per-comment permalink for linking to be reliable.
Not necessarily, pagination is often configurable, so either way you need a per-comment permalink for linking to be reliable.
This is correct. A problem with a sensible solution. When you scroll through NodeBB your address bar updates with the context of where you are. Copying that address will return you to where you were.
Likewise each post has a permalink in the timestamp. It will also return you to that post.
Likewise each post has a permalink in the timestamp. It will also return you to that post.
I do miss the old forums, but Discourse is pretty nice with Markdown formatting and its tagging system. Much better full-text search than the old-style forums too.
Hasn't been a problem for millions of people using PhpBB. Those things are nice but Discourse UI is disorienting for me. Threads don't feel like grouping of posts, they feel like search results. I like pagination and "staticness" of PhpBB, not a giant scrolling doomswheel that changes under you. The sticky header ensures that those pixels have private property rights and never ever move out of the way. I don't want to give up 80 vertical pixels for a Discourse logo.
Honestly, I am getting old or new UI's don't jive with me. I like borders and boxes. Old clunky things had clarity.
Honestly, I am getting old or new UI's don't jive with me. I like borders and boxes. Old clunky things had clarity.
It has been a problem, that's why there aren't several million more phpbb users. Discourse is filling a niche that hasn't been filled. Slack and Discord aren't right, but unfortunately phpbb isn't it either.
> not a giant scrolling doomswheel
Discourse's scrolling timeline is the absolute best UI feature I've ever used in a forum platform. Nothing else comes even close.
Discourse's scrolling timeline is the absolute best UI feature I've ever used in a forum platform. Nothing else comes even close.
Hmm, I'm genuinely curious: why? I tend to heavily dislike anything infinite-scrolling...
Have you tried it? Check it out e.g. [1].
1) You immediately get to see the date range of the thread. 2) You can instantly navigate to any date or position in that range. 3) Thus, it's not really infinite scrolling. At all. The only similarity is lazy loading, for long threads. 4) On mobile, you also get to preview the comments before actually jumping to it.
[1] https://meta.discourse.org/t/switch-from-gravatar-to-html-cs...
1) You immediately get to see the date range of the thread. 2) You can instantly navigate to any date or position in that range. 3) Thus, it's not really infinite scrolling. At all. The only similarity is lazy loading, for long threads. 4) On mobile, you also get to preview the comments before actually jumping to it.
[1] https://meta.discourse.org/t/switch-from-gravatar-to-html-cs...
It's not as awful as I would have suspected from the description, but I still don't really like it. Bar the fancy "scrollbar" timeline they give you to jump directly somewhere in the page - which does alleviate that problem I mentioned a little - it does feel exactly like infinite scrolling to me, I'm not sure where you're making the distinction between lazy loading and this. The content does physically appear later on the page, making the scrollbar jump around, which I heavily dislike. This renders the native scrollbar pretty much useless as a reference point.
The mobile preview is probably a nice touch, though.
The mobile preview is probably a nice touch, though.
> Have you tried it?
Yes, it’s awful.
> Check it out e.g.
Oh lord. 40 comments? That’s a single page of traditional forums.
How does it work when you have 1e4? 1e5? 1e6? And yes I do mean threads of a million comments.
Yes, it’s awful.
> Check it out e.g.
Oh lord. 40 comments? That’s a single page of traditional forums.
How does it work when you have 1e4? 1e5? 1e6? And yes I do mean threads of a million comments.
How is navigating millions of comments in a paginated thread any better? That's more than 25 000 pages.
[deleted]
Hmm... man I tried to like this stuff and used it with good faith. No idea why I don't like non-static UIs. I just want everything like a static page, almost like a physical analog piece of paper. Nothing moves. The monitor is like a loupe that I scan through on a giant canvas. I can empathize with people that like new fangled UIs, problem is with me.
It's not a competition, though. Nothing stopping a forum from having both features. A forum I'm on has the classic-style forum navigation as well as feeds, and customizable feeds at that. Each user can read through the forum in whatever fashion they like.
Isn't that sort of flexibility the goal of tech?
Isn't that sort of flexibility the goal of tech?
tl.net, display all.
I agree with all this. But I was talking about the full-text search and tags, which (at least in my opinion) is way better than the old forum engines.
Thank you for posting that. In taking a second look, I do see a link about installing it yourself. Though given the section mentioning it on the pricing page is below the fold, I'm not sure that I would go so far as to say they _encourage_ it. But it's good they have the option (and I did see info about vendors who also host)
My personal test for whether an open source company encourages self-hosting is whether any plans/pricing page advertises "Self hosting" in a parallel/equal way to how they advertise commercial offerings.
Having their free self hosting plan linked on their pricing page [1] is more than enough, ridiculous to expect companies should the devote the same valuable realestate promoting their free offering as their commercial products which sponsors development.
[1] https://www.discourse.org/pricing
[1] https://www.discourse.org/pricing
If they do, it just means that they're making more $$$ from you for providing that feature. Otherwise they're under-monetizing and all it tells you is that they don't have their pricing and growth strategy put together.
Here we go again. No, not every single decision (short-term or strategic) in a company is optimized only for $$$ at the expense of anything else. Nor should it, nor does that need to go against the interests of shareholders, nor is there any law mandating so.
Just like there exist companies who sell clothes not made in slave-like conditions even if they could legally get away with it and make more money by doing so.
Just like there exist companies who sell clothes not made in slave-like conditions even if they could legally get away with it and make more money by doing so.
I have to disagree. Nowadays, limited liability companies are literally an optimization mechanism for turning profits.
Believe me, if consumers were not aware and the law not enforced, there would be (are ?) companies making clothes in slave-like conditions.
Believe me, if consumers were not aware and the law not enforced, there would be (are ?) companies making clothes in slave-like conditions.
Whats the performance of discourse compared to the mybbs or smfs of yesteryear. I heard it's very bloated? I've been meaning to self host some sort of forum software on a $5 vps fro some of my hobbies.
While I can't speak for Discourse (a sibling comment mentioned it working fine via docker image on 1GB), our standard for NodeBB is it has to install and run on DO's $5 droplet.
So far we're hitting that goal.
So far we're hitting that goal.
Discourse can be hosted on $15-20 VPS since it's need docker and fsr more disk space due to using containers.
I could run phpBB just fine on my $5-10/mo shared hosting.
It's one thing I don't like about many new tools (Slack alternatives, a lot of ActivityPub stuff, etc) - they require a lot more resources than shared hosting can provide, so you need a VPS, and all the headaches that go along with it.
It's one thing I don't like about many new tools (Slack alternatives, a lot of ActivityPub stuff, etc) - they require a lot more resources than shared hosting can provide, so you need a VPS, and all the headaches that go along with it.
[deleted]
Community is good, but you can get that within a chat server, and there's something else massive that we've lost: searchability. Slack and Discord each have competent internal searches, after you've joined a particular server, but they're utter black boxes to the outer world.
I can point to several niches (mostly gaming, by inclination) where there is virtually no conversation outside of a Discord. Unless you find the appropriate server, you have no peers to share with, learn from. Even if you do find that server, you start running into structural problems for information sharing: Discord's only mechanisms for permanent content are a scrollable list of pinned messages, or admin-only archive channels. If you want to share a durable reference? I can't tell you how many times I've seen cobbled-together solutions, endless pins of shared Google Docs or imgur albums. RIP, wikis.
I can point to several niches (mostly gaming, by inclination) where there is virtually no conversation outside of a Discord. Unless you find the appropriate server, you have no peers to share with, learn from. Even if you do find that server, you start running into structural problems for information sharing: Discord's only mechanisms for permanent content are a scrollable list of pinned messages, or admin-only archive channels. If you want to share a durable reference? I can't tell you how many times I've seen cobbled-together solutions, endless pins of shared Google Docs or imgur albums. RIP, wikis.
The wiki situation is really not helped by how wikia turned into fandom turned into a garbage fire. I am not even sure whether there are any active, thriving wikis on fandom any more. Maybe Wookieepedia but there are noises of moving that away, too. What they have done to that site can not be borne.
> The wiki situation is really not helped by how wikia turned into fandom turned into a garbage fire.
Yeah, what's up with that? I mean, it's the perfect solution for wikipedia deletionism: one wiki for each niche.
How could they screw it up so badly? Every time I go there it's a mess of autoplaying videos, annoying banners, even ads...
Yeah, what's up with that? I mean, it's the perfect solution for wikipedia deletionism: one wiki for each niche.
How could they screw it up so badly? Every time I go there it's a mess of autoplaying videos, annoying banners, even ads...
Gotta make a profit.
Gotta make the most profit possible. At any cost.
Man I hate what the Internet became. Once upon a time your Internet connection would have come with some hosting space that you could use to put up a wiki for your favorite show or whatever. Not any more. Now it's just a pipe to an endless series of people eager to give you a space to put your content that's framed with ads.
Gotta make the most profit possible. At any cost.
Man I hate what the Internet became. Once upon a time your Internet connection would have come with some hosting space that you could use to put up a wiki for your favorite show or whatever. Not any more. Now it's just a pipe to an endless series of people eager to give you a space to put your content that's framed with ads.
Greed & platform lock-in with no good alternatives.
There isn't very much lock-in other than the domain names - Fandom wikis are all built on MediaWiki, and they have all of the MediaWiki export infrastructure (which exports everything about a page, including history) still intact last I checked.
Wikia/Fandom has a history of refusing to delete wikis where the community has agreed to migrate (such as when many wikis left after the forced skin change in 2010), leaving a stale copy with better SEO. I don't know whether they still do this nowadays, but after that incident I swore never to contribute to Fandom ever again (for new wikis I try to recommend other wiki farms, usually Miraheze).
Fandom's lockin is mainly not being able to migrate your community (they will ban you if you link to the new community) and having more SEO juice than you.
The fandoms for indie games (e.g. Papers, Please [0] and several others for less popular games) remain active, though not particularly curated. It's still nice to find some for particularly niche games, as some information (even if too opinionated or incomplete) is better than nothing for smaller games.
[0] https://papersplease.fandom.com/wiki/Papers_Please_Wiki
[0] https://papersplease.fandom.com/wiki/Papers_Please_Wiki
There are other wiki farms that are good if one wants to avoid Wikia's crap. I usually recommend Miraheze [1], which is MediaWiki-based, not-for-profit and ad-free (they run on donations).
[1] https://miraheze.org/
[1] https://miraheze.org/
The Dota 2 wiki is pretty much the canonical "technical reference" for the game.
There are a few games, mostly high-profile ones, with exceptional wikis or fan sites, but they are exceptions.
There's probably more than you think -- they can just hard to find due to the shortcomings/user hostility of Google, as has been discussed here recently [0].
As a concrete example, searching for "Rabi-Ribi wiki" for info regarding a somewhat obscure 2016 Japanese platformer bubbles up the usual Fandom spam garbage to the very top, followed by a copycat site "PCGamingWiki", followed by more generic information such as its Wikipedia page. It's only if you get to the second half of the second page results that you'll find a link to RabiDB [1], which is extremely comprehensive, ad-free and documents pretty much every detail about the game.
In a similar vein regarding the original comment, there are a lot of forums with very active user bases that will never show up at the top of Google results. I still post in one regularly with ~300 daily active users who have all known each other for years, for the most part. We'd never show up anywhere near the first page of a Google search result, though, so we essentially don't exist on the modern internet. I imagine countless other forums are in the same boat.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32594010
[1] https://rabidb.com/
As a concrete example, searching for "Rabi-Ribi wiki" for info regarding a somewhat obscure 2016 Japanese platformer bubbles up the usual Fandom spam garbage to the very top, followed by a copycat site "PCGamingWiki", followed by more generic information such as its Wikipedia page. It's only if you get to the second half of the second page results that you'll find a link to RabiDB [1], which is extremely comprehensive, ad-free and documents pretty much every detail about the game.
In a similar vein regarding the original comment, there are a lot of forums with very active user bases that will never show up at the top of Google results. I still post in one regularly with ~300 daily active users who have all known each other for years, for the most part. We'd never show up anywhere near the first page of a Google search result, though, so we essentially don't exist on the modern internet. I imagine countless other forums are in the same boat.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32594010
[1] https://rabidb.com/
What do you mean by PCGamingWiki being a "copycat site"? Copying who? It's always the go-to site I use to check various technical details on games and any tricks that can be done to improve shortcomings of especially older games.
I don't know that they are exceptions. The wikis for moderately popular but kinda niche games are often in good shape. For example, wikis for The Long Dark and the Kingdom series are two I've used in the recent past. Detailed information. Even the comments are good.
Both games are fairly popular within their spaces, but not mainstream or AAA.
Both games are fairly popular within their spaces, but not mainstream or AAA.
Completely agree. Since I’ve enjoyed taking a look at some of the good community run wikis others have posted, I’ll shout out coppermind.net, a very useful tool when digging into the lore of Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere universe.
The more fragile presence of the information is actually a feature to some. If messages are more permanent and accessible, people can be more likely to stop and think before replying for more substantive discussion, instead of having a free-flowing conversation.
I generally also prefer forums that are searchable and public, but it's nice to have a real-time communication with someone over Discord (e.g. a couple sentences per message that gets responses, with some jokes sprinkled in). I think it's a lot easier to develop a one-to-one interaction or relationship with someone over Discord, versus forums structured like HN or Reddit.
I generally also prefer forums that are searchable and public, but it's nice to have a real-time communication with someone over Discord (e.g. a couple sentences per message that gets responses, with some jokes sprinkled in). I think it's a lot easier to develop a one-to-one interaction or relationship with someone over Discord, versus forums structured like HN or Reddit.
On the one hand, I met my partner in a community that uses Discord, so I can't disagree that developing relationships there can work.
On the other, the flip-side of free-flowing conversation is endless rounds of "hi guys, new here, <novice question>" "check the pins".
On the other, the flip-side of free-flowing conversation is endless rounds of "hi guys, new here, <novice question>" "check the pins".
Yes, but not for e.g technical help channels. I don't want a personal relationship with another user of xx OSS tool - I want to search for the error message and find previous answers.
Yes, this. I never really fell into the community aspect of forums but I gained a ton from the community existing. People were helping others and I could find it later.
Early 00s, when I was managing my own dedicated servers, never even read a book about it, but when I searched I’d find tutorial sites, forums where people talked shop/Q&A, the expert sex change site, blogs, the docs, etc. Now when I search something similar it’s pretty much ads and stack overflow. SO is good but at times I don’t like how it’s so strictly Q&A with no room to ask for opinions or to debate pros/cons on a lot of topics. I could probably do that on Reddit but I’ve long learned to just live without that.
Early 00s, when I was managing my own dedicated servers, never even read a book about it, but when I searched I’d find tutorial sites, forums where people talked shop/Q&A, the expert sex change site, blogs, the docs, etc. Now when I search something similar it’s pretty much ads and stack overflow. SO is good but at times I don’t like how it’s so strictly Q&A with no room to ask for opinions or to debate pros/cons on a lot of topics. I could probably do that on Reddit but I’ve long learned to just live without that.
Expert sex change! Blast from the past. Pen Island too!
Discord’s UX is a disaster for most of the things I’ve seen Discord used for. Lately, I don’t even bother trying.
It just keeps happening.
People used email lists for everything, then forums for everything, subreddits for everything and companies are now using slack for everything. It is not in anyone's interest to educate users on picking communication tool for their purpose.
People used email lists for everything, then forums for everything, subreddits for everything and companies are now using slack for everything. It is not in anyone's interest to educate users on picking communication tool for their purpose.
Would a public, searchable, aggregator w/chat instead of comments work? I've been building https://sqwok.im and I'm interested in learning how I could help solve these issues...
They were also more than a community. They became massive sources of niche information.
Often incredibly detailed, and incredibly specific to a niche (1980s BJ74 landcruisers in Canada, or Halo 2 mods for Soft modded xbox 360s, or pedal steel guitar - latest favourite)
Some of these still exist. But if they disappear the world will be worse off.
Thankfully some remain in the archive, but once they’re inactive you can’t just jump in and continue the thread.
Some have been going for 10+ years, sporadically. Real time communication is not required for a community. And it’s a really poor way to create information that will remain useful for years or decades to come.
Google seemed to discount forums at some point, and what filled the vacuum is not as valuable to the user.
Often incredibly detailed, and incredibly specific to a niche (1980s BJ74 landcruisers in Canada, or Halo 2 mods for Soft modded xbox 360s, or pedal steel guitar - latest favourite)
Some of these still exist. But if they disappear the world will be worse off.
Thankfully some remain in the archive, but once they’re inactive you can’t just jump in and continue the thread.
Some have been going for 10+ years, sporadically. Real time communication is not required for a community. And it’s a really poor way to create information that will remain useful for years or decades to come.
Google seemed to discount forums at some point, and what filled the vacuum is not as valuable to the user.
Yeah - one thing I dislike about Reddit - it has eaten up all of the small forums and killed them. On one hand Reddit can be great but on the other hand sometimes you just want to discuss some niche stuff or hobby - and too much other crap will spillover from other subreddits sometimes to make that as useful
In what way does crap spillover from other subreddits? Are you talking about the new Reddit GUI (I use the old one) or mobile app (I use RedReader) spamming posts from other subreddits, or a more cultural aspect of site-wide conflicts?
It happens if a niche reddit has a popular post and makes it near the front page. Or, someone makes a post that gets the attention of one of the brigading subs(even if mods remove post as soon as they see it, it might be too late). Usually the sub will have an influx of low quality posts/shitposts for a while after that.
Also, not subreddit-subreddit, but multiplex times, posts of mine got reported to admins for hate speech because I said "retarder" in a mechanical focused subreddit, and I suppose they don't care to take the time to realize it's a perfectly fine piece of technology and not an ableist slur before sending out threats of banning you forever from the site.
Also, not subreddit-subreddit, but multiplex times, posts of mine got reported to admins for hate speech because I said "retarder" in a mechanical focused subreddit, and I suppose they don't care to take the time to realize it's a perfectly fine piece of technology and not an ableist slur before sending out threats of banning you forever from the site.
Reddit has active communities of people who just repost other subreddits to laugh at, get outraged at, or bully. In theory the bullying and brigading is supposed to be moderated against but weakly moderated niche subreddits can sometimes find themselves under attack.
That rarely happened with phpBB but I don't know about Discord. That fact makes me feel a little old.
That rarely happened with phpBB but I don't know about Discord. That fact makes me feel a little old.
Sites for pointing at people and mocking them for being different have been with us much longer than Reddit. SomethingAwful. 4chan. LJDrama. alt.fan.warlord. The current main site in this space is Kiwifarms and I sure won't be sad if Cloudflare finally decides to stop protecting them from the DDOS consequences of their actions.
Bulletin boards with any kind of roadbump to registration could make it a bit harder for a bunch of atrocity tourists to start showing up and mocking someone directly but you sure couldn't stop them from screenshotting you and kicking you around on their board.
(okay alt.fan.warlord is maybe a bit of a stretch given that it was generally confined to only making fun of people's signature blocks, but...)
Bulletin boards with any kind of roadbump to registration could make it a bit harder for a bunch of atrocity tourists to start showing up and mocking someone directly but you sure couldn't stop them from screenshotting you and kicking you around on their board.
(okay alt.fan.warlord is maybe a bit of a stretch given that it was generally confined to only making fun of people's signature blocks, but...)
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> I'm terrified of making a post on the wrong server by accident
I suspect this is one reason why forums died. Forums are places of muliti-paragraph well-structured posts. How many are uncomfortable with that? How many are even uncomfortable making a one sentence Slack or Discord post?
Forums could serve an important role in business documentation. Got a legacy project that nobody has touched for a decade? Imagine if years ago the developers had discussed things in forums instead of meetings.
I suspect this is one reason why forums died. Forums are places of muliti-paragraph well-structured posts. How many are uncomfortable with that? How many are even uncomfortable making a one sentence Slack or Discord post?
Forums could serve an important role in business documentation. Got a legacy project that nobody has touched for a decade? Imagine if years ago the developers had discussed things in forums instead of meetings.
See also: mailing lists.
Not gone at all! There are a bunch of companies working on the current generation of forums.
Discourse need not be the "golden child", the other ones are pushing the envelope of what makes a good community. Discourse often steals the good ideas from the other forums actually :)
e.g. NodeBB (https://NodeBB.org), Flarum, and Vanilla are three in the space.
(Admittedly, I maintain NodeBB, so take my recommendation with a grain of salt)
Discourse need not be the "golden child", the other ones are pushing the envelope of what makes a good community. Discourse often steals the good ideas from the other forums actually :)
e.g. NodeBB (https://NodeBB.org), Flarum, and Vanilla are three in the space.
(Admittedly, I maintain NodeBB, so take my recommendation with a grain of salt)
Not a lot of options where it's a fast, modern language (crystal/nim/rust/etc.) and also not an SPA.
Some solutions apply, but solutions aren't necessarily the problem. In the past, running a forum wasn't that hard - get a server with PHP and a database and install your choice of tools. You could do it yourself or, depending on the size of the community, with a small set of volunteers. That still fundamentally works today.
However, in today's legal landscape I'm not interested in running any service involving user-generated content that's not guarded by an LLC and an army of lawyers. No technology can make a dent in the costs that affect my decision to run a forum or not.
However, in today's legal landscape I'm not interested in running any service involving user-generated content that's not guarded by an LLC and an army of lawyers. No technology can make a dent in the costs that affect my decision to run a forum or not.
> It's interesting (and sad) how the forums of yesteryear have essentially gone away entirely
May phpBB and its ilk burn in hell.
I understand and recognize the value of private/self-hosted forums (I'm commenting on HN after all!) However the design principles of phpBB and similar forum software of the early 2000s were horrendous, and single-handedly held me back from participating in some communities I would have liked.
The excessive metadata displayed around comments, such as the user's icon, initial sign-up, or last activity cluttered the interface. And signatures! God those awful multi-line signatures, making every comment potentially a banner ad, when someone was just posting "this". And having to page through each... page, cluttered with inane responses.
Perhaps they were just a product of their era, script kiddies building their l33t hangout spaces before learning principles of design and UX, and before XmlHttpRequest came along to allow dynamic loading.
In any case, I'm extremely glad Discourse came along and democratized proper forum UX. I agree that we need an adequate free alternative. What are the candidates?
May phpBB and its ilk burn in hell.
I understand and recognize the value of private/self-hosted forums (I'm commenting on HN after all!) However the design principles of phpBB and similar forum software of the early 2000s were horrendous, and single-handedly held me back from participating in some communities I would have liked.
The excessive metadata displayed around comments, such as the user's icon, initial sign-up, or last activity cluttered the interface. And signatures! God those awful multi-line signatures, making every comment potentially a banner ad, when someone was just posting "this". And having to page through each... page, cluttered with inane responses.
Perhaps they were just a product of their era, script kiddies building their l33t hangout spaces before learning principles of design and UX, and before XmlHttpRequest came along to allow dynamic loading.
In any case, I'm extremely glad Discourse came along and democratized proper forum UX. I agree that we need an adequate free alternative. What are the candidates?
> The excessive metadata displayed around comments, such as the user's icon, initial sign-up, or last activity cluttered the interface. […] In any case, I'm extremely glad Discourse came along and democratized proper forum UX.
Yes, it’s so good that all this “excessive metadata” was replaced by… even worse metadata, and white space, and all the metadata is above and below comments because having giant margins is absolutely necessary, so information density absolutely tanked to non-existent.
Yes, it’s so good that all this “excessive metadata” was replaced by… even worse metadata, and white space, and all the metadata is above and below comments because having giant margins is absolutely necessary, so information density absolutely tanked to non-existent.
> In any case, I'm extremely glad Discourse came along and democratized proper forum UX. I agree that we need an adequate free alternative. What are the candidates?
Discourse is 100% open source.
Discourse is 100% open source.
I honestly prefer to see sites made by people who don't know how to design anything. The people who do know how to design websites seem to be either malicious or designing in the interest of some alien species from another dimension- see how bad Discourse looks, whitespace galore, too low density. Its modern polish is both its strength and its weakness.
Last activity and a (small) icon are valuable information. The icons visually distinguish users and "last seen" lets you know whether you are replying to a person or primarily replying for the benefit of the community. Also, distinct pagination means you have a stable location for each post instead of "scroll around until you see it".
I agree with your point about signatures and initial sign-up being clutter.
I agree with your point about signatures and initial sign-up being clutter.
Remember the Joel on Software forums? I think they were the first popular (at least in the tech world) forums that had a very simple interface. I don't think they had avatars/user icons, they definitely didn't have rich text or signatures. They didn't even support quoting (you could do it by copy/paste) or subthreading. The idea was that they were more like a natural discussion that way.
I really am missing forums. One area of interest of mine has a good one and it has a solid population. I value it increasingly highly.
Flarum (https://flarum.org/) is an interesting option.
rather ironic given that, in at least some instances i use, the primary mode of using slack (to the point that some members will complain if you violate it) is as a shitty forum. most discussions are segregated into threads; there isn't really much in channels other than the collection of initial messages that started a thread.
i despise this given that there's nothing like the bump mechanic in channels (threads with newer posts don't move to the top of a list, they just stay in their original chronological order), and in the thread view where there is, you can't keep threads uncompressed, there's no pagination for threads with 100s of messages, and finding individual threads is a chore because they're still not completely compressed.
i despise this given that there's nothing like the bump mechanic in channels (threads with newer posts don't move to the top of a list, they just stay in their original chronological order), and in the thread view where there is, you can't keep threads uncompressed, there's no pagination for threads with 100s of messages, and finding individual threads is a chore because they're still not completely compressed.
Slack has the absolute worst implementation of threads that I've ever seen. There is one item that only tells you that some of the treads you're in have new messages.
The whole point of having multiple channels is so you can see at a glance which has unreads and check them if interested, isn't it? What use are threads if they're all hidden?
The whole point of having multiple channels is so you can see at a glance which has unreads and check them if interested, isn't it? What use are threads if they're all hidden?
I have similar feelings, but FYI there's a checkbox when replying to a thread for "also post this comment to the channel" which I see used as a bump pretty often - that might help.
I don’t think the demise of classic forums/self-hosted communities is a technical problem. There is no shortage of modern communities - as you say, Discourse is one of the most popular. Otherwise there’s NodeBB, Flarum, etc - and vBulletin, IPB, phpbb, etc are still under active development.
The larger “problem” is the world has moved on. For its flaws, people seem to enjoy the familiarity/community of umbrella sites like Reddit.
The larger “problem” is the world has moved on. For its flaws, people seem to enjoy the familiarity/community of umbrella sites like Reddit.
The joy is probably the lack of friction.
I think https://twist.com/ is the best solution between chat and forum. But they have the same pricing slack now starts using and that makes it unusable to keep knowledge.
I host a bunch of Discourse sites. You can do it yourself on a 1GB server.
The docker install is super easy.
The docker install is super easy.
I would give Discord servers another go. They definitely have that "community" feel, especially for more niche servers.
> Discord (I'm terrified of making a post on the wrong server by accident)
You can make multiple Discord accounts, each with their own set of connected servers; and Discord now supports a sort of "fast user switching" between said accounts.
You can make multiple Discord accounts, each with their own set of connected servers; and Discord now supports a sort of "fast user switching" between said accounts.
…and I’d be terrified of using that.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32172741
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32172741
You can't switch users on mobile!
Discourse also offers free hosting for OSS projects.
There is 5GB limit for that offer. It's really low limit for any existing community. We end up asking for hosting sposorship from DigitalOcean and self-hosting Discourse there.
Yeah discourse SaaS owe us nothing, but their free offer is unfortunately very much useless for any existing community. And even with 50%-off 50$ is quite pricey for hobby non-profit open source project.
Yeah discourse SaaS owe us nothing, but their free offer is unfortunately very much useless for any existing community. And even with 50%-off 50$ is quite pricey for hobby non-profit open source project.
Good to know
I'm grateful to Slack for their changes in the free plan, it forced our hands.
We realized it's obvious we can't trust any of these external SaaS services, in the long run they will ALWAYS change the terms and somehow fuck the customers, paying or not. And then you will lose all the invaluable information and data that belongs to you. This has happened with other services we've used in the past too.
So we decided to just start self-hosting our own private intranet. I've installed gitea, NextCloud, a private irc server (we're old school irssi users and love it, shoutout for thelounge -client too), a private social network site with Wordpress and Buddypress+BBpress with our own theme, among other things. Everything was super simple to setup and is trivial to maintain, works well across devices without any limitations. We control everything and don't have to worry about the big brother snooping our data. Along with these came many new business opportunities. So yeah, thanks slack.
We realized it's obvious we can't trust any of these external SaaS services, in the long run they will ALWAYS change the terms and somehow fuck the customers, paying or not. And then you will lose all the invaluable information and data that belongs to you. This has happened with other services we've used in the past too.
So we decided to just start self-hosting our own private intranet. I've installed gitea, NextCloud, a private irc server (we're old school irssi users and love it, shoutout for thelounge -client too), a private social network site with Wordpress and Buddypress+BBpress with our own theme, among other things. Everything was super simple to setup and is trivial to maintain, works well across devices without any limitations. We control everything and don't have to worry about the big brother snooping our data. Along with these came many new business opportunities. So yeah, thanks slack.
You're not a customer, you don't pay for the product. If you want to be treated like a customer, then pay for the product. This entitlement mindset is extraordinary. Slack was literally paying for you to use their product. Regardless, it sounds like you're happy with your move.
Even if you pay for the product, using SaaS products VS hosting your own software, still puts you under someone else's control. The feature you really needed from them, might be decided that it should be removed, because only 1% of the total users actually used it, and you'll have no recourse.
This has happened time and time again with most SaaS, and will continue to do so, unless some new model arrives where each user can run their own version.
This has happened time and time again with most SaaS, and will continue to do so, unless some new model arrives where each user can run their own version.
I am their paying customer.
I had two slack workspaces for completely different projects/companies. I set the other one up early this year and we were slowly migrating to it after another SaaS went bust.
I was going to start paying for that workspace too, because I needed the extra features. Luckily they showed their true colors first and I got a chance to migrate away early. I don't want to deal with their whims long-term.
I had two slack workspaces for completely different projects/companies. I set the other one up early this year and we were slowly migrating to it after another SaaS went bust.
I was going to start paying for that workspace too, because I needed the extra features. Luckily they showed their true colors first and I got a chance to migrate away early. I don't want to deal with their whims long-term.
Does that mean you'll have no problem if Google deletes your email account, GitHub your repos and HN your posts (as well as put all threads behind a paywall)?
Honk honk.
Honk honk.
The freemium model needs to die. Entitled “customers” that dont pay are pita and thanks to their mindset we end up with stuff like facebook and generally speaking an ad filled internet. Sorry for the tone but i’ve had it.
Thank you for sharing your experience, this is very useful!
> Along with these came many new business opportunities
Curious to hear more?
Also curious how long you've been running this stack and how large your organization is?
> Along with these came many new business opportunities
Curious to hear more?
Also curious how long you've been running this stack and how large your organization is?
I’m not convinced running your own service is cheaper than paid solutions in general, if Slack can provide the same service for cheaper than it should be considered even if it’s no longer free.
I also don’t see it as a moral failing for a company to cripple/take away it’s free offerings unless it promised/guaranteed otherwise (like Google did with the Workplace Apps).
However I do see a major issue with Slack’s pricing structure - the per user pricing means it’s a lot more suited for communities or companies with small number of highly engaged users than large number of low engagement users, the latter end up costing a LOT more for the same server load, which seems like a major missed opportunity.
Unless of course Slack determines that they could earn more by doing it this way, even with the number of potential customers they’re losing.
I also don’t see it as a moral failing for a company to cripple/take away it’s free offerings unless it promised/guaranteed otherwise (like Google did with the Workplace Apps).
However I do see a major issue with Slack’s pricing structure - the per user pricing means it’s a lot more suited for communities or companies with small number of highly engaged users than large number of low engagement users, the latter end up costing a LOT more for the same server load, which seems like a major missed opportunity.
Unless of course Slack determines that they could earn more by doing it this way, even with the number of potential customers they’re losing.
Have you put up a blogpost to compare the alternatives? We'd love to self-host in the mid-term.
Not yet, but that's on my todolist. I recommend this list: https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted
In general I only select services that are easy and fast to install and backup and have a nice UX so it won't go unused. I always install a service into a virtual machine first and take notes about the process. If there are any red flags like too complicated configration, missing documentation, heavy reasource usage, crippleware aka paywalling core features, then I just skip it and move on the next one.
After the service has proven itself trustworthy and useful, it's nice to start contributing to the project too. Everybody wins. And I gotta say, there are some incredible open-source software out there.
In general I only select services that are easy and fast to install and backup and have a nice UX so it won't go unused. I always install a service into a virtual machine first and take notes about the process. If there are any red flags like too complicated configration, missing documentation, heavy reasource usage, crippleware aka paywalling core features, then I just skip it and move on the next one.
After the service has proven itself trustworthy and useful, it's nice to start contributing to the project too. Everybody wins. And I gotta say, there are some incredible open-source software out there.
Do you have integrated collab apps too ?
This should be the top comment.
While I agree with the sentiment that external dependencies are a risk, why should this be the top comment?
This person was having a service for free, having the possibility to pay and have better guarantees and is shocked that the service has changed its terms? How is this not an absurd mentality?
If gmail suddenly became paid, I would be pretty pissed, but I would have no real reason. It's a service I have for free!! Not even my taxes pay for it.
This person was having a service for free, having the possibility to pay and have better guarantees and is shocked that the service has changed its terms? How is this not an absurd mentality?
If gmail suddenly became paid, I would be pretty pissed, but I would have no real reason. It's a service I have for free!! Not even my taxes pay for it.
Why? Because it describes a technical solution to a problem, instead of complaining/rationalising.
I am/was their paying customer but I already explained that in the other comment.
My point was that I'm tired of not being able to trust any SaaS company long term. The service generally only gets worse over time, and then your data is at risk. So I decided I'm not gonna take any more chances with these and just try hosting everthing I need myself. So far so good.
My point was that I'm tired of not being able to trust any SaaS company long term. The service generally only gets worse over time, and then your data is at risk. So I decided I'm not gonna take any more chances with these and just try hosting everthing I need myself. So far so good.
I understand why people are upset but the chest thumping and anger over losing certain aspects of a free tier makes no sense to me. If you're hosting a large community of people that needs to look far back in history then maybe you should consider either self hosting, or cajoling your members into paying. If the community truly brings value you'll be able to find the money. If not, then you have your own freeloader problem you have to address.
This was the same thing as forums a long time ago. Unfortunately they are dead now. However, it wasn't uncommon to have a special member class for people who paid into some tier (usually less than a cup of coffee) to support the host.
It's easy to forget that while you're freeloading someone is paying the bill. Slack is just finally forcing free tier user's hands. For people like me who use a slack channel once in a blue moon outside work this change is effectively a no-op. The people who were hosting vibrant communities on the free tier now have the hard job of cajoling people who have no intention to pay into paying. I don't see a problem with this frankly. Slack is still footing the bill for storage/compute/etc and if the accounts show no real intention to buy into a better tier sometimes you need to twist the screws a little.
This was the same thing as forums a long time ago. Unfortunately they are dead now. However, it wasn't uncommon to have a special member class for people who paid into some tier (usually less than a cup of coffee) to support the host.
It's easy to forget that while you're freeloading someone is paying the bill. Slack is just finally forcing free tier user's hands. For people like me who use a slack channel once in a blue moon outside work this change is effectively a no-op. The people who were hosting vibrant communities on the free tier now have the hard job of cajoling people who have no intention to pay into paying. I don't see a problem with this frankly. Slack is still footing the bill for storage/compute/etc and if the accounts show no real intention to buy into a better tier sometimes you need to twist the screws a little.
My wife has 4 business slacks she's a part of. Because she's got the slack client open all day, she setup a little slack for just her and me to use. We use it during the day to plan things, talk etc etc.
It's been great to be able to go back and looks at various conversations/details/bits that were often up to two years old.
I don't think we were "freeloading" as such, the 4 business ones she uses are all paid. I'm a member of 3 paid slack myself.
Now we need to install a second app for this sort of stuff. As more people do that, it's going to mean more people are exposed to Slack alternatives and might move to them fully.
Making things free also makes them sticky for people using them in more than one way. They've now broken that.
It's been great to be able to go back and looks at various conversations/details/bits that were often up to two years old.
I don't think we were "freeloading" as such, the 4 business ones she uses are all paid. I'm a member of 3 paid slack myself.
Now we need to install a second app for this sort of stuff. As more people do that, it's going to mean more people are exposed to Slack alternatives and might move to them fully.
Making things free also makes them sticky for people using them in more than one way. They've now broken that.
Its been great for you to use Slack and to be able to go back and view conversations from years ago. It’s so useful to you that you’ve used it for years, and you love it.
…but you won’t pay $12/month for it?
Yes, you are a freeloader. And you’ll inevitably keep bouncing from free app to free app as services mature and shift focus to making money. You, as a freeloader, are of no economic value to Slack, Discord, or wherever you end up next.
…but you won’t pay $12/month for it?
Yes, you are a freeloader. And you’ll inevitably keep bouncing from free app to free app as services mature and shift focus to making money. You, as a freeloader, are of no economic value to Slack, Discord, or wherever you end up next.
> …but you won’t pay $12/month for it?
But it’s $24/month, isn’t it? Double that if they invited the kids, in-laws, or neighbors but they don’t use it regularly because those people don’t use Slack for business — which is the whole point of the loss-leader approach: get people used to using slack, get them in the app, and then get them to bring it into larger environments where corporate rates make sense.
This new policy degrades the value of slack significantly for a bunch of long-term, low-volume users. It will cause a few people to move to a paid plan, maybe, and it will certainly cause many to leave slack. The last part will make slack less sticky, less familiar, less generally used, and will save them some amount on storage, maybe? Have you priced out storage recently? I’d bet the cost difference for storage of short text snippets between 90-day rolling and 10k messages is: - Smaller than the variance of MTBF of different batches of disks - Smaller than the variance on overhead in block/page size for their underlying storage system - Smaller than the variance of employee number for their 90th percentile large customers In other words, they’re adding annoyance and losing users for peanuts.
But it’s $24/month, isn’t it? Double that if they invited the kids, in-laws, or neighbors but they don’t use it regularly because those people don’t use Slack for business — which is the whole point of the loss-leader approach: get people used to using slack, get them in the app, and then get them to bring it into larger environments where corporate rates make sense.
This new policy degrades the value of slack significantly for a bunch of long-term, low-volume users. It will cause a few people to move to a paid plan, maybe, and it will certainly cause many to leave slack. The last part will make slack less sticky, less familiar, less generally used, and will save them some amount on storage, maybe? Have you priced out storage recently? I’d bet the cost difference for storage of short text snippets between 90-day rolling and 10k messages is: - Smaller than the variance of MTBF of different batches of disks - Smaller than the variance on overhead in block/page size for their underlying storage system - Smaller than the variance of employee number for their 90th percentile large customers In other words, they’re adding annoyance and losing users for peanuts.
$12/month is a lot for a messaging protocol, some scripts, and storage under a few GB a year in a market that is Betrand pricing with a first-mover leader.
SaaS adds up.
SaaS adds up.
$12/month is a LOT of money for sending some messages back and forth with your significant other. I would suggest they use Signal for that.
I'm using Slack for productive purposes and still won't pay 12/month/user for it. We're an outlier org that has a lot of mostly inactive users that get active when something's going on. We don't want to pay 12/month just because one of them said happy birthday in the general channel. And no, the guest user feature won't do.
They should switch to fixed pricing for small teams. Something that ends up at far less than 12/user.
They should switch to fixed pricing for small teams. Something that ends up at far less than 12/user.
And paying $12 p/m for a tool you and your wife enjoy and have been getting value for years is not an option, because…?
> $12 p/m
Notably this is a 50% higher price than Disney+
Each subscription takes a toll. The price is set at $0, to make it more expensive is always going to be infinitely more expensive, but $12 is a lot for simple uses, and paying it in perpetuity is undesirable too.
Whatsapp was $1/y when it monetised, and I believe they were profitable, for context.
Notably this is a 50% higher price than Disney+
Each subscription takes a toll. The price is set at $0, to make it more expensive is always going to be infinitely more expensive, but $12 is a lot for simple uses, and paying it in perpetuity is undesirable too.
Whatsapp was $1/y when it monetised, and I believe they were profitable, for context.
The problem is that there are many useful tools and services that most of us are using for free: Text editors, browsers, email, forum software, all sorts of apps, cloud storage etc. It's not realistic to pay 5$ or 12$ a month for each.
Not saying that this is Slack's problem, and we really should cultivate more community organized tooling based on Open Source. But I would say 12$/month is a lot for OP's usecase.
Not saying that this is Slack's problem, and we really should cultivate more community organized tooling based on Open Source. But I would say 12$/month is a lot for OP's usecase.
Imagine explaining to someone ca. 2000 that the replacement for a magnetic fridge notepad should cost $140/yr.
A magnetic fridge notepad accessible anywhere in the world.. with lots of advanced features... etc... would probably have been worth $1400/yr (in 2022 dollars) to serious customers back in 2000.
"serious" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence, because it's a no-true scotsman: anyone not paying is not serious enough.
"advanced features" is also vague enough to be true no matter what you mean.
Practically speaking "magnetic notepad on a fridge accessible from anywhere" has been solved over and over and over again, and often in better ways.
Slack is a shiny UX on a middling bit of software with a good marketing department.
"advanced features" is also vague enough to be true no matter what you mean.
Practically speaking "magnetic notepad on a fridge accessible from anywhere" has been solved over and over and over again, and often in better ways.
Slack is a shiny UX on a middling bit of software with a good marketing department.
Well by definition… how else would you differentiate between serious customers and tire kickers?
It’s pretty obvious that a magnetic fridge pad has less features.
And it was not a solved problem in the year 2000.
It’s pretty obvious that a magnetic fridge pad has less features.
And it was not a solved problem in the year 2000.
Honestly this is just a really poor take.
There will always be egregiously priced “enterprise” software but that doesn’t mean the value is there, it’s usually because nobody knows better; the “tire-kickers” are people suckered into the platform using the exact same tactics as people who peddle drugs, that’s not defensible.
Centralised notetaking/communication has been a solved problem since the BBS era, it gets reinvented constantly.
There will always be egregiously priced “enterprise” software but that doesn’t mean the value is there, it’s usually because nobody knows better; the “tire-kickers” are people suckered into the platform using the exact same tactics as people who peddle drugs, that’s not defensible.
Centralised notetaking/communication has been a solved problem since the BBS era, it gets reinvented constantly.
You claim it's a 'poor take' but you only repeat what you said prior with more words instead of elaborating on how so.
For example.
'Centralised notetaking/communication has been a solved problem since the BBS era'
How did BBS 'solve' this problem?
For example.
'Centralised notetaking/communication has been a solved problem since the BBS era'
How did BBS 'solve' this problem?
BBS's, the pre-cursors to forums had real time notice boards and messaging systems.
The only bad part of it was the fact that nobody had a BBS compatible device in their pocket, but the core functionality of a centralised message board accessible from anywhere in the planet in essentially real-time was definitely at hand.
The major difference is that things these days are quite a bit more usable and we have little devices that are many hundreds of times more powerful than those BBS clients in our pockets.
But there have been so many iterations on the same idea that it's absolutely FALLACIOUS to say that Slack has innovated in anything other than marketing, they are so far from the first and so far from the best that it's sickening that you would defend $12/mo PER USER for a family.
yeah, they're not serious enough, but it's not costing Slack $48/mo to host 4 people, it probably costs $4 (very generously, taking all costs into consideration)
The only bad part of it was the fact that nobody had a BBS compatible device in their pocket, but the core functionality of a centralised message board accessible from anywhere in the planet in essentially real-time was definitely at hand.
The major difference is that things these days are quite a bit more usable and we have little devices that are many hundreds of times more powerful than those BBS clients in our pockets.
But there have been so many iterations on the same idea that it's absolutely FALLACIOUS to say that Slack has innovated in anything other than marketing, they are so far from the first and so far from the best that it's sickening that you would defend $12/mo PER USER for a family.
yeah, they're not serious enough, but it's not costing Slack $48/mo to host 4 people, it probably costs $4 (very generously, taking all costs into consideration)
Sure the BBS ecosystem had a mostly similar feature set if you combine everything here and there but there wasn't a single product a customer could just download that had ALL the features rolled into it.
And even if there were such a product, why do you think that the $4/month in 2022 terms wouldn't have been $40/month or more, in 2000?
To me it seems intuitively obvious, much smaller adoption rate, much more niche or wealthy customer base on average, etc., in 2000, which would have made 2000Slack a boutique product.
And even if there were such a product, why do you think that the $4/month in 2022 terms wouldn't have been $40/month or more, in 2000?
To me it seems intuitively obvious, much smaller adoption rate, much more niche or wealthy customer base on average, etc., in 2000, which would have made 2000Slack a boutique product.
$4 in 2002 is equivalent to $6-7 with the US treasuries own inflation calculator; but I never really argued that, I argued their current cost.
Other than that it is obvious to me that you’re out of touch with reality entirely. $12 per user per month for a chat tool is a legitimately unjustifiable amount for the majority of the current slack user base.
You can argue that free is freeloading, perhaps I agree, but saying anyone not forking over €12/user is not a serious user is just insanely dismissive to the point of absurdity.
You also completely missed the point: BBSs were a one stop shop for all the features and more that slack has, IRC was the same but lacked persistence, which was bolted on, XMPP also had all the features slack had and is being sold to you as things like google talk and Facebook messenger (which is XMPP underneath!).
Slack innovates in marketing, telling people that they want this stuff. The product is not innovative and for the average/prosumer user the value simply isn’t there.
Zulip is so superior it is actually disgusting; and it’s FOSS.
Not to mention “matrix” or the multitude of fantastic walled garden chat tools.
Slack enjoys a niche because of rugpulling, bringing people in with marketing and UX and the promise that you can work with your existing client and cheaply so don’t worry about it! (IRC/XMPP gateways; generous free tier) before removing them.
That you defend this makes me believe you have a financial incentive.
Other than that it is obvious to me that you’re out of touch with reality entirely. $12 per user per month for a chat tool is a legitimately unjustifiable amount for the majority of the current slack user base.
You can argue that free is freeloading, perhaps I agree, but saying anyone not forking over €12/user is not a serious user is just insanely dismissive to the point of absurdity.
You also completely missed the point: BBSs were a one stop shop for all the features and more that slack has, IRC was the same but lacked persistence, which was bolted on, XMPP also had all the features slack had and is being sold to you as things like google talk and Facebook messenger (which is XMPP underneath!).
Slack innovates in marketing, telling people that they want this stuff. The product is not innovative and for the average/prosumer user the value simply isn’t there.
Zulip is so superior it is actually disgusting; and it’s FOSS.
Not to mention “matrix” or the multitude of fantastic walled garden chat tools.
Slack enjoys a niche because of rugpulling, bringing people in with marketing and UX and the promise that you can work with your existing client and cheaply so don’t worry about it! (IRC/XMPP gateways; generous free tier) before removing them.
That you defend this makes me believe you have a financial incentive.
The question isn’t whether it’s worth that much to someone, it’s whether it’s worth that much to a couple using it to casually exchange messages (and/or what it costs Slack, which is definitely nowhere near that much).
Feels like regressive AWS style pricing. The casual users are overpaying to provide the basis for advanced features only a fraction of users, who have sufficient resources to optimize their efficiency, need.
Feels like regressive AWS style pricing. The casual users are overpaying to provide the basis for advanced features only a fraction of users, who have sufficient resources to optimize their efficiency, need.
Yeah right, we know, it's cheaper than a Starbucks coffee. All those Starbucks coffees add up you know.
There's kinda of a https://xkcd.com/1172/ vibe to that use case.
Being able to go back through two years of chats with your wife most likely was never an intended use case for Slack. For a free tier, 90 day retention seems reasonable. The issue Slack has in their pricing, for private use, is that the cheapest tier is pretty expensive. This could be remedied by adding a private tier, for $1 per month per user. I think Slack has put a large number of potential customers in a position where they are asking them to upgrade to a paid tier, but not providing a realistic tier to upgrade to.
I am fascinated by the amount of people who use Slack though. While completely off topic, it an absolutely mess of a thing. It has to be one of the worst UIs I had the misfortune to use. It makes Google Chat look reasonable.
Being able to go back through two years of chats with your wife most likely was never an intended use case for Slack. For a free tier, 90 day retention seems reasonable. The issue Slack has in their pricing, for private use, is that the cheapest tier is pretty expensive. This could be remedied by adding a private tier, for $1 per month per user. I think Slack has put a large number of potential customers in a position where they are asking them to upgrade to a paid tier, but not providing a realistic tier to upgrade to.
I am fascinated by the amount of people who use Slack though. While completely off topic, it an absolutely mess of a thing. It has to be one of the worst UIs I had the misfortune to use. It makes Google Chat look reasonable.
It's irc with the ability to share files and pin stuff to channels :) Felt extremely natural to me from day one.
Except threads. Threads are useless.
Except threads. Threads are useless.
> Except threads. Threads are useless.
That might exactly be my problem with Slack, and Google Chat as well. I understand the desire to wanting to some sort of threading, but it doesn't work in either programs. Instead it just confuses the interface greatly. Slack is super weird, because you can have a thread open, and navigate around, so the thread view is now completely out of context.
That might exactly be my problem with Slack, and Google Chat as well. I understand the desire to wanting to some sort of threading, but it doesn't work in either programs. Instead it just confuses the interface greatly. Slack is super weird, because you can have a thread open, and navigate around, so the thread view is now completely out of context.
IMO Slack threads are quite good.
I'm sure it depends on your use case etc., but in my work context I find they function really well.
I did try test some concepts around Slack/Discord threads serving as entire "discussions" for a literary community (so you e.g. post a topic and discuss it in the thread under the topic), and in the end there were a bunch of small pain points that all added up and made it unfeasible.
At work though I find Slack threads to be a good middle ground for having discussions in a medium-large channel with interested parties - everyone can see the main channel message, and those who choose to engage further can post in the thread or opt to receive thread updates if they just want to "listen in"... then if some important conclusion is reached you can opt to send that thread message out to the main channel as well to catch other people up on what was discussed.
I'm sure it depends on your use case etc., but in my work context I find they function really well.
I did try test some concepts around Slack/Discord threads serving as entire "discussions" for a literary community (so you e.g. post a topic and discuss it in the thread under the topic), and in the end there were a bunch of small pain points that all added up and made it unfeasible.
At work though I find Slack threads to be a good middle ground for having discussions in a medium-large channel with interested parties - everyone can see the main channel message, and those who choose to engage further can post in the thread or opt to receive thread updates if they just want to "listen in"... then if some important conclusion is reached you can opt to send that thread message out to the main channel as well to catch other people up on what was discussed.
> but in my work context I find they function really well.
You have only one channel? We have zillions, per topic.
You have only one channel? We have zillions, per topic.
Besides the default/obvious channels, we generally seem to have a channel per "team", a channel per "division" (group of teams), and then some channels for "division collaborations" e.g. data science + engineering. Then we also often set up a channel for big new features/projects and invite stakeholders to them.
EDIT: I guess the last type could be what you mean by "topic" - we are a startup so perhaps the number of feature/project type channels will balloon out over time, but doubt we would end up with "zillions" haha. And loads of them would be old and essentially archived.
A lot of the channels become somewhat bloated over time, with people joining because they are interested in keeping up with stuff in a broad context, but have no need to click into each thread and read over everything.
I would choose threaded discussions over PM groups or short-lived channels any day tbh.
EDIT: I guess the last type could be what you mean by "topic" - we are a startup so perhaps the number of feature/project type channels will balloon out over time, but doubt we would end up with "zillions" haha. And loads of them would be old and essentially archived.
A lot of the channels become somewhat bloated over time, with people joining because they are interested in keeping up with stuff in a broad context, but have no need to click into each thread and read over everything.
I would choose threaded discussions over PM groups or short-lived channels any day tbh.
I think the problem is not with threads themselves but with Slack's implementation. Threads provide a much-needed way of creating a discussion around a specific topic that doesn't pollute the main channel. In Slack they seem like more of an afterthought than a primary communication tool.
Yeah, they're very hard to find when you just quickly check where you're needed.
> The people who were hosting vibrant communities on the free tier now have the hard job of cajoling people who have no intention to pay into paying. I don't see a problem with this frankly.
The problem, as another commenter points out, is the price. There just isn't a pricing tier that would make sense for people to pay as individuals to participate in an informal community (especially if even only some members could not afford it). I can't imagine more than $5/yr really working - probably only $1-2.
Well another problem is that they don't actually have a way for individuals to cover their own memberships; you'd need a community leader to set up a GoFundMe/equivalent, fundraise every billing cycle (which is logistically taxing and damages community feelings), etc. Yuck.
For color, I'm part of a professional network slack (alumni of a company) that people derive a fair amount of professional and personal value from. Important business and career networking, fond friendships, etc etc. Roughly nobody in that group is poor, or even US-middle-class, but the willingness to pay the current lowest tier for us is absolutely not there. Not even close.
The problem, as another commenter points out, is the price. There just isn't a pricing tier that would make sense for people to pay as individuals to participate in an informal community (especially if even only some members could not afford it). I can't imagine more than $5/yr really working - probably only $1-2.
Well another problem is that they don't actually have a way for individuals to cover their own memberships; you'd need a community leader to set up a GoFundMe/equivalent, fundraise every billing cycle (which is logistically taxing and damages community feelings), etc. Yuck.
For color, I'm part of a professional network slack (alumni of a company) that people derive a fair amount of professional and personal value from. Important business and career networking, fond friendships, etc etc. Roughly nobody in that group is poor, or even US-middle-class, but the willingness to pay the current lowest tier for us is absolutely not there. Not even close.
This sort of "mana from heaven" success that Zulip has been seeing reminds me of the time Google Reader announced that it was closing and Feedly was just sitting there with a product that was exactly like Google Reader and could import your subscriptions from Google Reader with one click.
I wonder how often people succeed with these sorts of business models, which seem to be summarizable as "copy something extremely successful exactly, wait for them to fuck up sufficiently badly, and make sure migrating is really easy."
I wonder how often people succeed with these sorts of business models, which seem to be summarizable as "copy something extremely successful exactly, wait for them to fuck up sufficiently badly, and make sure migrating is really easy."
Digg vs Reddit also comes to mind.
https://www.reddit.com/r/business/comments/d78wi/digg_loses_...
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2005-01-01%202...
https://mashable.com/archive/reddit-digg-traffic
https://www.reddit.com/r/business/comments/d78wi/digg_loses_...
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2005-01-01%202...
https://mashable.com/archive/reddit-digg-traffic
DIGG blew its userbase by fucking up the UX.
Reddit is on path to do same. If reddit ever kills old.reddit, exodus will happen.
-
But seriously, a designer should be thinking about the consumption/participation model as opposed to just the eyeballs/adwords-please-kill-me-now model...
The consumption and participation of a site is direct to the UX - and when DIGG basically made it a 100% consumption push, while also making participation weird/hard/less-desirable, that shit was dead.
Reddit is becoming a weird corporate bot colony and they are actively killing their UX.
Reddit is on path to do same. If reddit ever kills old.reddit, exodus will happen.
-
But seriously, a designer should be thinking about the consumption/participation model as opposed to just the eyeballs/adwords-please-kill-me-now model...
The consumption and participation of a site is direct to the UX - and when DIGG basically made it a 100% consumption push, while also making participation weird/hard/less-desirable, that shit was dead.
Reddit is becoming a weird corporate bot colony and they are actively killing their UX.
> Reddit is on path to do same. If reddit ever kills old.reddit, exodus will happen.
I use Reddit exclusively in the "old" mode, but I wonder how impactful would this be. The Reddit redesign was basically done to cater to a wider audience (9gag, TikTok, etc). I feel that either at this point or in the near future the number of people that use old.reddit.com exclusively will be a small percentage of the whole lot of people using the new design. Particularly because Reddit is "strangling" out users of old.reddit by leaving them out of the new features (I normally see comments with stuff like :4222: which I assume are emoticons only available in the new reddit).
I use Reddit exclusively in the "old" mode, but I wonder how impactful would this be. The Reddit redesign was basically done to cater to a wider audience (9gag, TikTok, etc). I feel that either at this point or in the near future the number of people that use old.reddit.com exclusively will be a small percentage of the whole lot of people using the new design. Particularly because Reddit is "strangling" out users of old.reddit by leaving them out of the new features (I normally see comments with stuff like :4222: which I assume are emoticons only available in the new reddit).
> I normally see comments with stuff like :4222: which I assume are emoticons only available in the new reddit
For what it's worth, someone posted this Tampermonkey script that converts those codes to the proper custom Emoji's, on Old Reddit. It works well with Firefox at least:
https://justpaste.it/6624t
For what it's worth, someone posted this Tampermonkey script that converts those codes to the proper custom Emoji's, on Old Reddit. It works well with Firefox at least:
https://justpaste.it/6624t
I've posted a lot about this in the past, and one of the things about 'old./r/' that is overlooked by the massive mobile consumers, is that information density is super high with old.reddit and RES.
I posted a bunch of tips on how to set them up for speed - Like I said, as a daily redditor for 15 years, uhm I have the 1,000 Karma Stare.
I posted a bunch of tips on how to set them up for speed - Like I said, as a daily redditor for 15 years, uhm I have the 1,000 Karma Stare.
IIRC, Old Reddit addicts are a disproportionate influence among the moderation and high-karma populations. New Reddit is for the read-only proles, Old Reddit is for the people who provide value.
>I normally see comments with stuff like :4222: which I assume are emoticons only available in the new reddit
You're not missing much
You're not missing much
> If reddit ever kills old.reddit, exodus will happen.
You overestimate. Most people have moved on, and reddit gains new users every day who have no idea what old.reddit is.
You overestimate. Most people have moved on, and reddit gains new users every day who have no idea what old.reddit is.
it's becoming tiktok slowly
This is one of those things where the distinction between "UI" and "UX" really matters. reddit is fucking up the UI, but the content is still reddit. digg fundamentally changed the content they displayed from community driven to publisher and power-user driven. they could have survived a redesign if they hadn't also pivoted the whole product direction at the same time.
IIRC, ads and paid posts caused Digg to lose over Reddit. I didn’t use either at the time, but people I know did.
Yes. This is exactly what happened.
DIGG basically became what new Reddit looks like now, but they were specifically transparent that every post was essentially a paid marketing blob and the corporate commercial took over all of DIGG - pissed everyone off and they all flocked to Reddit.
Reddit is doing the same thing, however, when DIGG messed around with the UX, bots were not a thing in the same form they are now…
“Video killed the radio star” but now it’s
“Bot killed any sense of trust on social media”
DIGG basically became what new Reddit looks like now, but they were specifically transparent that every post was essentially a paid marketing blob and the corporate commercial took over all of DIGG - pissed everyone off and they all flocked to Reddit.
Reddit is doing the same thing, however, when DIGG messed around with the UX, bots were not a thing in the same form they are now…
“Video killed the radio star” but now it’s
“Bot killed any sense of trust on social media”
As someone who only occasionally visits reddit, can I ask what the bots are doing? I’ve only ever seen bots that do things like correct spelling
> If reddit ever kills old.reddit, exodus will happen.
Plausible, but if it really does happen it will be a landmark. Modern losing against old and ~crippled UX.
Plausible, but if it really does happen it will be a landmark. Modern losing against old and ~crippled UX.
It is still so friggin' weird to me that Reddit had the longevity over Digg.
Zulip didn't just "copy [Slack] exactly". The UX is much better than Slack, in my opinion. It's faster, and it puts the conversations center stage. With Slack I always felt that I had too click too much to get to a certain thread, and then it only used < 50% of my screen to show the conversation.
Zulip > Slack, even without this new change that Slack is dumping on users.
Zulip > Slack, even without this new change that Slack is dumping on users.
> "I wonder how often people succeed with these sorts of business models, which seem to be summarizable as "copy something extremely successful exactly, wait for them to fuck up sufficiently badly, and make sure migrating is really easy."
It definitely happens: another example that seems fitting was with LastPass. A lot of users (at least a few I know personally) migrated to Bitwarden after they changed its free plan, and many other long-time premium users also switched services due to bugs. Switching between password managers is a lot easier than one might expect (due to standardized database formats).
I'm not sure if many companies follow this plan intentionally, as it's not a given that the market leader(s) will eventually fail, but companies certainly benefit when former market leaders slip up.
It definitely happens: another example that seems fitting was with LastPass. A lot of users (at least a few I know personally) migrated to Bitwarden after they changed its free plan, and many other long-time premium users also switched services due to bugs. Switching between password managers is a lot easier than one might expect (due to standardized database formats).
I'm not sure if many companies follow this plan intentionally, as it's not a given that the market leader(s) will eventually fail, but companies certainly benefit when former market leaders slip up.
To a degree, our current company exists because Yoast SEO made enough bad decisions that people switched to our WordPress SEO plugin. My friend wrote it only because he disliked Yoast and as every programer, he thought "I can code this in a weekend and it will work better". It was never ment to become a project.
Anyway Yoast eventually made a big enough mistake and 5 years later my programmer friend is working on this full time. I am the only other guy working with him.
Transport of data was at that time trivial.
Anyway Yoast eventually made a big enough mistake and 5 years later my programmer friend is working on this full time. I am the only other guy working with him.
Transport of data was at that time trivial.
That casts Google shutting down dozens of products in a different light!
Slack has actually caused this same situation before. Tuple benefited when Slack shut down ScreenHero.
https://medium.com/codingzeal/tuple-the-new-hero-of-pair-pro...
https://medium.com/codingzeal/tuple-the-new-hero-of-pair-pro...
Is it? The only customers who would would put pain to migrate are the customers who would never pay. If I were Zulip and I didn't aimed to run just on VC's money, I wouldn't prefer hoard of people who I know for almost certainty that they won't pay.
No problem against it but please don't migrate to discord, migrate to Matrix. My plea has nothing to do with product quality but that with Matrix I can access other bridged people. But discord and pals not so much.
Wasting 8gb ram on slack, already on gitter, teams, google meet and I am not even a people's person others have more platforms active in parallel.
This is why I don't support any platform that does not also use an interoperable protocol. This includes Signal which won't let 3rd party clients connect to its servers. Protocol is a foundational element of communication. If you are designing a communication system that others that are strangers to your system can't talk to your users because you don't have a protocol, your system isolates users and is hostile to its very purpose:communication.
I mean really, I rant here a bit but have all these smart people never heard of adversarial compatibility?
For Matrix, I really wish they didn't associate with their flagship client, others who build clients have to also compete with the protocol authors, this should be a lesson to future communications systems designers.
Wasting 8gb ram on slack, already on gitter, teams, google meet and I am not even a people's person others have more platforms active in parallel.
This is why I don't support any platform that does not also use an interoperable protocol. This includes Signal which won't let 3rd party clients connect to its servers. Protocol is a foundational element of communication. If you are designing a communication system that others that are strangers to your system can't talk to your users because you don't have a protocol, your system isolates users and is hostile to its very purpose:communication.
I mean really, I rant here a bit but have all these smart people never heard of adversarial compatibility?
For Matrix, I really wish they didn't associate with their flagship client, others who build clients have to also compete with the protocol authors, this should be a lesson to future communications systems designers.
I'm interested in matrix, how can I learn more and can you choose providers or clients, any recommendations?
Element [0] is the main/most popular client. FluffyChat [1] is also good. They both have web, Android, iOS, and desktop (Electron) apps. There are at least a dozen other clients but those are the only two I've tried so far.
For hosting, I believe the flagship host is Element Matrix Services [2]. It's made by the same organization that leads development (it is all FOSS) of Element and the reference server Synapse.
You can also self-host. Synapse is pretty slow and memory-hungry (it's written in Python), but for a small group it still fits pretty comfortably on a $5 DigitalOcean VPS. That's what I'm doing. It took less than an afternoon to set up (`apt install synapse` and then setting some config, mainly—there are a bunch of good guides online) and has been happily running ever since. Matrix is federated, so as long as you set up federation properly, you can seamlessly message anyone on any federated Matrix server. (Federation is opt-in.)
There's also Dendrite and Conduit, Matrix servers written in Go and Rust respectively, which are much leaner and faster. Both are still in beta and missing some features, but are definitely usable.
If you want to mess around with bots, I've had a lot of fun with both the Matrix Rust SDK [3] and JavaScript bot SDK [4]. Both are quite easy to get started with, and as of a few months ago both support E2EE pretty painlessly too (not totally pain-free though lol), which is cool.
Overall, the ecosystem is still maturing imo, but I've been using self-hosted Synapse and Element "in production"—it's me and my girlfriend's primary method of communication—for over a year now with only some minor UX hiccups (mostly issues decrypting E2EE messages in Element). I definitely encourage giving it a shot as long as you're willing to tolerate a few remaining growing pains.
[0]: https://fluffychat.im/
[1]: https://element.io/get-started
[2]: https://element.io/matrix-services
[3]: https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-rust-sdk
[4]: https://github.com/turt2live/matrix-bot-sdk
For hosting, I believe the flagship host is Element Matrix Services [2]. It's made by the same organization that leads development (it is all FOSS) of Element and the reference server Synapse.
You can also self-host. Synapse is pretty slow and memory-hungry (it's written in Python), but for a small group it still fits pretty comfortably on a $5 DigitalOcean VPS. That's what I'm doing. It took less than an afternoon to set up (`apt install synapse` and then setting some config, mainly—there are a bunch of good guides online) and has been happily running ever since. Matrix is federated, so as long as you set up federation properly, you can seamlessly message anyone on any federated Matrix server. (Federation is opt-in.)
There's also Dendrite and Conduit, Matrix servers written in Go and Rust respectively, which are much leaner and faster. Both are still in beta and missing some features, but are definitely usable.
If you want to mess around with bots, I've had a lot of fun with both the Matrix Rust SDK [3] and JavaScript bot SDK [4]. Both are quite easy to get started with, and as of a few months ago both support E2EE pretty painlessly too (not totally pain-free though lol), which is cool.
Overall, the ecosystem is still maturing imo, but I've been using self-hosted Synapse and Element "in production"—it's me and my girlfriend's primary method of communication—for over a year now with only some minor UX hiccups (mostly issues decrypting E2EE messages in Element). I definitely encourage giving it a shot as long as you're willing to tolerate a few remaining growing pains.
[0]: https://fluffychat.im/
[1]: https://element.io/get-started
[2]: https://element.io/matrix-services
[3]: https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-rust-sdk
[4]: https://github.com/turt2live/matrix-bot-sdk
Synapse is no longer very slow or memory-hungry. It is being continuously optimised.
"for instance Synapse uses 5-10x less RAM than it used to (my personal federated server is only using 145MB of RAM atm!" - https://matrix.org/blog/2022/08/15/the-matrix-summer-special...
"for instance Synapse uses 5-10x less RAM than it used to (my personal federated server is only using 145MB of RAM atm!" - https://matrix.org/blog/2022/08/15/the-matrix-summer-special...
I'm on the matrix server of a research group that self-hosts matrix (Synapse). It has been quite low maintenance, has around 15 users, and as it's on a server that's already running the group's website, the running costs other than the time maintaining it are minimal.
As an additional advantage over per-user-priced options, it has very low barriers for loose collaborations. There's no reason to fret over giving someone an account if they might ever use it. And if someone already has a matrix account elsewhere, federation means we can just add their accounts to our rooms.
As an additional advantage over per-user-priced options, it has very low barriers for loose collaborations. There's no reason to fret over giving someone an account if they might ever use it. And if someone already has a matrix account elsewhere, federation means we can just add their accounts to our rooms.
Legend
If you end up using Element, beware one thing. Although it looks like Discord, it's not. Spaces may look like servers, but they do not contain channels.
A Space is a list, phone book, a map that lists a bunch of rooms so you can join many of them conveniently.
A Space is a list, phone book, a map that lists a bunch of rooms so you can join many of them conveniently.
In addition to what the sibling comment said, Beeper is a great 'all in one' bridges type of software. The client is proprietary, but still interoperable with the larger Matrix network (and they contribute to upstream too).
Matrix too slow, missed important messages. Never again.
There's a talk that made the same points: Signal: You were the chosen one.
https://media.ccc.de/v/mch2022-196-signal-you-were-the-chose...
Discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32244795
https://media.ccc.de/v/mch2022-196-signal-you-were-the-chose...
Discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32244795
This felt like a mean spirited and cynical money play to me, especially coming years after launching free instances. For smaller groups (families, houses, etc) this effectively forces them to pay or lose months or years of history.
To me, this says that I can't trust that slack cares about supporting what people are currently using their product for. They'll be looking for opportunities to reduce costs or increase revenue and they don't much care if that means losing a lot of users who aren't making them much money. For all the users but the biggest users, this is a sign that you should start looking around for other options.
To me, this says that I can't trust that slack cares about supporting what people are currently using their product for. They'll be looking for opportunities to reduce costs or increase revenue and they don't much care if that means losing a lot of users who aren't making them much money. For all the users but the biggest users, this is a sign that you should start looking around for other options.
> pay or lose months or years of history.
You can download all your workspace data now, includes chat history.
Chat history on free plan was already limited, so I don’t think anyone who was aware of that was using it as an archive.
You can download all your workspace data now, includes chat history.
Chat history on free plan was already limited, so I don’t think anyone who was aware of that was using it as an archive.
No, some certainly were. There's one quoted in the blog post, for example.
In a small community, and if you're not using it for lots of chit-chat but rather for something focused like scientific research, you can go years and years without reaching 10k messages. So in that circumstance, it's pretty reasonable to have chosen Slack under its old policy. Especially if one wasn't aware of Zulip. ;-)
(I'm one of the Zulip developers.)
In a small community, and if you're not using it for lots of chit-chat but rather for something focused like scientific research, you can go years and years without reaching 10k messages. So in that circumstance, it's pretty reasonable to have chosen Slack under its old policy. Especially if one wasn't aware of Zulip. ;-)
(I'm one of the Zulip developers.)
> ather for something focused like scientific research, you can go years and years without reaching 10k messages
I don’t know what kind of scientists you’ve worked with, but I haven’t met any so short-winded
I don’t know what kind of scientists you’ve worked with, but I haven’t met any so short-winded
I work with a ton of scientists (and am one myself) and I’m a member of multiple slack channels with hundreds of members that are years old and only have a 1-2k messages.
An example is a Python users group where there’s maybe a few threads a week. And it’s really useful to search for old threads.
Another is a hackathon with maybe 30 people where there were a few hundred messages over a week and then 1 message a month.
An example is a Python users group where there’s maybe a few threads a week. And it’s really useful to search for old threads.
Another is a hackathon with maybe 30 people where there were a few hundred messages over a week and then 1 message a month.
Self host a forum…
That’s what I’ll end up doing. Pretty much migrating all these chats off slack.
Interestingly, these led to lots of pie licenses and we’re migrating all these over too.
Once we’re self hosting a server then we don’t need the paid license either.
Seems kind of much for $100/year/user anyway. Teams is bundled in with o365 for nothing or little extra.
Interestingly, these led to lots of pie licenses and we’re migrating all these over too.
Once we’re self hosting a server then we don’t need the paid license either.
Seems kind of much for $100/year/user anyway. Teams is bundled in with o365 for nothing or little extra.
[deleted]
sounds like now you know of plenty!
I don't mean to say that people were led to believe that free instances had no limits - just that this is a reversal of the nature of those limits. Groups that had planned based on the old limits are now in a tough spot.
I'm glad to hear that you can do a full export though and I am surprised it includes the messages you can't access within the slack client.
I'm glad to hear that you can do a full export though and I am surprised it includes the messages you can't access within the slack client.
You can’t download private messages, however.
I jumped up and down about this to Slack over the course of a few emails, having some paid workspaces and a couple on the free plan that I use(d) for family. Eventually I got one of those "Hi this is such and such, stepping in for the other person" emails, with a link to this app that can export everything (including private messages):
https://export.fountstudio.com/
The export is in a proprietary JSON format and only contains links to attachments, plus it has a limit on the number of messages you can export if you don't pay for it. But after jumping through various hoops one afternoon I was able to export all the messages and attachments from a family channel that we've had going for a few years - since our kids were first active on computers. The total number of messages was about 3500, but we would have lost the vast majority of them with Slack's new approach.
https://export.fountstudio.com/
The export is in a proprietary JSON format and only contains links to attachments, plus it has a limit on the number of messages you can export if you don't pay for it. But after jumping through various hoops one afternoon I was able to export all the messages and attachments from a family channel that we've had going for a few years - since our kids were first active on computers. The total number of messages was about 3500, but we would have lost the vast majority of them with Slack's new approach.
> pay or lose months or years of history.
You have to be very inactive slack to have years of history fit in 10,000-message. Our family slack hit 10k long time ago: 7 members total, 4 inactive and most active channels is @me using it as clipboard across devices.
Teams that were on an old 10k plan either:
- potentially going to become paid customer eventually (evaluating slack or early-stage company trying to save money) - never going to pay (families, online communities)
Changing this to 90-days plan:
- potential paid customers now have a clear cut-off date and either stay on free plan longer or convert to paid customers before 90 days mark OR move somewhere else; Either way, it's a win for slack. - Online communities most likely benefit from that because I've been to slacks that churn thousands of messages a day - Family slacks probably don't care, they always knew old messages will go away
The only reason I use Slack for family and my side-gig company is because I use Slack at the day job.
You have to be very inactive slack to have years of history fit in 10,000-message. Our family slack hit 10k long time ago: 7 members total, 4 inactive and most active channels is @me using it as clipboard across devices.
Teams that were on an old 10k plan either:
- potentially going to become paid customer eventually (evaluating slack or early-stage company trying to save money) - never going to pay (families, online communities)
Changing this to 90-days plan:
- potential paid customers now have a clear cut-off date and either stay on free plan longer or convert to paid customers before 90 days mark OR move somewhere else; Either way, it's a win for slack. - Online communities most likely benefit from that because I've been to slacks that churn thousands of messages a day - Family slacks probably don't care, they always knew old messages will go away
The only reason I use Slack for family and my side-gig company is because I use Slack at the day job.
> To me, this says that I can't trust that slack cares about supporting what people are currently using their product for.
Did you expect Salesforce to?
Did you expect Salesforce to?
Isn't slack a bit heavy for families/houses/groups of friends? Why not something like Telegram?
[deleted]
IRC has always been free and you can search as much as you've logged...
One thing that a lot of people seem to have difficulty understanding is just how little space text takes up; someone typing at 120wpm continuously for 28h has only generated a little over 1MB of text. No doubt Slack is taking advantage of that lack of understanding to make people think the costs are greater.
One thing that a lot of people seem to have difficulty understanding is just how little space text takes up; someone typing at 120wpm continuously for 28h has only generated a little over 1MB of text. No doubt Slack is taking advantage of that lack of understanding to make people think the costs are greater.
IRC has always been free and you can search as much as you've logged...
The biggest problem with IRC has always been its lack of server-side history.
The biggest problem with IRC has always been its lack of server-side history.
Server side history and SaaS frontends is the biggest misfeature of all the modern chat services. (and corresponding lack of client side history logging)
Every single time I have to join one of these new chat systems I have to figure out ways to copy the archive of messages on the platform over their often private http APIs.
There's no way I can use a chat service for business communication without having an archive of communication. If you join a foreign workspace you don't even have an export option (or it's surely is well hidden).
With XMPP/IRC clients, you can at least log locally and don't have to deal with bloated webapps you can't even control the basics on like disabling typing notifications, or online status tracking.
Every single time I have to join one of these new chat systems I have to figure out ways to copy the archive of messages on the platform over their often private http APIs.
There's no way I can use a chat service for business communication without having an archive of communication. If you join a foreign workspace you don't even have an export option (or it's surely is well hidden).
With XMPP/IRC clients, you can at least log locally and don't have to deal with bloated webapps you can't even control the basics on like disabling typing notifications, or online status tracking.
To me it is a feature not a limitation
So read it as:
> The biggest problem with IRC [for Slack’s principle use case, which does not apply to me] has always been its lack of server-side history.
You can understand that while still personally preferring another messaging model.
> The biggest problem with IRC [for Slack’s principle use case, which does not apply to me] has always been its lack of server-side history.
You can understand that while still personally preferring another messaging model.
I have no idea why you wouldn't mind that, but thats fine, you do you. I am curious though, if you don't mind sharing why?
To everybody else who are hit by this, they would not consider it a feature but a pretty serious limitation, since if you didn't care about server side logging in first the place why would you mind messages disappearing after 90 days?
Regardless though, IRC also doesn't persist user names which I think is a serious limitation.
To everybody else who are hit by this, they would not consider it a feature but a pretty serious limitation, since if you didn't care about server side logging in first the place why would you mind messages disappearing after 90 days?
Regardless though, IRC also doesn't persist user names which I think is a serious limitation.
But: It does not randomly change payment tiers or features or require a client update. In fact, IRC works stable for like, 40 years now?
Replacing slack with IRC really doesn’t feel like a sincere proposal. Slack has persistent history for everyone, push notifications, image and other file uploads, audio calls, video calls, and screen sharing. And all of that works with no configuration or research.
The only way it’s going to fly is if your organization is entirely hacker types.
The only way it’s going to fly is if your organization is entirely hacker types.
>The only way it’s going to fly is if your organization is entirely hacker types.
Read that as "IRC has integrated anti-non-hacker technology."
Consider holding physical meetings with hard copies of reading material (or at least some Lorem ipsum) to occupy the other employees.
Read that as "IRC has integrated anti-non-hacker technology."
Consider holding physical meetings with hard copies of reading material (or at least some Lorem ipsum) to occupy the other employees.
I did work at one company where the main means of communication was an IRC server on the intranet. Calls were done through VoIP and file sharing was via the usual shares --- usually the coworker's machine, but central servers were also available. Of course this was a company that specialised in networking and communications products, so perhaps they were more inclined to do such a thing (and we "dogfooded" all of our products too), but nonetheless it was a great experience.
Slack allows image and file uploads, and in every slack I've been on that feature is used heavily. Those stack up fast.
We need a IRC client that will convert images to ASCII art.
no one needs anything more than ASCII art ;)
no one needs anything more than ASCII art ;)
I've seen a matrix client that does this, 'Gomuks' if I recall correctly.
Yeah, even if file uploads are disabled and limited to sharing links (e.g. from Google Drive), screenshots will be very useful for communication, for a long while.
From the size and performance of their website, I’d guess they’ve probably found a way to make their costs much greater.
Yes, and searching history in slack is very painful, I have no use for history in slack, might as well delete it after 2 days.
With IRC, you can search your history (logs) anyway you want using any tool you want.
With IRC, you can search your history (logs) anyway you want using any tool you want.
I normally use localslackirc (which I mostly wrote) https://github.com/ltworf/localslackirc to use slack.
I can grep through the logs if I need to find something. That's really really fast compared to their search on the website.
I also get other advantages such as not automatically being forced to see all the reaction GIFs and being able to silence notifications from certain users that abuse them.
I can grep through the logs if I need to find something. That's really really fast compared to their search on the website.
I also get other advantages such as not automatically being forced to see all the reaction GIFs and being able to silence notifications from certain users that abuse them.
One of my main concerns about IRC, for the average user, is the lack of good modern clients. IRCCloud is pretty good, but that's also sort of missing one of the point with IRC, to me at least.
That being said, it's not like Slack has a fantastic UI either... Actually it's horribly confusing.
That being said, it's not like Slack has a fantastic UI either... Actually it's horribly confusing.
My initial reaction to Slack's change was that it's not a big deal. In the small communities I've worked with through Slack, we generally assumed that Slack messages are temporary, and we'd hit the former 10,000 message limit someday. We used email for more permanent communication, so the expectation of permanency wasn't changed.
However, it was interesting to see the company's data that is supporting the headline's assertion (in terms of migrations to the service after the Slack change). I'm also part of a smaller Slack group of a few people, and in abstract, it's understandable that it will be sad to see the older messages disappear. But then again, even in the tiny group, I always thought we'd hit the old 10,000 message limit someday, and never personally expected the messages to stay permanently.
However, it was interesting to see the company's data that is supporting the headline's assertion (in terms of migrations to the service after the Slack change). I'm also part of a smaller Slack group of a few people, and in abstract, it's understandable that it will be sad to see the older messages disappear. But then again, even in the tiny group, I always thought we'd hit the old 10,000 message limit someday, and never personally expected the messages to stay permanently.
I hate slack and chat in general being temporary at basically everywhere I have worked. So often a colleague will give you instructions on some process then the next time you need it, it's gone.
Huh, I worked at a place that used it for several years and kept all the history. It was actually amazing to be able to search through conversations within the company for problems that other people had run into and the solutions they came up with. Once or twice I ran into an issue and found the answer in a conversation I had actually had with a colleague and then forgotten.
When the company moved to Teams (because it was free with the other Microsoft stuff), I asked if it would be possible to get an archive saved somewhere and I got the brush-off, "we'll look into it". It's a shame how much was just thrown out.
When the company moved to Teams (because it was free with the other Microsoft stuff), I asked if it would be possible to get an archive saved somewhere and I got the brush-off, "we'll look into it". It's a shame how much was just thrown out.
And then there's the folks that use Slack/Rocketchat for support - zero ability to curate any useful info.
argh, or worse yet: you search and find someone had the exact same issue! You click on the response to their thread and it says "oh yea this, I'll call/email/whisper the answer personally to avoid helping anyone else in future"
This is a Saleforce thing.
They own both Heroku & Slack and both have completely revamped/ended their free tier this week.
They own both Heroku & Slack and both have completely revamped/ended their free tier this week.
We have a paid slack for our team & customers, and a free slack to support our community, and Slack continuing to kneecap our community zone keeps pushing us towards dropping slack in general.
Just as Slack emerged to fill a social networking gap not quite solved by irc & hipchat, the steady mishandling of community pricing & usage (web indexing, ...) is keeping the door open for a good competitor to knock them out from the bottom. Discord is an obvious possibility, but it can be anyone new too. In a world where Teams is already knocking them out of the enterprise market, Slack intentionally losing their main advantages in community, vs pulling up the ladder on competitors, seems pretty dumb.
Just as Slack emerged to fill a social networking gap not quite solved by irc & hipchat, the steady mishandling of community pricing & usage (web indexing, ...) is keeping the door open for a good competitor to knock them out from the bottom. Discord is an obvious possibility, but it can be anyone new too. In a world where Teams is already knocking them out of the enterprise market, Slack intentionally losing their main advantages in community, vs pulling up the ladder on competitors, seems pretty dumb.
No one is stopping you from using a different free product.
We are paying users with a growing annual account, this is not about free.
We want 1 product for chat, enjoy that Slack solved much of community side of chat (cross-company, ...), and Slack's UX is slightly better than Discord's + significantly better than Team's. Likewise, there is gravity keeping us there: text history + customer accounts.
My point is Slack's lead is tenuous, and they are steadily eroding their primary moat for us -- community-minded features. Our community account already has limited search and customization, and this update obliterates that further. If/when we move our free community channel, we will move our paid account too.
We want 1 product for chat, enjoy that Slack solved much of community side of chat (cross-company, ...), and Slack's UX is slightly better than Discord's + significantly better than Team's. Likewise, there is gravity keeping us there: text history + customer accounts.
My point is Slack's lead is tenuous, and they are steadily eroding their primary moat for us -- community-minded features. Our community account already has limited search and customization, and this update obliterates that further. If/when we move our free community channel, we will move our paid account too.
Good free IRC on mobile would be killer.
Setting aside that this is from a Slack competitor...
> one would be hard-pressed to find any who are excited about it
Me.
You know all that bitching we collectively do about ad and tracking supported business models obsfuscating the cost of "free" products?
The solution is being willing to pay for something you use and like.
> one would be hard-pressed to find any who are excited about it
Me.
You know all that bitching we collectively do about ad and tracking supported business models obsfuscating the cost of "free" products?
The solution is being willing to pay for something you use and like.
I have like 7 Slacks. 2 of them are paid, 5 of them are hobby that I may use once a month. What are you suggesting? That I pay an extra $40/month just so that maybe I need an old message in one of those? I'd agree with you if Slack were indie devs but does Slack need my $40?
The unhappiness comes from the fact that people want to rely on a service, even if it's free. It would make sense if this was a change for the sake of resources or paid user experience. This is for neither, just a tiny push for people to pay or leave. Ironically, It may make me want to stop paying because having all the conversations in one place is nice if I take the hobby slacks elsewhere
The unhappiness comes from the fact that people want to rely on a service, even if it's free. It would make sense if this was a change for the sake of resources or paid user experience. This is for neither, just a tiny push for people to pay or leave. Ironically, It may make me want to stop paying because having all the conversations in one place is nice if I take the hobby slacks elsewhere
So I have to ask, why use Slack for hobby things instead of Discord? Is that driven by people used to having it at work? I'm confused by the thought of "hobby Slack channels".
Discord is actually fairly annoying because so many things are on Discord and split between servers.
I agree. My experience with Discord vs. Slack is not nearly what people seem to make it out to be. I find Discord significantly more confusing and the concept of "servers" is not one that makes any actual sense; they are using that word as a stand-in for rooms/workspaces/etc, but "servers" sounds better to gamers. I can't blame them, but it's confusing to me. Oh well. I'm old.
I don't really get your source of confusion, The concept of a server makes perfect sense in so far as it's a self-contained "themed" communication space that contains many rooms a.k.a. channels.
> the concept of "servers" is not one that makes any actual sense; they are using that word as a stand-in for rooms/workspaces/etc
What do you mean? The analogue to rooms would be channels, which falls under a server.
What do you mean? The analogue to rooms would be channels, which falls under a server.
I don't understand the point of your comment. How is it annoying that different interest groups are separated from each other? Reddit is split into different subredits, IRC is split into different servers and channels, forums do the same thing, I could go on. Would you rather everything be jumbled together in one place?
How is this any different than slack being split between workspaces?
It seems to me that the main organization model of Slack and Discord are the same.
It seems to me that the main organization model of Slack and Discord are the same.
Discord is so childish. It's embarassing to have open.
Is it the friendly user-interface?
The non-corporate artwork on curated pages?
The community-vs-company-based branding?
What about any of that is embarrassing or childish? That it's not specifically designed for corporate drudgery hell?
What about any of that is embarrassing or childish? That it's not specifically designed for corporate drudgery hell?
Yea, pretty much, well put.
Being embarrassed by it seems childish. Who are you trying to impress?
I feel like it's rather silly to be so concerned over something as trivial as that, like being worried over what other people think if you have a hello kitty bag. Life is entirely too short to be bothered by inconsequential external perception.
In what way is Discord childish?
Nitro banners, blobs, public servers with bowling balls etc.
If you're just in a discussion it's fine but click the wrong place and it's like a teenage dream exploded.
I’d be willing to pay, but not that much for my brother and I to chat every now and then.
Their pricing is geared towards enterprises with big budgets, not family and friends, nor even interest groups. It’s pretty much Discord everywhere now, and it’s just a matter of time until Discord eats the enterprise market too…
Their pricing is geared towards enterprises with big budgets, not family and friends, nor even interest groups. It’s pretty much Discord everywhere now, and it’s just a matter of time until Discord eats the enterprise market too…
Discord just isn't a good fit for B2B
Yet?
Hypothetically, I wonder how Discord would pull off a shift to enterprise. A big differentiator is that Discord is more for casual conversation. By changing the current successful product, it won't stand out versus Slack/Teams.
However, a fork to a separate version of Discord sounds very, very costly in terms of resources. They would need a lot of software development (when their current developers are already occupied with the main app), and a costly marketing strategy too (to reframe Discord's fork as non-casual and suitable for business).
The shift sounds very expensive, and I'm not sure how Discord could make it pay off.
However, a fork to a separate version of Discord sounds very, very costly in terms of resources. They would need a lot of software development (when their current developers are already occupied with the main app), and a costly marketing strategy too (to reframe Discord's fork as non-casual and suitable for business).
The shift sounds very expensive, and I'm not sure how Discord could make it pay off.
> I'm not sure how Discord could make it pay off.
I dunno, enterprise sales sound like a fairly straightforward payoff to me. But I kinda don’t want them to lose focus, and that would inevitably happen.
I dunno, enterprise sales sound like a fairly straightforward payoff to me. But I kinda don’t want them to lose focus, and that would inevitably happen.
I think Google shows how non-trivial being good at enterprise sales is. It's a different mindset to become a "We never thought anyone would want to do that, but we realize it's a key feature for you, so we'll get it on the roadmap" company.
Except we still get tracked in the paid stuff.
Exactly right. The whole “pay so they don’t track you” thing is a trope of maybe more than a decade ago. Now you pay to get the basic feature you need and you’ll get your data sold anyways.
The fact they track the amount of messages is analytics to begin with even if it has a valid reason.
Paying for something does not necessarily mean you won't be tracked, or even not be shown ads ( Windows, anybody?).
The better solution for that is to use open-source software.
The better solution for that is to use open-source software.
I would be excited if it applied to paid plans too so "oh the documentation is this ancient Slack thread" would stop being treated as a viable option. ;)
Honestly... good. For company-private communication sure but for FLOSS projects it genuinely irks me that Slack (Discord too) is _ever_ used as a communication medium. Make a forum, use IRC/Matrix or even Gitter/RocketChat.
Almost all the time whenever I reluctantly decide to join a FLOSS project's Slack it works out like this:
(1) Hunt for the invitation link and hope I can actually join because a lot of them have that annoying error where if your email doesn't end in `@theirproduct.com` you cannot join. Unless I really, really, REALLY want to join I give up here 99% of the time. (2) If the invite link hasn't expired, and if they allow any email to join then I am in but the channels are all basically ghost towns even for big projects like Kubernetes.
I suspect the friction in being able to easy join versus just visiting a website (forum) or opening a chat (IRC/Matrix, even Gitter) is why.
Almost all the time whenever I reluctantly decide to join a FLOSS project's Slack it works out like this:
(1) Hunt for the invitation link and hope I can actually join because a lot of them have that annoying error where if your email doesn't end in `@theirproduct.com` you cannot join. Unless I really, really, REALLY want to join I give up here 99% of the time. (2) If the invite link hasn't expired, and if they allow any email to join then I am in but the channels are all basically ghost towns even for big projects like Kubernetes.
I suspect the friction in being able to easy join versus just visiting a website (forum) or opening a chat (IRC/Matrix, even Gitter) is why.
If Zulip became an overnight success, five to seven years from now I see them making similar changes. Resources cost money and Slack achieved what it needed to in order to establish itself as the dominant company in the space.
If anything, this will allow for some meaningful competition
If anything, this will allow for some meaningful competition
Slack isn't dominant. They sold to Salesforce because they couldn't beat Microsoft on distribution in the enterprise, and saw the writing on the wall.
I am skeptical this is driven by "resource cost". What resources will be saved by this change?
I am skeptical this is driven by "resource cost". What resources will be saved by this change?
Slack only lost because of Microsoft using their near-monopoly in one space to take over another. Almost like this is a pattern of behavior for them.
Especially given how god-awful of a product Teams is. It could never survive in the marketplace on its own merits.
Especially given how god-awful of a product Teams is. It could never survive in the marketplace on its own merits.
Teams is horrible, of course. Like I said, Microsoft won cause of enterprise market dominance.
> Especially given how god-awful of a product Teams is.
That's why Microsoft won. It's better than Slack for the people that make the purchase decisions. Who cares what the users think if they're not the ones that make that decision.
That's why Microsoft won. It's better than Slack for the people that make the purchase decisions. Who cares what the users think if they're not the ones that make that decision.
One difference is that Zulip is 100% open source, whereas Slack is not.
I can self-host Zulip, so I don't care what they do, as long as they're alive.
Big fan of Zulip here. Admittedly, I haven't used Zulip in the context of a company. But I'm a happy user of
Besides that, I find that Zulip found the Goldilocks-equilibrium with its threading model. It works really well for both synchronous and asynchronous conversations, and you can easily switch back and forth between the two within one thread.
I'm a big fan.
- leanprover.zulipchat.com (~4000 messages / week)
- coq.zulipchat.com (~1200 messages / week)
- categorytheory.zulipchat.com (~600 messages / week)
- isabelle.zulipchat.com
- hott.zulipchat.com
Besides that, I find that Zulip found the Goldilocks-equilibrium with its threading model. It works really well for both synchronous and asynchronous conversations, and you can easily switch back and forth between the two within one thread.
I'm a big fan.
I wish they would integrate an IRC or XMPP gateway per default. I know that #isabelle is visible in isabelle.zulipchat.com, but if the instance admin does not enable it, there's no way to participate using the standard IM protocols.
Slacks pricing model makes sense for business workspaces, but it doesn't work well for public communities.
I run the Slack community for https://github.com/robusta-dev/robusta
We'd gladly pay, but pricing needs to be different when you have a community that is open to the public and has far, far more users than the size of your company.
I run the Slack community for https://github.com/robusta-dev/robusta
We'd gladly pay, but pricing needs to be different when you have a community that is open to the public and has far, far more users than the size of your company.
Same. I have some slacks with friend groups on the free tier. We'd like to see message history and would pay a bit for it... but the enterprise rates are way too high for random social groups.
Stop using chat for things that you want to keep long term. It's not just about retention. Even with long term retention, it's nearly impossible to find things in a huge dump of unstructured conversation.
EDIT - and stop using things that are invisible to search engines.
EDIT - and stop using things that are invisible to search engines.
Agreed, chats as your organizational memory are a disaster.
We’ve set our Slack to cull content older than 30 days.
Knowing that information posted on Slack is transient nudges our team to use the appropriate platform for information that needs to be persisted.
Also, it’s more comfortable to chat casually knowing that what you say isn’t indefinitely retained and searchable.
We’ve set our Slack to cull content older than 30 days.
Knowing that information posted on Slack is transient nudges our team to use the appropriate platform for information that needs to be persisted.
Also, it’s more comfortable to chat casually knowing that what you say isn’t indefinitely retained and searchable.
Or better yet, pay people for what you want to keep long term.
Do you think most Slack teams on the free plan are active enough to send 10,000 messages every 90 days? That’s 111 messages every single day, or 156 every weekday!
Maybe my team uses Slack too much, but that doesn't sound like very much to me. We have 11 devs, and a few non-dev roles, across 8 channels and we must be sending at least 500 messages in total on a busy day, and I doubt it's ever less than a couple of hundred. If I include the JIRA, CI, and bug reporting integrations it's far higher. We pay for Slack but this would be a good change for us if we didn't.
This is also a good time to point out that Slack conversations are not documentation. If you're losing access to important things because you can't go back more than 90 days in your chat history then you need a better knowledge capture process. Recognise when important information has been shared in chat, especially in a private chat, and put it somewhere that's easy for the whole team to access and that you know will still be available in a couple of years time. You won't regret it.
Maybe my team uses Slack too much, but that doesn't sound like very much to me. We have 11 devs, and a few non-dev roles, across 8 channels and we must be sending at least 500 messages in total on a busy day, and I doubt it's ever less than a couple of hundred. If I include the JIRA, CI, and bug reporting integrations it's far higher. We pay for Slack but this would be a good change for us if we didn't.
This is also a good time to point out that Slack conversations are not documentation. If you're losing access to important things because you can't go back more than 90 days in your chat history then you need a better knowledge capture process. Recognise when important information has been shared in chat, especially in a private chat, and put it somewhere that's easy for the whole team to access and that you know will still be available in a couple of years time. You won't regret it.
I haven't seen Mattermost [0] mentioned by anyone here, especially considering it's open-source and you can self-host. Admittedly, it has been a while since I've done some research on these platforms, but is there something I'm missing that makes Zulip or Rocketchat better?
[0] https://mattermost.com/
[0] https://mattermost.com/
zulip really is an amazing piece of software. Don't let the looks deceive you. They are "brutalist" because they are spending all the effort on UX and UI. If you download their terminal client, there is nothing to learn if you already know vim, and more importantly everything is very intuitive. Their messaging model is a bit different and needs an initial familiarization until it dawns on you that this is how messaging should be done anyway.
Extremely agree. After having used Zulip, Slack feels like going back to snail mail after email.
Catching up on messages after days of being off is a breeze in Zulip. Threads are a joy to use, not an afterthought like in Slack. It's just superior in every way (except popularity, sadly).
Catching up on messages after days of being off is a breeze in Zulip. Threads are a joy to use, not an afterthought like in Slack. It's just superior in every way (except popularity, sadly).
Imagine if Google announced:
We are improving Gmail Free plan.
Earlier we limited free users with 15 GB storage.
Now, we are giving full access to the past 90 days. Unlimited GB yay!!!
We are improving Gmail Free plan.
Earlier we limited free users with 15 GB storage.
Now, we are giving full access to the past 90 days. Unlimited GB yay!!!
Does anyone use Zulip that used to use Slack?
Our developers have a ton of webhooks on Slack bots and integration. I see no good guides for porting them over and there's a four year old Github ticket with zero responses asking about it.
Anyone have experience with this? I'd love to self-host Zulip and save $10k/year on Slack, but if it's gonna cost me $20k+ in dev salaries to migrate the webhook notifications, ah forget it.
Our developers have a ton of webhooks on Slack bots and integration. I see no good guides for porting them over and there's a four year old Github ticket with zero responses asking about it.
Anyone have experience with this? I'd love to self-host Zulip and save $10k/year on Slack, but if it's gonna cost me $20k+ in dev salaries to migrate the webhook notifications, ah forget it.
We tried it, I even made some contributions trying to get it to work. In the end we just migrated to Mattermost, which speaks Slack webhooks natively and is a very competent Slack replacement. We self-host it, too, which is a big win.
Those contributions were much appreciated and were merged as:
https://zulip.com/integrations/doc/slack_incoming
It probably deserves another pass on the documentation; it's been improved a few times since then and may no longer deserve the "beta" designation.
https://zulip.com/integrations/doc/slack_incoming
It probably deserves another pass on the documentation; it's been improved a few times since then and may no longer deserve the "beta" designation.
We merged https://zulip.com/integrations/doc/slack_incoming (thanks to the contribution from cheald down thread), which lets one migration many incoming webhook integrations by just changing the URL.
See also https://zulip.com/integrations/ for native integrations that often provide a better experience, taking advantage of topics to thread notifications together nicely.
Can you provide a link to the 4-year-old GitHub issue you found? I'd like to clean it up to reference what has changed since then.
See also https://zulip.com/integrations/ for native integrations that often provide a better experience, taking advantage of topics to thread notifications together nicely.
Can you provide a link to the 4-year-old GitHub issue you found? I'd like to clean it up to reference what has changed since then.
Integrations is the main deal for me as well. Discord might have some integrations here and there, but slack is virtually on every dev tool.
Like nextjs for deployment/fail messages.
Like nextjs for deployment/fail messages.
Zulip has Slack-compatible incoming webhooks. Is that not sufficient?
Can't speak for Zulip, but Discord seems to be better than Slack in almost every way. It's not open-source pr self-hostable, but they are a lot more generous (e.g. unlimited message history, https://upsilon-it.medium.com/slack-vs-discord-comparison-wh...). They're also a lot faster and have less downtime. And they do have channels and threads and bots, though there may be less integrations than Slack, there are a lot.
I use Discord for some personal stuff where the groups use it, and I don't think it's anywhere close to as usable as Slack for a small business unfortunately.
There’s some kind of problem with Discord’s privacy history (either country of ownership, or founder) that makes it unsuitable for a lot of firms.
Discord explicitly declares itself unsuitable for business use and their terms of service also reflects this.
I was using Slack to manage notes on my personal research projects. I never used any features besides channels, messages, and search. I loved it's UI, rich-text features, accessibility, and reliability. Amount of workspace messages after 5 years is 1154. Besides that, I'm using Slack's business+ plan in the corporate teams I'm leading.
Again needing to migrate from a once great app that's now getting ruined by Salesforce, again with no complete export features available, I start feeling ridiculed.
Zulip looks promising, and they even support good imports from Slack. However, their UI just feels too cluttered with all those borders around messages, and their rich-text support isn't as convenient as Slack's.
A majority of my team members felt the same, and we decided to spend a day for hosting an internal contest to build a basic alternative to Slack that we happily migrated our personal workspaces to.
What Slack could've done better: - Saving money at other places than the most critical one for backwards compatibility, message retention - Store messages locally, instead of on their servers - Offer complete exports - Don't advertise this change as "beneficial for free users" - As a last resort, offer one-time payments instead of a per-user subscription model
Again needing to migrate from a once great app that's now getting ruined by Salesforce, again with no complete export features available, I start feeling ridiculed.
Zulip looks promising, and they even support good imports from Slack. However, their UI just feels too cluttered with all those borders around messages, and their rich-text support isn't as convenient as Slack's.
A majority of my team members felt the same, and we decided to spend a day for hosting an internal contest to build a basic alternative to Slack that we happily migrated our personal workspaces to.
What Slack could've done better: - Saving money at other places than the most critical one for backwards compatibility, message retention - Store messages locally, instead of on their servers - Offer complete exports - Don't advertise this change as "beneficial for free users" - As a last resort, offer one-time payments instead of a per-user subscription model
So many smaller companies I know paying for Slack are doing so because their employees used free versions of Slack in some form or the other so recommended it as the first choice, as opposed to Teams, or other alternatives.
If the employees were agnostic about the choice, it’s highly likely that many of these companies’ IT departments would choose Teams instead, because MS is certainly more company friendly (and its bundles tend to be cheaper).
I think Slack may end up regretting losing these non paying customers, who usually end up being their biggest and only cheerleaders in paying contexts.
The other problem for Slack is this decision makes open source alternatives more popular which means more users of the open source alternatives which would likely lead to more maintainers and developers for those projects, leading to them becoming increasingly competitive with Slack. That would squeeze Slack from all sides, with MS hitting them from the enterprise end and these alternatives from the open source end.
It would be difficult for a company to justify paying Slacks high prices when they have all these options instead.
If the employees were agnostic about the choice, it’s highly likely that many of these companies’ IT departments would choose Teams instead, because MS is certainly more company friendly (and its bundles tend to be cheaper).
I think Slack may end up regretting losing these non paying customers, who usually end up being their biggest and only cheerleaders in paying contexts.
The other problem for Slack is this decision makes open source alternatives more popular which means more users of the open source alternatives which would likely lead to more maintainers and developers for those projects, leading to them becoming increasingly competitive with Slack. That would squeeze Slack from all sides, with MS hitting them from the enterprise end and these alternatives from the open source end.
It would be difficult for a company to justify paying Slacks high prices when they have all these options instead.
Wonder how many people jumped ship to https://mattermost.com/
Zulip is a much better communication medium than Slack, is faster, has better UX and is open source.
I hope this move by Slack accelerates migration to Zulip.
I hope this move by Slack accelerates migration to Zulip.
> Zulip [has] better UX [than Slack]
While yes I like the thread model, I don’t believe most users would agree and say Zulip UX is better.
While yes I like the thread model, I don’t believe most users would agree and say Zulip UX is better.
Really? I'm surprised many people would disagree. Slack is slow, bloated, has threading as an afterthought, is really hard to navigate, and is very bad at traversing history.
In Slack, if I've been away and going through channels to see what I've missed, and want to go back to something I just saw, it's impossible to find again unless I remember the channel name. In Zulip, just scroll up.
In Slack, if I've been away and going through channels to see what I've missed, and want to go back to something I just saw, it's impossible to find again unless I remember the channel name. In Zulip, just scroll up.
I find Zulip unbeareable and feel like I was sent back to the 1990s but IRC in the 90s was much better than Zulip in the 2020s.
I literally cannot follow anything and be productive in Zulip for communities with a reasonable number of people (e.g. Quarkus).
Some of it is obviously personal taste and habits
I literally cannot follow anything and be productive in Zulip for communities with a reasonable number of people (e.g. Quarkus).
Some of it is obviously personal taste and habits
There is a massive difference in # of users of Slack vs. # of users of Zulip. Easily 2 orders of magnitude.
People literally like the UI/UX of a Slack so much more than Zulip they are willing to pay for it vs. using a complete free Zulip alternative.
I’m not trying to be negative. Just don’t let a vocal minority cause confirmation basis. People have spoken with their wallets on Slacks UI/UX.
People literally like the UI/UX of a Slack so much more than Zulip they are willing to pay for it vs. using a complete free Zulip alternative.
I’m not trying to be negative. Just don’t let a vocal minority cause confirmation basis. People have spoken with their wallets on Slacks UI/UX.
You're telling me that everyone who's used Slack has used Zulip and just found Slack better?
alt-left to go back. Just like a browser.
Seeing this, and then seeing Heroku cut its free plan…isn’t this just Salesforce dictating the future of the companies they acquire? Salesforce is traditionally an incredibly expensive platform and there really aren’t many things you get for free with them. The focus seems to be shifting to enterprise customers(even more so than before).
(Salesforce developer here)
(Salesforce developer here)
Please stop using Slack/Discord for forum replacements. Forums can be indexed and found. Slack/Discord is like pissing in the wind. Here today, gone three hours from now.
An interesting partial solution to an older, niche Discord community I've found was the creation and sharing of a "lore document" of important insights and parts of the community's history.
I generally agree that knowledge-sharing helps more people if it's easily searchable via Google, but then again, it's also possible that the interactions would be different without the exclusivity. Many events in the community's history may have never happened if it were more public.
I generally agree that knowledge-sharing helps more people if it's easily searchable via Google, but then again, it's also possible that the interactions would be different without the exclusivity. Many events in the community's history may have never happened if it were more public.
> Please stop using Slack/Discord for forum replacements
I always thought it was replacing irc and other previous chat platforms (google chat, hipchat, skype, icq, etc)?
I always thought it was replacing irc and other previous chat platforms (google chat, hipchat, skype, icq, etc)?
Slack was, and is, a business tool; It was never intended for communities (though they clearly didn’t discourage this type of usage).
In Lenny’s podcast (link below), you can listen to Slack’s former head of product and growth, Merci Grace, talk about why they never implemented a block feature. The answer, like this 90 day limitation, is obvious once you look at it from the lens of a business tool.
When you mistakenly look at Slack as a community tool, this change is bound to upset you. On a personal level, loss aversion sucks, and I’m sorry to lose all of the slack history that my wife and I had.
https://twitter.com/lennysan/status/1546515666420649984?s=21...
In Lenny’s podcast (link below), you can listen to Slack’s former head of product and growth, Merci Grace, talk about why they never implemented a block feature. The answer, like this 90 day limitation, is obvious once you look at it from the lens of a business tool.
When you mistakenly look at Slack as a community tool, this change is bound to upset you. On a personal level, loss aversion sucks, and I’m sorry to lose all of the slack history that my wife and I had.
https://twitter.com/lennysan/status/1546515666420649984?s=21...
According to the analytics of number of message, those infrequent and long running slack channels and users probably can just use email.
Outrage for outrage sake. #2020s
Outrage for outrage sake. #2020s
It's a normal, universal human response to protest when something you're used to is no longer there. Even though I don't share the outrage, there's nothing 'current year'/particularly contemporary about it.
If you were using a free product with limited history and expected not to lose history then I have exactly zero sympathy for you. Even if the free product you were using changed their terms.
I don't use slack outside of work, so nothing from me. Just sayin' how people are so easily outraged w/o really thinking about their needs and technologies. I have no sympathy for those slack users either, cheers.
> Instead of a 10,000-message limit and 5 GB of storage, we are giving full access to the past 90 days of message history and file storage.
This limit sounded reasonable. In fact, I would rather set such limit myself to prevent leaks (for example, my Telegram account is set to delete if I'm inactive for 60 days).
IMO, private chat message SHOULD be temporary by default, and made persistent only if user decides to achieve it. I also don't use chat services to share my PPTs/PDF/other files in general, there are way better place to do such thing than in an IM.
As long as Slack don't delete my account and chat rooms (and it's settings), it's fine by me.
Also... Smart move, Zulip
This limit sounded reasonable. In fact, I would rather set such limit myself to prevent leaks (for example, my Telegram account is set to delete if I'm inactive for 60 days).
IMO, private chat message SHOULD be temporary by default, and made persistent only if user decides to achieve it. I also don't use chat services to share my PPTs/PDF/other files in general, there are way better place to do such thing than in an IM.
As long as Slack don't delete my account and chat rooms (and it's settings), it's fine by me.
Also... Smart move, Zulip
An example of the company making the world better (for its investors):
1. Destroy low-maintenance forums and IRC (often fully owned by their owners) by providing 'better' and more convenient services, let them 'own' a virtual channel and a promise (no public history in order to force the creation of more accounts, paid for by investors but that's a detail)
2. discontinue or make free plans unusable in order to force users to pay and bring investors huge profits
3. sell the company and live your life, laughing at the stupidity of the users who now have no history and no money
1. Destroy low-maintenance forums and IRC (often fully owned by their owners) by providing 'better' and more convenient services, let them 'own' a virtual channel and a promise (no public history in order to force the creation of more accounts, paid for by investors but that's a detail)
2. discontinue or make free plans unusable in order to force users to pay and bring investors huge profits
3. sell the company and live your life, laughing at the stupidity of the users who now have no history and no money
I think that something like this is basically inevitable for most free offerings that deal with data storage.
We saw something similar planned by DockerHub because there were a lot of abandoned container images, GitLab briefly wanted to do something similar to dormant projects and I'm sure that there are plenty other cases like that out there.
That said, this always comes with quite the backlash, so quite possibly it's better to bake in data expiry and cleanup from day 1 if you can get away with it.
Personally, though, I think that more people should host their own Mattermost, Rocket.Chat, Nextcloud Talk or other chat solution instances.
We saw something similar planned by DockerHub because there were a lot of abandoned container images, GitLab briefly wanted to do something similar to dormant projects and I'm sure that there are plenty other cases like that out there.
That said, this always comes with quite the backlash, so quite possibly it's better to bake in data expiry and cleanup from day 1 if you can get away with it.
Personally, though, I think that more people should host their own Mattermost, Rocket.Chat, Nextcloud Talk or other chat solution instances.
My wife and I have used slack for years for our personal chat. The multiple channels made categorizing the messages easy (ex. #house, #kid1, #kid2, #coding, etc). The change in free retention meant we'd lose important messages so we've given up on slack and moved to a different service.
I'm sure our small usage of it won't matter to slack, but the money grab and their insistence that this change was somehow better for me because it was "simpler" when I reached out to their support really soured my opinion of them. I wouldn't recommend them to others in the future.
I'm sure our small usage of it won't matter to slack, but the money grab and their insistence that this change was somehow better for me because it was "simpler" when I reached out to their support really soured my opinion of them. I wouldn't recommend them to others in the future.
I hate this entitled attitude. There is no “money grab”. They own the service, they’re free to set whatever price they want. If you don’t want to pay, don’t use it.
In other words, don’t rely on “free”, as there is no such thing.
In other words, don’t rely on “free”, as there is no such thing.
I don’t think it has anything to do with an entitled attitude. Nobody is demanding that Salesforce provide free services. What I see instead is valid criticism of sleazy business practices. IMO, the fact that Slack won’t unconditionally permit you to exfiltrate your private message data (even after upgrading two tiers to a “Pro” plan!!) says everything that needs to be said.
[deleted]
We stopped using it as you said. TFA is all about how many people did that.
The money grab is in how they've gone about this. They made up an excuse about how this is better for users somehow (as discussed in the article as well). If they want to eliminate the free tier they should just do it.
The money grab is in how they've gone about this. They made up an excuse about how this is better for users somehow (as discussed in the article as well). If they want to eliminate the free tier they should just do it.
Element (Matrix) might be a good alternative!
Every multi-user communication system invented after Usenet tries to fix some shortcoming in Usenet while (sometimes intentionally) throwing out some part of the essential usefulness of Usenet.
Zulip comes pretty close, though.
Zulip comes pretty close, though.
Curious if this is the first sign of what are likely to be more aggressive monetisation changes coming from Salesforce. I'd say that if this is a sign of things to come, it's time to plan your exit if you are on the free tier even if you aren't affected by this change.
The good news is that Slack's success has bred a crop of much more free and open including self-hostable alternatives. It's a good time to check them out. Slack always was a bait and switch as a shallowly open but ultimately data-lockin play with a walled garden.
The good news is that Slack's success has bred a crop of much more free and open including self-hostable alternatives. It's a good time to check them out. Slack always was a bait and switch as a shallowly open but ultimately data-lockin play with a walled garden.
Good. Slack history isn't documentation. Long term data retention seems bad anyway.
While it might suck for some people, the 10k message limit was always there, so if you wanted to keep history - why the hell would you be on slack?
And the people here shouting matrix and "don't go to discord" have never tried to push more non-technical people onto it. It starts with differently named apps on desktop and mobile (sure there are a few multi-platform clients). But then the naming? Back in the old days, IRC for a lot of people was not IRC, but mIRC. Why? Because the icon they had to click had that name. Thank goodness it at least resembled the name of the actual thing they were connecting to, where they could go "IRC? you mean mIRC?".
If I now tell someone to go on matrix - they don't have a matrix app on their phone, Mac or pc, and I have no idea which-one it'll be. Branding and name recognition is important here.
And the people here shouting matrix and "don't go to discord" have never tried to push more non-technical people onto it. It starts with differently named apps on desktop and mobile (sure there are a few multi-platform clients). But then the naming? Back in the old days, IRC for a lot of people was not IRC, but mIRC. Why? Because the icon they had to click had that name. Thank goodness it at least resembled the name of the actual thing they were connecting to, where they could go "IRC? you mean mIRC?".
If I now tell someone to go on matrix - they don't have a matrix app on their phone, Mac or pc, and I have no idea which-one it'll be. Branding and name recognition is important here.
One reason for this change might be all the dead Slack workspaces out there. I’ve been in over a dozen Slack workspaces over the years, and many of them were just used temporarily for one project or another. Slack probably has millions of such zombie workspaces, that pay no money, but with the simple 10k message limit system, they had to keep their data around forever.
This is amazing marketing. I would never know or care about Zulip but I like how they’re dissing Slack so now I’ll keep them in mind.
HACK: If you want to save all of your current slack messages, sign up for https://orbit.love, connect it to slack, and then grab the messages from the API. Not sure how much longer this will work, it takes time and they may catch on.
I do like Orbit as a user, still a relatively new product
I do like Orbit as a user, still a relatively new product
As I was reading your message my brain inserted a second step, where you use a slack bot / api to reinject all the messages back into slack, but with today's date.
Unlimited storage; 90 day retention! Whee!
Unlimited storage; 90 day retention! Whee!
Please understand that Zulip is nightmare software and it's absolutely not a replacement for useful productivity team software. Zulip is a joke (and an unfunny joke at that) for so many reasons. I've worked at three companies that tried and abandoned Zulip, all for good reason.
We have been self-hosting Zulip for about 3 years now and it is immensely popular.
It would be nice if there were a good fail over or cluster model so we could run it at multiple sites.
It would be nice if there were a good fail over or cluster model so we could run it at multiple sites.
I'm a huge fan of Zulip. I use it heavily on leanprover.zulipchat.com (~4000 messages/week). I've never used it in the setting of a company.
What kind of issues did you hit? Doesn't sound fair to me to call Zulip an unfunny joke without providing any serious reason.
What kind of issues did you hit? Doesn't sound fair to me to call Zulip an unfunny joke without providing any serious reason.
That's interesting - I've used Zulip casually and it's always been more responsive and stable than Slack, which has endless UI glitches both on my phone and laptop.
Not to mention that Zulip has some nice features like sane markdown and latex integration.
What has your problems with Zulip been?
Not to mention that Zulip has some nice features like sane markdown and latex integration.
What has your problems with Zulip been?
This will catch a lot of small teams unprepared, but to be honest they should've considered chat as ephemeral, and if something was worth keeping they should've persisted that elsewhere. Also that reminds me of the old days of IRC and how simple it was to keep logs of conversations.
You've got to have a pretty sticky and/or differentiated product before you won't see a lot of price/feature sensitivity in the skew-small groups who would be affected by this.
Slack as a product is pretty good, but it's not wildly better than the other zillion messaging things. If you've got 10-100K people in your Slack, that's a high switching cost, but you're not using the free tier at that point.
I have Slack along with Signal and Telegram and Discord and iMessage and Google Meet and IRC and and and and... some people I need to talk to are on it.
But is it scratching any itch that I have as a small fry that isn't easily scratched elsewhere? Not really.
Slack as a product is pretty good, but it's not wildly better than the other zillion messaging things. If you've got 10-100K people in your Slack, that's a high switching cost, but you're not using the free tier at that point.
I have Slack along with Signal and Telegram and Discord and iMessage and Google Meet and IRC and and and and... some people I need to talk to are on it.
But is it scratching any itch that I have as a small fry that isn't easily scratched elsewhere? Not really.
It's $6.67 per user. Just get a paid account. But no... people will spend hours or days switching to an alternative, and then they have to maintain it which will be even more time. I guess it ends up with: what is your time worth?
So if you have 15 users, pay $100/month? I suppose a senior engineer for Facebook wouldn't have a problem that. More seriously though
> what is your time worth?
What time are you talking about? If you're doing basic chat stuff on Zulip, and the free plan works, what exactly are you going to "maintain" that's worse than paying $1200 a year until you die - or until Slack decides decides they need revenue growth, so they bump up prices to $2000 a year.
> what is your time worth?
What time are you talking about? If you're doing basic chat stuff on Zulip, and the free plan works, what exactly are you going to "maintain" that's worse than paying $1200 a year until you die - or until Slack decides decides they need revenue growth, so they bump up prices to $2000 a year.
I don't know of any other industry, where (I assume everyone here is connected to IT) IT people have such a hard time paying other IT people. Slack has to pay salary, servers, networks, devops, health insurance, rent, etc etc. And people just expect them to be able to send out a free service to everyone, and yet they are even keeping their free tier. They are just changing it a little.
The same would be true for Zulip. I assume their developers need to pay rent and provide for their families. But it's open source, you might argue. Okay, if you have contributed to the project you get 20 free accounts for life. The rest of us can pay a small fee every month, so their developers can pay rent and actually focus on making a better product for us.
The same would be true for Zulip. I assume their developers need to pay rent and provide for their families. But it's open source, you might argue. Okay, if you have contributed to the project you get 20 free accounts for life. The rest of us can pay a small fee every month, so their developers can pay rent and actually focus on making a better product for us.
If you are a company, then you have to move everyone over and they have to learn the new software, and Karen from accounting and others needs a lot of help switching and what the app on her phone. "The old one was much nicer", "I don't know Markdown". Now Karen hates the new system.
If you self-host then you have to pay for a server. That server needs updates and backups so that is even more time. A server on AWS can just disappear overnight, so you need to prepare for that.
And yet people still go to Starbucks and buy expensive coffee without thinking.
If you self-host then you have to pay for a server. That server needs updates and backups so that is even more time. A server on AWS can just disappear overnight, so you need to prepare for that.
And yet people still go to Starbucks and buy expensive coffee without thinking.
Anything self hosted you pay twice. You pay for the infrastructure and you pay for the time lost setting things up. Engineers are really bad at time estimates and they'll argue it's easy and not a big deal. And then they'll end up spending hours/days on it, which by their hourly wages means you are getting a much worse deal than a paid service. And even if you are saving some money, you are still losing time that you might have used more productively.
And if you cut corners and don't do a proper job of self hosting, you are going to pay a third time when it inevitably blows up and needs more time and attention to be fixed; all while your company has no access to whatever the thing was you were self hosting. I've seen Jira go down, self hosted gitlab servers running out of disk (without backups), irc servers go down, jenkins build servers blowing up, etc. Very disruptive when that happens. And preventable if you do a proper job. But that costs extra and you need competent people to be on this. People that could be doing more valuable things instead.
We use freemium accounts Github and Slack. So, we have Github Actions, issue tracking, chat, etc. without actually paying a single dollar. Github actually used to charge and the company I was CTO for at the time was happily paying for it (we upgraded from our self hosted Gitlab because I got tired of dealing with that). But then they removed the limitations on private repositories. So, these days, using Github and Slack for free is kind of a no-brainer for me. I'd consider paying for this stuff even but there simply is no need currently and the added value of the paid only features just isn't that high to me.
MS did what Slack should be doing. They realized that the value of being the number 1 choice for a commodity service is that you end up with an insanely valuable thing: every developer joins your service. They have Linus Torvalds hosting the Linux kernel on Github even. The percentile of developers without a Github account is ridiculously low. And their dominance as the number 1 choice in the corporate world is huge because of that. And there are plenty of ways to monetize being that large other than asking companies to pay per month per user. As soon as they'd force companies to pay, they'd inevitably open up the market to competitors and lose their dominant position. Gitlab is the obvious one. But it is merely the largest of a very long tail of alternatives. As long as MS keeps their pricing as it is, they get to keep their position.
Slack is dominating corporate chat in a way that MS never really achieved despite trying very hard with various products. However, chat is a commodity and Slack succeeded in on-boarding lots of companies and teams by giving it away for free. As soon as it stops being free, people will vote with their feet because there are plenty of other free/cheap options. They should prevent that at all cost and focus on finding better ways to convert some of their users to paid users. Shrinking their user base is counter productive for that.
And if you cut corners and don't do a proper job of self hosting, you are going to pay a third time when it inevitably blows up and needs more time and attention to be fixed; all while your company has no access to whatever the thing was you were self hosting. I've seen Jira go down, self hosted gitlab servers running out of disk (without backups), irc servers go down, jenkins build servers blowing up, etc. Very disruptive when that happens. And preventable if you do a proper job. But that costs extra and you need competent people to be on this. People that could be doing more valuable things instead.
We use freemium accounts Github and Slack. So, we have Github Actions, issue tracking, chat, etc. without actually paying a single dollar. Github actually used to charge and the company I was CTO for at the time was happily paying for it (we upgraded from our self hosted Gitlab because I got tired of dealing with that). But then they removed the limitations on private repositories. So, these days, using Github and Slack for free is kind of a no-brainer for me. I'd consider paying for this stuff even but there simply is no need currently and the added value of the paid only features just isn't that high to me.
MS did what Slack should be doing. They realized that the value of being the number 1 choice for a commodity service is that you end up with an insanely valuable thing: every developer joins your service. They have Linus Torvalds hosting the Linux kernel on Github even. The percentile of developers without a Github account is ridiculously low. And their dominance as the number 1 choice in the corporate world is huge because of that. And there are plenty of ways to monetize being that large other than asking companies to pay per month per user. As soon as they'd force companies to pay, they'd inevitably open up the market to competitors and lose their dominant position. Gitlab is the obvious one. But it is merely the largest of a very long tail of alternatives. As long as MS keeps their pricing as it is, they get to keep their position.
Slack is dominating corporate chat in a way that MS never really achieved despite trying very hard with various products. However, chat is a commodity and Slack succeeded in on-boarding lots of companies and teams by giving it away for free. As soon as it stops being free, people will vote with their feet because there are plenty of other free/cheap options. They should prevent that at all cost and focus on finding better ways to convert some of their users to paid users. Shrinking their user base is counter productive for that.
Welcome to the "Extenguish" phase of the business model ladies and gents. Now that you're all dependent on their product they're going to charge for all the free features that made you embrace it. What, did you think their business model was to generate a profit by giving everything away for free forever?
PersonallyI stopped liking them after they ditched the irc gateway. That was when I realized that all this silicon valley free-service bullshit is just a short-term ploy to expand their customer-base as large as they can before the free VC money runs out and they have to generate a profit somehow.
PersonallyI stopped liking them after they ditched the irc gateway. That was when I realized that all this silicon valley free-service bullshit is just a short-term ploy to expand their customer-base as large as they can before the free VC money runs out and they have to generate a profit somehow.
Imagine a ransomware company gives you a free SSD for your home computer, and then encrypts data making it inaccessible after a few months, and then reduces that to 90 days. That SSD doesn't seem so free after all!
It is about time newer generations understand no one lives out of thin air, and other professionals pay for their worktools.
Or they can keep jumping from free tool to free tool, while complaining some good ones end up vanishing.
Or they can keep jumping from free tool to free tool, while complaining some good ones end up vanishing.
My favorite is still Stackoverflow’s channels for community discussions. It sucks that SO didn’t find time to invest in the channels. I hate Slack and Discord for creating broken siloed communities.
The 90 day limit is better for large groups. We have 12,000 students in a free slack chat and we can't see yesterday's messages because they're past the message limit.
I tried using Zulip for a short period of time at a small company with lots of chat and was completely overwhelmed by the volume of messages that that I had alerts for. There didn't seem to be any obvious way to choose not to include the whole company in a conversation by default, allowing them instead to opt in. I had thousands of unread messages and just declared bankruptcy by deciding not to read all of them. I mostly had to just wait for someone to @mention me.
To me this looks like better plan. Instead of unpredictable mechanism on when the messages disappear from you history, it's now predictable and you can act according to it.
Oh cry me a river.
You don't pay for it - you are not a customer, you're probably the product.
You don't own the server - you dont own the data on this server/service (anymore).
You cant afford to pay for such service - declare bankruptcy, obviously your business is not sustainable.
You cant afford to pay for the needed SLA and your business won't survive a few days downtime - declare bankruptcy, obviously your business is not sustainable.
The 90 day cap on the search history essentially turns the free plan into a time-limited trial. Slack is probably happy to part ways with whoever still cannot justify their subscription price after that time. They will have figured that these users are not likely to upgrade to a paid tier at a later date either. As a for-profit entity, Slack has no reason to offer a free service to a longtail of non-paying users.
From a business perspective, this makes perfectly good sense.
From a business perspective, this makes perfectly good sense.
> whoever still cannot justify their subscription price after that time
There's also a lost opportunity in not selling these users a subscription at a lower price. Products like Gmail partly succeeded because that's what people used at home, so they wanted to use something equally good at work.
If you push users towards alternative in their private life, you risk that they want to bring new product into work.
There's also a lost opportunity in not selling these users a subscription at a lower price. Products like Gmail partly succeeded because that's what people used at home, so they wanted to use something equally good at work.
If you push users towards alternative in their private life, you risk that they want to bring new product into work.
Can't you use some channel bot to archive everything?
If you're upset with changes like this, you weren't using Slack as it is intended to be used. Nowhere is Slack advertising itself as a data archival platform, a file storage, or a project management software. It's a chat application.
Look at all the reactions in the article, they all are using Slack in ways it is not supposed to be used.
Also note that the article is written by a direct competitor of Slack...
Look at all the reactions in the article, they all are using Slack in ways it is not supposed to be used.
Also note that the article is written by a direct competitor of Slack...
I would take this post with a grain of salt given it's written by a direct competitor who has many reasons to have a biased point of view. That they noticed people signing up in troves on their platform is a totally valid point. They do mention that fact, but a big disclaimer is the kind of information you'd like to see at the top of the article.
It's on their corporate blog; I'm totally unfazed by the lack of disclaimer since it's literally running under their banner.
Do you have any issues with the article?
Do you have any issues with the article?
I didn't know Zulip or what they did prior to reading this, so I guess it's also contextual. I understand why they would advertize that they didn't change their plan even though Slack did and they are indeed free to post whatever they want on their corporate blog. I would just take it with a grain of salt given the underlying interests.
Oh, I agree completely that the article should be taken with a grain of salt but don’t need a disclaimer. I also didn’t really see anything in the article that made me suspicious.
More power to Tabbot and the team over there, but for an active community slack I'm on, 90 days is an extension from 10k messages
> However, Slack’s policies do not allow organizations on the Free or Pro plans to export their private channels and private message history.
I guess, but individual users can still periodically sync everything they have access to via regular API to some database for archival purposes. That includes the private messages. You can workaround these limits that way.
I guess, but individual users can still periodically sync everything they have access to via regular API to some database for archival purposes. That includes the private messages. You can workaround these limits that way.
OpenSource projects who relied on “free” slack were told by many, many people they were being stupid. And here is why.
I don’t understand the criticism. I worked with a lot of free Slack accounts. None of these had 90 days of history. Would say 20-30 days or something like that on average. To get 90 days history is an improvement for most larger consumers on free tiers. No?
My rather large extended friend group uses Slack free quite heavily. We have less than 90 days history right now so are looking forward to the change. It is also nice to know exactly how long messages will be around for. I think people are overreacting.
I'm just wondering why these services need centralised hosting to begin with. Peer-to-peer networking isn't new, Blockchain as a tech could take care of decentralised but shared information.
And I don't mean that a company of 10 people depends on each other, their messages are also hashed, seeded, encrypted, etc. on the entire network. Each company and each individual can have their own unique key that's used to make their own messages and content readable again.
Of course, a company should be able to choose to only share messages across their own employees and not to anyone outside, if they are wary of security issues. Messages could have set expirations, too, etc.
We shouldn't need an expensive middle-man. It should be a free open-source project.
But I'm not a networking expert. Is this simply not feasible for other reasons? I'd love to work on such a project as a software engineer, for sure.
And I don't mean that a company of 10 people depends on each other, their messages are also hashed, seeded, encrypted, etc. on the entire network. Each company and each individual can have their own unique key that's used to make their own messages and content readable again.
Of course, a company should be able to choose to only share messages across their own employees and not to anyone outside, if they are wary of security issues. Messages could have set expirations, too, etc.
We shouldn't need an expensive middle-man. It should be a free open-source project.
But I'm not a networking expert. Is this simply not feasible for other reasons? I'd love to work on such a project as a software engineer, for sure.
"But Clack’s marketing team isn’t happy with that! They ask the analytics team what can be done..."
(sigh) If meetings and analysis are required to assess alternatives to freemium collaboration apps, then you can afford the $9 per month :-/
(sigh) If meetings and analysis are required to assess alternatives to freemium collaboration apps, then you can afford the $9 per month :-/
> Your chat history should be a valuable knowledge repository
No, no, no. Anything important needs to go into a document with some kind of shared permanence. Chats are not not not documentation! Have been burned by this too many times.
No, no, no. Anything important needs to go into a document with some kind of shared permanence. Chats are not not not documentation! Have been burned by this too many times.
I mean, where are we gonna go? Microsoft Teams? Damn thing is terrible.
I guess Discord can be a option.
I guess Discord can be a option.
A new one will pop up.
It is the chat client circle of life. An old chat client has to do something unpopular to obtain some return on investment. Users look for a new solution. They find one that is still in the "basically mature but trying to grow marketshare by using investor money to provide services and features for free." It works well while that investor money holds out/as long as they can get more ("look at our user growth!"). Eventually investors get tired of paying for things, look for an ROI, and they have to do something unpopular...
Hopefully the "gamer" branding will keep Discord in their niche for a little longer. It will be a shame when we all have to transfer our gaming groups to something different.
It is the chat client circle of life. An old chat client has to do something unpopular to obtain some return on investment. Users look for a new solution. They find one that is still in the "basically mature but trying to grow marketshare by using investor money to provide services and features for free." It works well while that investor money holds out/as long as they can get more ("look at our user growth!"). Eventually investors get tired of paying for things, look for an ROI, and they have to do something unpopular...
Hopefully the "gamer" branding will keep Discord in their niche for a little longer. It will be a shame when we all have to transfer our gaming groups to something different.
...Zulip, the author of this blog post?
A cheap VPS could easily host your own Zulip or Mattermost server. Then you can be in charge of your own data.
Maybe our needs aren't terribly great, but Teams works pretty well in our enterprise. ~3000 users.
If teams works great for you I don’t think I want to work there.
Some idiot higher up thought it was a great idea to switch from Slack to Teams, presumably because they have a vendetta against it, and our communication experience and effectiveness (especially cross-border) absolutely crumpled.
My biggest problem with Teams is the same as Jira. It gives you so much rope to hang yourself with.
Everybody and their mother wants to create a whole Team for their pet project, and then invites the whole organisation, because there is no way to discover existing teams.
Some idiot higher up thought it was a great idea to switch from Slack to Teams, presumably because they have a vendetta against it, and our communication experience and effectiveness (especially cross-border) absolutely crumpled.
My biggest problem with Teams is the same as Jira. It gives you so much rope to hang yourself with.
Everybody and their mother wants to create a whole Team for their pet project, and then invites the whole organisation, because there is no way to discover existing teams.
MS Teams is garbage. When I did some consulting for Microsoft recently I was added to a Slack channel. Even the engineers at Microsoft I work with don't use it.
One developer at my company uses Teams for video meetings instead of our corporate Zoom account. I don't know why. So like 5-10% of the meetings I go to I have to suffer through Teams' inferior audio and interactive experience.
One developer at my company uses Teams for video meetings instead of our corporate Zoom account. I don't know why. So like 5-10% of the meetings I go to I have to suffer through Teams' inferior audio and interactive experience.
I work for 4 different companies. Each one have Teams. I can't even put the 4 accounts in the desktop app. I can do in the mobile, but not in the desktop.
I had to install containers in firefox, and open 4 tabs to be able to use the 4 accounts at the same time. And of course, because Im using firefox, I can't use the camera in video calls because microsoft allows only chromium browsers to do so.
And the linux client is bug as hell.
I had to install containers in firefox, and open 4 tabs to be able to use the 4 accounts at the same time. And of course, because Im using firefox, I can't use the camera in video calls because microsoft allows only chromium browsers to do so.
And the linux client is bug as hell.
Teams is a mess, but it's a Microsoft supported mess that integrates with the rest of their mess. Granted I run version 1.5.00.23452 as of today which is even more messy than public.
Telegram is pretty good
Good time for NetMeeting to make a return.
Google Workspace Chat! jk
I'm using google workspace in my personal projects and when I'm the one sending invites to reunions. Works from the browser, is lightweight.
I hope this is a wake up call for OSS projects that communicate from Slack to migrate to discord. And for discord based projects to have a plan to commit valuable conversations to a more open and permanent record.
I hope this is a wake up call for OSS projects that communicate via Slack to migrate to Zulip and turn on the public thread option so those chats show up in search results
Going from one closed ecosystem to another closed ecosystem sounds like the makings for having to do that migration again when Discord does something evil this time next year
I'm looking at you, kubernetes.slack.com
Going from one closed ecosystem to another closed ecosystem sounds like the makings for having to do that migration again when Discord does something evil this time next year
I'm looking at you, kubernetes.slack.com
I see a general move towards "reducing costs at all costs", which at least for me, indicates that people are getting ready for the upcoming Autumn/Winter Economic crisis...
Bring back mailing lists; ban Outlook from top posting to them.
Distributed forums. Tada!
Distributed forums. Tada!
I’ve never subscribed to replacing documentation with Slack search. Use markdown, wysiwyg, whatever fits the org and restore good hygiene. The culture will probably improve as well.
Slack makes no momey from free users.
So how does free users being upset and leaving hurt slack?
Maybe that will help bolster a competitor.
But ultimately Slack wins, some free users will convert to paid subscribers.
So how does free users being upset and leaving hurt slack?
Maybe that will help bolster a competitor.
But ultimately Slack wins, some free users will convert to paid subscribers.
How does Slack make money off the free plan? If they don't, I don't see that anyone has any business complaining about any changes they make to it whatsoever
>>I have recommended Slack for almost any project! I can't do that anymore... :-(
Yeah, don't recommend something you have no control over DONT DO IT....EVER!!!
Yeah, don't recommend something you have no control over DONT DO IT....EVER!!!
Talk about entitled. First off, this is a CHAT system, not document storage. If you want permanence, send E-mail (and archive it).
Second, it’s FREE. Case closed.
Second, it’s FREE. Case closed.
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We've looked at paying for our free slack a few times but the pricing is just far too high to take serious for the amount of users we have.
Not all software should be or can be free. If you’re using a FREE product you should have zero expectation of service or reliance on that product.
Specially no service you don't host yourself can be free. It can be paid by adds, but expecting someone else to run servers for free for you is insanity.
While this is a slimy tactic from Slack, I doubt that organisations significantly under the 10k message limit over 90 days are actually benefitting from it.
That’s 110 messages a day. Fewer than ~5 users and regular personal IM applications are probably easier to use than Slack. Fewer than 20 messages a day and the messages are probably long enough form that email or documents would be a better option.
Slack is a lot of overhead to read just a few messages, and is definitely best when multiple channels become necessary, and when not using it for email-length messages.
That’s 110 messages a day. Fewer than ~5 users and regular personal IM applications are probably easier to use than Slack. Fewer than 20 messages a day and the messages are probably long enough form that email or documents would be a better option.
Slack is a lot of overhead to read just a few messages, and is definitely best when multiple channels become necessary, and when not using it for email-length messages.
I am sorry to report from the front lines that such users and use cases do, in fact, exist.
Sure, but are they getting more value out of slack? I’ve been in many slack channels that would be better as email, IM, or other formats. I feel like many jump on the slack bandwagon because it’s popular rather than critically evaluating it next to other options.
What do you feel it brings for these very small and low volume use-cases over alternatives?
What do you feel it brings for these very small and low volume use-cases over alternatives?
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Head of product of Slack recently said in an interview: [paraphrased] "We don't want to make money, the founder wants adoption"
Boo hoo. Either use open source of pay for the service. It's bizarre that people think everything should be free and spoonfed to them
I would imagine this is the first wave of changes to come. Salesforce wants to see bigger profits so more and more changes will come.
Gen F? People who demand free stuff and complain like babies instead of building a solution based on an existing docker image in 1 day
I think it would be cool to be able to pay on the user side and allow me to have some number of workspaces with distinct friend groups.
Why would you expect a business to provide a free service in perpetuity? Some people ar eso entitled and naive.
An exodus?
An exodus of free tier users whom Slack doesn’t want anyways, or an exodus of paying customers?
An exodus of free tier users whom Slack doesn’t want anyways, or an exodus of paying customers?
They should just make it to 3 months -or- 10.000 messages and everybody will be happy.
Get a $10 VPS and install Rocket Chat. Same functionality, supports hundreds of users.
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The main competitor of your paid product cannot be your free product.
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I thought that all the cool kids are squatting in Discord now?
They finally got us guys! is anyone surprised at all?
How many new users is Zulip picking up every day?
If people have small communities on slack they can use Niche Community https://niche.community
I find that landing page insulting to anyone who might want to learn what that product is and why I should use it. So your webpage allows me to play basketball or go hiking together, is that what it does? Only by going to "the changelog" link, because I'm a curious fellow, does one find the discovery page and see an actual implementation: https://niche.community/niche/pzd3x67l0gmqn/hackernews/
> What is the current stage of Niche Community?
> Niche Community is in the early stages of its development.
Yeah, no kidding
> What is the current stage of Niche Community?
> Niche Community is in the early stages of its development.
Yeah, no kidding
I hate the state of chat right now. IRC is the kind of open standard and FOSS technology we need, but terribly outdated, Slack and Co. are shiny but inflexible and locked in.
Saleforce's style, force you to sale
Go Mattermost!
ffs just use IRC. Not proprietary. You can host it yourself. All your base are belong to… yourself.
To where? Another free platform? You want quality services, without ads, you need to pay for them. Get used to it.
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my first thought was: why not move to discord for you hobby project?
my first thought was: why not move to Zulip in general?
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For users in the European Economic Area, could they get the private message export by making a subject access request using the GDPR?
Cough up.
guilded.gg is a great alternative for this use case (and many others). Transparency: I work there.
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So many people talking about how extremely valuable it is to them and yet they won't bother paying for it.
If you are running a small Open Source community, it is close to impossible to pay for it.
If you run a small open source community, you should run an open source community-enabling piece of software probably. Like Zulip.
A cheap VPS could run something like Zulip or Mattermost or phpBB or other ways to communicate. Then that open source community would be in control of their own data.
We’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas!
I pay for Slack, but I'm also part of a number of non-organization communities. They're more like the phpBB communities of the 2000s. Even if I were willing to pay to be a member of those (which I probably am, but not to the tune of $8 each), the organizational overhead of collecting dues from everyone towards Slack fees wouldn't be worth the effort.
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What is it about free services that brings out the worst complaints from people? I understand the paid plans aren’t cheap for small projects, but then maybe don’t rely on a free service for archiving important information.
The CUE team was looking at a $8k monthly bill for keeping Slack. The money Slack wants can be pretty outrageous when most users don't even chat. Add on top that a single user is likely in several orgs, the money they make per user is approaching usury, if you'll pardon the pun
CUE is keeping Slack for now and accepting limited history
https://github.com/cue-lang/cue/discussions/1839 has an overview of the situation and a discussion of alternatives being considered
CUE is keeping Slack for now and accepting limited history
https://github.com/cue-lang/cue/discussions/1839 has an overview of the situation and a discussion of alternatives being considered
Zulip is a very good fit for open source communities, and much much better for communication than Slack. I hate how Slack encourages you to say everything in the main channel, threads are close to impossible to use.
They're a tiny section off to the side and you can't easily navigate between them, it's really badly done.
They're a tiny section off to the side and you can't easily navigate between them, it's really badly done.
It's improved and is now resizable, still much much better than discord
The main problem with alternatives is integrations, bots, and similar. The ecosystems are not as available, at least that is the impression
The main problem with alternatives is integrations, bots, and similar. The ecosystems are not as available, at least that is the impression
Yeah, the ecosystem and integrations is definitely where Slack has the advantage. Still, I'd rather give up the integrations than the much improved communication.
I think the real problem is that people can only really support having one chat application open continuously at a time. Maybe two for some, if you account for the non-chat things like text & email. Notification / source burnout. I have to use slack professionally, I'm not going to add another tool.
That's why someone was suggesting mattermost (iirc on a friday), as something that bridges all the chat platforms and gives you a single tool
That's why someone was suggesting mattermost (iirc on a friday), as something that bridges all the chat platforms and gives you a single tool
Hmm, what do you mean? I'm talking about using Zulip instead of Slack. If I'm going to use another similar service, I might as well use Slack itself. Zulip is miles ahead.
I'm saying my employer, who pays for slack so this whole thing is a no-op, means I have to have slack open. I'm not adding another chat platform to my repertoire, that is the real problem of incumbent
If you read the CUE discussion I linked, you will see several people making this same point
If you read the CUE discussion I linked, you will see several people making this same point
Well yes, how could you? If the rest of the company is on Slack, you using a different service wouldn't work. The question is where does the employer (or, specifically, the CUE team) go if they don't want to pay for Slack any more.
Let's clarify a few things
1: I am not employed by CUE. I am their biggest fan and cheerleader
2: CUE has never paid for Slack
The context is that I have slack open, I am in 12+ groups. I've tried adding other platforms like discord and keeping them open.
The point is that, as a human, I only have so much attention, and having more than one chat program open at a time, in addition to the other messaging streams we are subjected to, it's a non-starter.
For my own sanity, only one chat platform can be regularly open. Thus follows the network effect and incumbent arguments
1: I am not employed by CUE. I am their biggest fan and cheerleader
2: CUE has never paid for Slack
The context is that I have slack open, I am in 12+ groups. I've tried adding other platforms like discord and keeping them open.
The point is that, as a human, I only have so much attention, and having more than one chat program open at a time, in addition to the other messaging streams we are subjected to, it's a non-starter.
For my own sanity, only one chat platform can be regularly open. Thus follows the network effect and incumbent arguments
People don't value things that are cheap or free. Anyone who has spent enough time doing work on commission knows this. If you set your price too low, you'll get customers of quality proportional to that price, some of whom will believe it's their right to ask the moon of you (or their money back). By raising your price, you won't have as many customers, but the customers you do keep will likely be high of quality and much easier to work with. Even if they request more work of you, they will likely make it worth your while.
I noticed this as an independent web developer. When I charged very little, all my clients believed they could make unlimited changes to the expectations of the project, no matter how impractical or time consuming. When I charged what at the time I thought was way more than I was actually worth, someone still ended up paying me and they actually respected my expertise while leaving me alone most of the time.
I noticed this as an independent web developer. When I charged very little, all my clients believed they could make unlimited changes to the expectations of the project, no matter how impractical or time consuming. When I charged what at the time I thought was way more than I was actually worth, someone still ended up paying me and they actually respected my expertise while leaving me alone most of the time.
In general your worst customers are the ones who see no value in your service; which tends to collect in the “free” tier.
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Just migrate to Discord?
The main advantage that Slack has, especially for many people in non-technical roles, is the just-professional-enough user interface over the casual look of Discord.
I've been in Discord servers for volunteer work, and while it generally works pretty great, the system feels a lot more casual to users (e.g. with non-human profile pictures). On the other end of the spectrum, Microsoft Teams is almost too professional, and has an emotional association of being too corporate/formal for more pleasant use.
Discord is also tougher to create group conversations easily (you need to be Friends first). Though, if message history is really that important, it could be a worthwhile tradeoff.
I've been in Discord servers for volunteer work, and while it generally works pretty great, the system feels a lot more casual to users (e.g. with non-human profile pictures). On the other end of the spectrum, Microsoft Teams is almost too professional, and has an emotional association of being too corporate/formal for more pleasant use.
Discord is also tougher to create group conversations easily (you need to be Friends first). Though, if message history is really that important, it could be a worthwhile tradeoff.
> The main advantage that Slack has, especially for many people in non-technical roles, is the just-professional-enough user interface over the casual look of Discord.
1) That's not much of a moat for Slack. If Discord were serious about entering the enterprise market, and there's sufficient user feedback on this point, I'm sure they could adapt with a few month's work.
2) I've heard similar critique about Slack in the past as well. IMHO professional vs casual comes down to expectation and familiarity. As more youths who are accustomed to Discord enter the workforce, the casual connotation would go away.
There was a time when e-mail was considered too casual and unfit for professional communication, too.
1) That's not much of a moat for Slack. If Discord were serious about entering the enterprise market, and there's sufficient user feedback on this point, I'm sure they could adapt with a few month's work.
2) I've heard similar critique about Slack in the past as well. IMHO professional vs casual comes down to expectation and familiarity. As more youths who are accustomed to Discord enter the workforce, the casual connotation would go away.
There was a time when e-mail was considered too casual and unfit for professional communication, too.
> Microsoft Team is almost too professional
The problem with Teams is not that it's "too professional". The problem is that there is more spacing in the interface than there is actual text. You know, the conversations - the thing it's meant to do best. Threads are a mess to follow, channels are awkward... If professional == terrible UX, then you may be right.
And let's not even talk about how unstable and unreliable it is.
The problem with Teams is not that it's "too professional". The problem is that there is more spacing in the interface than there is actual text. You know, the conversations - the thing it's meant to do best. Threads are a mess to follow, channels are awkward... If professional == terrible UX, then you may be right.
And let's not even talk about how unstable and unreliable it is.
It depends on the user. You could argue that many users in technical roles would see a professional interface, as one with less white space that allows for more information on the screen at once. However, many users in non-technical roles actually prefer more white space. This is why the default options for newer software redesigns (e.g. Outlook) favor more white space, with a "compact" options in the settings for users who prefer more information.
I think the Teams design team tried to compromise by making the interface approachable enough for the greatest number of users. But for one reason or another (strategy to differentiate from Slack, company DNA, or other reasons), they couldn't make the interface subjectively feel more casual and less professional.
Everything from the name ("Microsoft Teams") to the logo (a bunch of people, versus the Slack logo with eyes and a mouth) is more serious, even if the team tried to soften it a bit by using less formal language in the interface.
I think the Teams design team tried to compromise by making the interface approachable enough for the greatest number of users. But for one reason or another (strategy to differentiate from Slack, company DNA, or other reasons), they couldn't make the interface subjectively feel more casual and less professional.
Everything from the name ("Microsoft Teams") to the logo (a bunch of people, versus the Slack logo with eyes and a mouth) is more serious, even if the team tried to soften it a bit by using less formal language in the interface.
100% agreed; Teams UX is awful
> Microsoft Teams is almost too professional
Teams target is Corporations so it should be professional?
Microsoft has tries to make Teams "less professional" or more causal and people hate the changes. They recently changed the theme of the emoticons "Microsoft Fluent Emojis were brought to life to embrace expressiveness and play" they seem to be well received by non-professional users, or even professionals in "creative" fields, but for traditional corporate users they look terrible and are not well received at all, the feedback asking for the return of the traditional emojis has 10's of thousands of votes.
for work I want a professional platform, I want teams to be a professional tool for professionals
Teams target is Corporations so it should be professional?
Microsoft has tries to make Teams "less professional" or more causal and people hate the changes. They recently changed the theme of the emoticons "Microsoft Fluent Emojis were brought to life to embrace expressiveness and play" they seem to be well received by non-professional users, or even professionals in "creative" fields, but for traditional corporate users they look terrible and are not well received at all, the feedback asking for the return of the traditional emojis has 10's of thousands of votes.
for work I want a professional platform, I want teams to be a professional tool for professionals
Microsoft is in a tough place in that respect, because its user base is so broad by design (as a default program in Windows 11 now). It can never be fully optimized for professionals in formal environments, nor professionals who prefer more casual environments.
This Pirates of Silicon Valley scene comes to mind [0]. Teams may not be the most optimized software for formal versus informal users, but that doesn't matter because it's trying to have a broad appeal.
https://youtu.be/UFcb-XF1RPQ?t=131
This Pirates of Silicon Valley scene comes to mind [0]. Teams may not be the most optimized software for formal versus informal users, but that doesn't matter because it's trying to have a broad appeal.
https://youtu.be/UFcb-XF1RPQ?t=131
They are in a tough space by their own making because they keep refusing what the market has been telling them for decades. They need to SEPARATE their consumer making business from their Corporate business.
For example
Lync was separate from Skype... Business and Consumer
Then they got rid of Lync in favor of Skype for business... Bad
Then comes Teams, designed from the Ground up for Corporate. Dropping Skype for Business like many many wanted, a separate corporate app
Now with Win11 they are making the same mistake again with "Teams" the default app in windows 11, which is different client than the "business teams app" and at launch could not even connect to organizational teams tenants only "Microsoft" teams accounts which should be called Skype....
Skype should remain the consumer / family platform, if they want to bring "teams like" features to that great. Teams should remain a business app
For example
Lync was separate from Skype... Business and Consumer
Then they got rid of Lync in favor of Skype for business... Bad
Then comes Teams, designed from the Ground up for Corporate. Dropping Skype for Business like many many wanted, a separate corporate app
Now with Win11 they are making the same mistake again with "Teams" the default app in windows 11, which is different client than the "business teams app" and at launch could not even connect to organizational teams tenants only "Microsoft" teams accounts which should be called Skype....
Skype should remain the consumer / family platform, if they want to bring "teams like" features to that great. Teams should remain a business app
Just migrate to Zulip?
Just migrate to Mattermost?
Just host your own IRC server and migrate to IRC? /s
Or just use a popular, stable, free IRC network such as libera.chat.
A lot of very good IRC clients are available for free.
IRCCloud is a good starting point for a lot of people: excellent UI/UX, a free tier, and a very inexpensive paid tier (around 4 USD/month).
Create as many channels as you like.
A lot of very good IRC clients are available for free.
IRCCloud is a good starting point for a lot of people: excellent UI/UX, a free tier, and a very inexpensive paid tier (around 4 USD/month).
Create as many channels as you like.
This, but without the /s.
I tried this and the server crashed a ton and was unstable; I used their official deployment guides to a DigitalOcean VPS. Nuked the VPS and stuck with Slack.
I'll probably give Zulip a try before I go back to Mattermost.
I'll probably give Zulip a try before I go back to Mattermost.
I can say plenty of bad things about Mattermost, but it's been completely stable on my cheapo Digitalocean VPS, running night and day for at least three and a half years.
yeah, ive been running mattermost on a server for years. Very stable.
Just migrate to SMS?
Discord doesn’t have any limitations on message history, or the amount of messages.
No, discord is not a good alternative. We just have to wait until they pull the rug from under their free users in order to aggressively monetize. And I think that will hurt much more than Slack.
So, Element/Matrix it is, then? I'm not sure how it holds up to slack, having never touched Slack myself, however it fills the Discord niche for me.
not just that, they're also incredibly hostile to users trying to retain privacy.
they're requiring phone number validation just after registration or you run the risk that they suddenly lock your account, demanding a phone number for "abuse prevention". depending on ip reputation and possibly other factors it may be impossible to use it in the first place without providing a phone number.
they're requiring phone number validation just after registration or you run the risk that they suddenly lock your account, demanding a phone number for "abuse prevention". depending on ip reputation and possibly other factors it may be impossible to use it in the first place without providing a phone number.
I like, and use, Discord daily, and like it a lot.
But I have to agree: Eventually, management will start to more aggressively monetize it (i.e., "pull the rug from under their free users").
Truly free (e.g., IRC) alternatives seem like the only long-term solution, otherwise people will keep stumbling from one commercial platform to another, because they never last.
But I have to agree: Eventually, management will start to more aggressively monetize it (i.e., "pull the rug from under their free users").
Truly free (e.g., IRC) alternatives seem like the only long-term solution, otherwise people will keep stumbling from one commercial platform to another, because they never last.
A free tier is a loss-leader, intended to support sales of the paid product.
If too many “…have been happily using Slack’s free plan for years”, then Slack will have to change the terms.
Generally, storage and access to storage cost money. If you aren’t paying for it, it is definitely temporary, whether anyone says it explicitly or not. I don’t just mean in a “nothing lasts forever” way, but that it will gone in the relatively short term. This is just reality.