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Show HN: Dock – Slack minus the bloat, tax, and 90-day memory loss

getdock.io

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Re: Show HN: Dock – Slack minus the bloat, tax, and 90-day memory loss

#11

Post by zeras »

Disclaimer: I'm developing a chat app/serivce as well, but it's not a Slack/Teams competitor.

I personally would love to see real alternatives to Slack and Teams.

Discord has Stoat (formerly "Revolt") and a newer app called "Root" but both of those have a long way to go to replace Discord.

Maybe I am atypical, but to me the biggest problem with Slack is not the 90-day retention (because I would assume any paid version should include message retention), but rather the per-user pricing.

Given your current pricing (at least what you show right now), it seems like your team-based pricing model is a much better selling point for your service over something like Slack or Teams which use per-user pricing, assuming you offer most of the features that typical Slack/Teams clients need.

The only issue I see with pricing is your free tier might ultimately undermine your revenue since the only differences between it and the first paid tier are 15 more users and priority support (which most people should never need).

Re: Show HN: Dock – Slack minus the bloat, tax, and 90-day memory loss

#14

Post by ramraj07 »

a-dub wrote: post #12

it seems like a product launching in this space in 2026 should have seamless and default e2ee for everything...

E2ee meaning what? Im assuming for compliance reasons any company needs to be able to access all of their internal chats?

Re: Show HN: Dock – Slack minus the bloat, tax, and 90-day memory loss

#15

Post by calvinmorrison »

pedalpete wrote: post #5

I'm with you on the frustration with Slack and every month when I see our bill I consider forcing the company to change. My co-founder and I tried moving to Google Chat. We already pay for workspace so why not. What kept us on slack is the external partners who are on slack. This is a bigger deal than you might think. Google chat doesn't allow you to add external members unless they were added at the creation of the…

> What kept us on slack is the external partners who are on slack. This is a bigger deal than you might think.

We are there as well. Most partners and clients use Windows. Most of them therefore had exchange and moved to the cloud. Most of them got 'Teams' for free in the package, chat and meetings.

Now we see a zoom link and go 'euuuuugh', yuck. hipster yuck.

Give me Teams

Upsides seem to be, its back to xmpp where we can communicate with anyone

Downside is, its total lock-in to microsoft.

Re: Show HN: Dock – Slack minus the bloat, tax, and 90-day memory loss

#16

Post by 1123581321 »

I don't know if I like the marketing. A deeply discounted product obviously has some appeal, but it's at odds with the "chat that just works" messaging that suggests an advantage in reliability or UI and that will realistically take time to mature enough to be at parity, let alone ahead.

Re: Show HN: Dock – Slack minus the bloat, tax, and 90-day memory loss

#18

Post by mbreese »

ramraj07 wrote: post #14
a-dub wrote: post #12

it seems like a product launching in this space in 2026 should have seamless and default e2ee for everything...

E2ee meaning what? Im assuming for compliance reasons any company needs to be able to access all of their internal chats?

Not the OP, but I’m assuming they meant end-to-end-encryption.

The company (customer) would be able to see their chats, but the provider (Dock) would not. I don’t think you’d need to have the encryption on a per-user level, but you could. The main point being that the customer’s chats would only be visible to them, not Dock. It would make some features more difficult though, namely search.

I’m not sure it’s entirely required, but I’d expect it as an option in the non-free tiers.

Re: Show HN: Dock – Slack minus the bloat, tax, and 90-day memory loss

#19

Post by browningstreet »

koziserek wrote: post #10

can someone tell me why won't a matrix server suffice in most situations? stable protocol, ability to federate, rooms/channels... what is lacking?

matrix, element.. too confusing

i use slack with one other person. we've been using it for 10 years. we pay every once in a while and download our archives. but i haven't found anything that's as useful, media-friendly, preview-friendly, and thread friendly as slack. we keep looking, but we always stay on slack.

Re: Show HN: Dock – Slack minus the bloat, tax, and 90-day memory loss

#20

Post by kevin061 »

Just another SaaS whose promises we are forced to trust, but have no way of ensuring they keep them. No self-hosting option?

I really don't aee how anyone would migrate to this. The "bloat" of Slack is also years of people making third-party integrations work, which Dock will probably never have until and unless it gains a significant amount of regular users.

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