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

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

#81

Post by dangus »

stevage wrote: post #79

This caught my eye: > $50 /month > $300/year if paid annually I've never seen such a steep discount for annual payment. 50%! Whereas this, under the "what we don't do": > Feature circus > Workflows, canvases, clips, huddles, lists... When did chat get this complicated? This is not very believable. This new product doesn't have those things because they haven't had time to build them yet. They will. Because there will…

I see nothing mentioned about integrating webhooks or some kind of similar feature. The Slack app ecosystem and the general ease of integrating literally anything into it is the revolution of the whole thing.

It’s great that this is “Slack with no features/bloat and cheap” but I’m not sure the creators of this project realize how cheap Slack already is.

If you’re hiring employees, paying under ten bucks a month per user for a full communication suite is not bad.

Might I add that the Huddles that get criticized by this product but are actually pretty amazing. This product criticizes AI features but huddles AI summaries are downright incredible with how they summarize a meeting and cut out 100% of the small talk and distractions.

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

#82

Post by dangus »

asdff wrote: post #48
calvinmorrison wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Screw teams. I had a meeting on teams for the first time ever so I decided to use safari, my designated un touched browser on my mac, to use teams in order to maximize compatibility. The thing kept shutting off my webcam every two seconds. I’d turn it on then it would shut off two seconds later. We switched to zoom for the remainder of the meeting. Google’s offering isn’t much better either. I tried the same thing, g…

If you had just downloaded Teams it would have worked fine.

It isn’t Microsoft’s fault that Safari is a shit browser and the macOS people who keep it as their default won’t switch to something better.

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

#83

Post by dangus »

yadavrh wrote: post #31
1123581321 wrote: post #16

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.

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The main feature you seem to be interested in is the fact that you’ve saved yourself 100x infrastructure costs on your back end and that the app performs well. But that doesn’t benefit end users at all, that isn’t a solution to business pain.

That ability to integrate is the core of Slack’s identity. That’s the main reason to use Slack instead of its predecessors. Slack competitors like Teams, Zulip, and Mattermost all offer easy ability to integrate with anything that can make a web request.

You site’s marketing copy dunks on Huddles but I think it’s the other essential functionality to include in a chat application. You’re saying I can’t have a video/screen sharing call on your application when I can do that for free with Discord?

IMO this package you’re advertising is kind of a contradiction and/or a no-man’s land.

It’s like you’re charging $20 for Notepad.exe when the Microsoft Office suite is $100, and then your selling point is that it’s fast and lightweight. But then your customers could just get Notepad++ for free elsewhere.

I’m concerned for you as far as having a buyer persona or ideal customer profile.

People who buy your product for its low price have to supplement lost features by paying for other stuff.

People who don’t need all the features of Slack could just use something free like Signal, WhatsApp, Matrix, Discord, etc, and they might actually GAIN some features in comparison.

People who buy your product to avoid bloat arguably don’t really avoid it because they have to constantly leave your app and use other stuff to supplement it.

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

#84

Post by czhu12 »

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…

I’m very puzzled by Google chat to be honest. It’s a massive missing piece in the Google workspace toolchest. Teams is the central place for companies on Microsoft, and arguably the most sticky part of the MS cloud productivity stack. So it can’t be lost on Google how important it is to have something here.

Google slides, docs, sheets are fantastic products, but Google chat is so clunky and awkward that it seems hard to believe they really can recommend it as a slack / teams alternative. What’s keeping them from just

A: making it better?

B: buying one of the dozen other alternatives? All I really need is a log in with Google for our company domain.

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

#85

Post by tormeh »

czhu12 wrote: post #84
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…

I’m very puzzled by Google chat to be honest. It’s a massive missing piece in the Google workspace toolchest. Teams is the central place for companies on Microsoft, and arguably the most sticky part of the MS cloud productivity stack. So it can’t be lost on Google how important it is to have something here. Google slides, docs, sheets are fantastic products, but Google chat is so clunky and awkward that it seems hard…

Really? Teams is the most sticky? Teams sucks. Excel and PowerPoint are the most sticky parts, and Teams just comes bundled with those.

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

#86

Post by dundundundun »

dangus wrote: post #82
asdff wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Screw teams. I had a meeting on teams for the first time ever so I decided to use safari, my designated un touched browser on my mac, to use teams in order to maximize compatibility. The thing kept shutting off my webcam every two seconds. I’d turn it on then it would shut off two seconds later. We switched to zoom for the remainder of the meeting. Google’s offering isn’t much better either. I tried the same thing, g…

If you had just downloaded Teams it would have worked fine. It isn’t Microsoft’s fault that Safari is a shit browser and the macOS people who keep it as their default won’t switch to something better.

Can I download Teams without it also requiring Microsoft updaters and other stuff that insists on lurking in the background? Having a standalone MS app is fine, but I will never allow their updaters and background processes.

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

#87

Post by Wilder7977 »

browningstreet wrote: post #19
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.

Honestly, if I had to start from scratch in my own company, I would pick zulip. That is thread friendly for real, for proper async communication. Slack threads were bolted on as a feature, and it shows. I know that in 2 this is not a problem, but the way that - for example - notifications work for threads when you have 10s (or 100s) of threads is a pain. Finding back threads you were involved with is a huge pain.

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

#88

Post by pedalpete »

tormeh wrote: post #85
czhu12 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m very puzzled by Google chat to be honest. It’s a massive missing piece in the Google workspace toolchest. Teams is the central place for companies on Microsoft, and arguably the most sticky part of the MS cloud productivity stack. So it can’t be lost on Google how important it is to have something here. Google slides, docs, sheets are fantastic products, but Google chat is so clunky and awkward that it seems hard…

Really? Teams is the most sticky? Teams sucks. Excel and PowerPoint are the most sticky parts, and Teams just comes bundled with those.

I agree that Teams sucks, but speaking to people who are locked into the Microsoft environment, they love it.

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

#89

Post by TkTech »

I might have missed it, but no mention of _where_ data is stored in the FAQ and seems critically reliant on Cloudflare.

In a changing world, what's the selling point for those outside of the USA? Why would our company pick this over self-hosting when our country is threatened with American annexation almost weekly? If I go with Zulip, mattermost, rocket.chat, matrix, etc I introduce maintenance overhead but I don't have to worry about unstable politics or a disliked tweet getting us sanctioned and banished from American-hosted services. The chat platform we use internally is critical business infrastructure and so we're required to ask these kinds of questions for business continuity.

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

#90

Post by yadavrh »

unsnap_biceps wrote: post #45
yadavrh wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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Your costs will change and shift over time. Personally, I don't trust anything that says "Free Forever" or "Unlimited". Give a real limit and figure out the transition. "Free now, and no plans to change, but if it does, we will give you one year to transition" is much more confidence building then "Free forever".

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