This could have been completely avoided if they had used Mattermost.
Do you know if there is any mattermost installation with over 5000 users.
Mattermost team here. Yes, there are multiple Mattermost deployments over 5000 users within enterprises.
We Tried Slack and We Deeply Regretted It (2015)
101–110 of 133 posts
Re: We Tried Slack and We Deeply Regretted It (2015)
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please share your method of uncovering, in advance, undocumented limits inherent in software; it's desperately needed. The guy left a free trial for another free trial; if he's at fault we're all at fault every time we change our go-to software. The lesson might be that "there be dragons" - you should guess that any "better" program or SaaS out there is less that half of what it says once unknown limits have been dis…
It's called "due diligence", and people do it all the time. He didn't change his own personal go-to software, we're not talking about a trial of a video game here. He changed the software for thousands of his users. He put thousands of people on a free trial for something that was not obviously going to work. You do have the option to investigate before you make that kind of move. If you choose not to exercise it, yo…
troll
Re: We Tried Slack and We Deeply Regretted It (2015)
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please share your method of uncovering, in advance, undocumented limits inherent in software; it's desperately needed. The guy left a free trial for another free trial; if he's at fault we're all at fault every time we change our go-to software. The lesson might be that "there be dragons" - you should guess that any "better" program or SaaS out there is less that half of what it says once unknown limits have been dis…
It's called "due diligence", and people do it all the time. He didn't change his own personal go-to software, we're not talking about a trial of a video game here. He changed the software for thousands of his users. He put thousands of people on a free trial for something that was not obviously going to work. You do have the option to investigate before you make that kind of move. If you choose not to exercise it, yo…
[deleted]
Re: We Tried Slack and We Deeply Regretted It (2015)
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's called "due diligence", and people do it all the time. He didn't change his own personal go-to software, we're not talking about a trial of a video game here. He changed the software for thousands of his users. He put thousands of people on a free trial for something that was not obviously going to work. You do have the option to investigate before you make that kind of move. If you choose not to exercise it, yo…
The due diligence in this case would have been researching the user limits which (as others have pointed out) were not published or advertised anywhere.
There's a reason it's called "diligence", because it typically involves trying. Personally, I don't count reading a company's ad copy on their own web page as being even remotely diligent or doing much research. Normally 'due diligence' involves talking to the party you intend to engage with, as well as talking to others who have experience with that party. The author didn't mention any of that.
Other users here also pointed out that there is a known specific API error message for the user limit. That kind of thing could be uncovered with a little diligence. Author could also have setup a fake team and tried to add many users before putting 8k real users on the team and just hoping.
He did finally start talking directly to Slack only after he started having trouble, and they responded and disclosed the existence of a team size limit. This obviously could have happened before hitting the limit.
The author expressed incredulity at what would be a $500k price tag, and yet completely fails to see why that is a massive glaring red flag. That alone should have been enough signal that his plan was skating on thin ice, but instead he drove right past all the warning signs and then blamed Slack for it.
Re: We Tried Slack and We Deeply Regretted It (2015)
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
"For teams of all sizes" is pretty deceptive. Even if the limit was disclosed somewhere deeper, advertising with a fundamentally inaccurate line is unfortunate.
At a "team" size of 5000, the 10000-message limit means you each get 2 messages before things start disappearing. So I think the message limit pretty strongly implies a team member limit.
But is the user limit only for the free version? As I read that support email it was simply a limit on the size of Slack teams across the board.
Re: We Tried Slack and We Deeply Regretted It (2015)
#106I switched over a large group of friends from using a gazillion hangouts to slack and it's mostly been an improvement. That being said, there's a lot less of us: around 30. I'm definitely disappointed to hear about this. The pricing model sucks for us as well since it means $60 a head to add someone to the friend group if we wanted to pay for slack. If we could pay a fixed price and get a slightly better message hist…
> we had issues with some people not having access at work.
Do you know why it happens? Do those companies block Discord as an "unprofessional" website?
Re: We Tried Slack and We Deeply Regretted It (2015)
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why not just email?
Email implies a different sort of latency. If I want to ask my coworker René for a quick bit of knowledge, a phone call is too disruptive and too urgent, and an email might not be answered for a few hours. Slack/hipchat/irc are the perfect medium for "hey, do you know off the top of your head why X is Y?"
Sometimes I fail to answer slack messages for a good chunk of time, with email I only have to pay attention to one notification and can handle all communication from the same interface (and you have to use email anyway).
I don't think there is anything inherently slow about email, or that firing off one without a carefully crafted subject would be bad manners. Might be a personal preference, nevertheless I don't think there is any technical advantage in using an instant messaging service.
Re: We Tried Slack and We Deeply Regretted It (2015)
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's called "due diligence", and people do it all the time. He didn't change his own personal go-to software, we're not talking about a trial of a video game here. He changed the software for thousands of his users. He put thousands of people on a free trial for something that was not obviously going to work. You do have the option to investigate before you make that kind of move. If you choose not to exercise it, yo…
troll
Hahahaha! I upvoted you because that's funny. But word to the wise; this kind of comment, even if you're joking, can get flagged and backfire badly on HN.
If you're serious, I'd like to invite you to share your reasoning for your insult. I gave a direct answer to a direct question from @Nomentatus, and had no intention of saying something inflammatory.
Re: We Tried Slack and We Deeply Regretted It (2015)
#109Hm. Well, that made me a bit concerned to start, as I'm working on a Slack-based hack-and-slash RPG [1] that I'm planning on running entirely on their free tier, but I'm pretty sure that their use cases differ from mine significantly. I'm not worried about message archives (as it's just game history), and I have @here/@all locked down significantly. The "max user size" thing is a bit worrisome, but MMOs have a histor…
Are you planning on trying to make money with this? If so, you're in some amount of trouble, depending on how much you're looking at trying to make. If you're not trying to make money, you still should check the agreements for Slack; this may constitute abuse. You should also take a look at your architecture, too. You've got a clear message bus where you send things to and receive things from Slack. You may notice th…
I don't think I trip up the agreements anywhere, I've checked over them a few times and also emailed Slack to ask if it was cool if I made a game on their platform before I started. I didn't share too many specifics (I said it was MUD-like and was going to use their buttons), but they told me to go for it, so I think I'm in the clear there.
Also, while I haven't figured out monetization, I don't think there should be any real problems with that either. Other people charge for their slack bots and integrations, so unless they specifically have a problem with a game-style slackbot charging money, there shouldn't be anything preventing me from charging for stuff.
You very well may be right about the name, though. I've just registered "chatandslash.com" as a backup that I can switch to before too much marketing has gone forward, and I've already emailed Slack again to show them what I've come up with and for further confirmation that what I'm up to is fine and dandy before progressing any further.
Oh, and you're totally right about shimming out Slack with my own frontend. It's in the backlog of stuff to do some day potentially, but I think there's a lot to be gained in the meantime by explicitly staying with Slack in the meantime. "An RPG you play in Slack" is a lot more interesting than "An RPG that looks kinda like chat, I guess".
Thanks for the advice!
Re: We Tried Slack and We Deeply Regretted It (2015)
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's called "due diligence", and people do it all the time. He didn't change his own personal go-to software, we're not talking about a trial of a video game here. He changed the software for thousands of his users. He put thousands of people on a free trial for something that was not obviously going to work. You do have the option to investigate before you make that kind of move. If you choose not to exercise it, yo…
The due diligence in this case would have been researching the user limits which (as others have pointed out) were not published or advertised anywhere.
"There's also no limit on how many people you can add to your team on Slack."
-- The Slack screenshot in the article.