Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Slack’s free plan change is causing an exodus

blog.zulip.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 790 posts

Re: Slack’s free plan change is causing an exodus

#251

Post by mritchie712 »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #64

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…

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...

Re: Slack’s free plan change is causing an exodus

#253

Post by ThunderSizzle »

rtpg wrote: post #234
domador wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

Low value users should be okay though, because they should also be low-cost users.

Re: Slack’s free plan change is causing an exodus

#254

Post by bfung »

markmark wrote: post #103
bfung wrote: post #13

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

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.

Re: Slack’s free plan change is causing an exodus

#255

Post by balderdash »

joshspankit wrote: post #208
jmull wrote: post #163

People should understand this: 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…

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 Sla…

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

Re: Slack’s free plan change is causing an exodus

#256

Post by MexicanJoe »

bachmeier wrote: post #173
MexicanJoe wrote: post #160

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 the…

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.

Re: Slack’s free plan change is causing an exodus

#257

Post by jwr »

jmull wrote: post #163

People should understand this: 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…

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.

Re: Slack’s free plan change is causing an exodus

#258

Post by jwr »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #186
jmull wrote: post #163

People should understand this: 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…

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…

In the EU at least, this is impossible because of invoicing and bookkeeping/accounting requirements.

Re: Slack’s free plan change is causing an exodus

#259

Post by [deleted] »

rtpg wrote: post #234
domador wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

[deleted]

Re: Slack’s free plan change is causing an exodus

#260

Post by gridspy »

jwr wrote: post #257
jmull wrote: post #163

People should understand this: 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…

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.

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.

Post reply on HN