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Slack’s free plan change is causing an exodus

blog.zulip.com

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

#331

Post by snickerbockers »

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.

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

#332

Post by berns »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #205
JadoJodo wrote: post #21

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/c…

> 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 li…

> 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.

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

#333

Post by marricks »

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…

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

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

#334

Post by iratewizard »

joshstrange wrote: post #281
joshspankit wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

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.

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

#335

Post by raydev »

muppetman wrote: post #325
xen2xen1 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 so childish. It's embarassing to have open.

Being embarrassed by it seems childish. Who are you trying to impress?

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

#337

Post by renewiltord »

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…

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.

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

#338

Post by raydev »

icelancer wrote: post #158
Aeolun wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

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

#339

Post by iratewizard »

galangalalgol wrote: post #292
mikepurvis wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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

#340

Post by egKYzyXeIL »

muppetman wrote: post #325
xen2xen1 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 so childish. It's embarassing to have open.

In what way is Discord childish?
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