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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

#401

Post by masklinn »

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…

> The excessive metadata displayed around comments, such as the user's icon, initial sign-up, or last activity cluttered the interface. […] In any case, I'm extremely glad Discourse came along and democratized proper forum UX.

Yes, it’s so good that all this “excessive metadata” was replaced by… even worse metadata, and white space, and all the metadata is above and below comments because having giant margins is absolutely necessary, so information density absolutely tanked to non-existent.

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

#402

Post by dagss »

ryantgtg wrote: post #380
p1esk wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is Discord superior to Slack?

I like that in Discord you can choose to spin off the conversation into a separate thread, or you can reply within the main chat and it quotes the comment you’re replying to (and the quote is clickable) in order to see context. You can’t do the latter in slack, and it’s easy to not realize that others have started a thread when it’s above the fold.

Isn't this like replying to a thread and clicking "Also post to channel" in Slack?

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

#403

Post by jakobnissen »

stevebmark wrote: post #374

Please understand that Zulip is nightmare software and it's absolutely not a replacement for useful productivity team software. Zulip is a joke (and an unfunny joke at that) for so many reasons. I've worked at three companies that tried and abandoned Zulip, all for good reason.

That's interesting - I've used Zulip casually and it's always been more responsive and stable than Slack, which has endless UI glitches both on my phone and laptop.

Not to mention that Zulip has some nice features like sane markdown and latex integration.

What has your problems with Zulip been?

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

#404

Post by BlargMcLarg »

tweetle_beetle wrote: post #390
darthrupert wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discord has the worst ux of any chat software I have ever used, fwiw. There's a fascinating race to the bottom in this area.

I'm surprised to not see more comments like this. I think chat clients are a product which is used so frequently that after adapting, users become blind to defficiencies. I consider myself pretty technically literate and have used probably a dozen chat clients over years. Discord is the only one where I couldn't understand how to do the basics straight after installing it. I don't use it much, and when I come back to…

Because on the flipside, there are users like me who found Discord far more intuitive than anything else. I don't think your 'technical literacy' overcomes a difference in expectations and culture when many others feel it works just fine. It's not the best UI, but it is acceptable given the status quo.

Neither you nor GP are articulating or giving examples. Start there and we can have a proper discussion, otherwise it'll be just another case of 'he-said-she-said'.

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

#405

Post by m8s »

darthrupert wrote: post #359
xmprt wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes me wonder how long before Discord rolls out their enterprise tier. There are tons of Gen Z and Millenials using Discord who are likely in positions where they can make those kinds of decisions for the company. And it's a great and intuitive product too.

Discord has the worst ux of any chat software I have ever used, fwiw. There's a fascinating race to the bottom in this area.

That’s surprising. In what way? I find it to be the most consistent and the most correct out of any chat software I’ve used, including IRC, Slack, Mattermost, and Microsoft Teams. They seem to just get a lot of stuff right.

The only thing that took me some time to adjust to was how overwhelming joining a new server can be. So many channels! Everything needs my attention! But after using it for a long time, I think this is actually a feature. I can mute channels and categories I’m uninterested in, but how many channels on Slack are never found due to poor discoverability?

We run both Slack and Discord at my work and the engineers vastly prefer Discord, for what it’s worth.

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

#406

Post by kristianc »

xyzzy123 wrote: post #368
kristianc wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say they are acutely aware of the sales funnel. They weren’t making any money from those users who were ‘happily using Slack’s free tier for years’ and neither was there any prospect of converting them into paid users in the coming years. Very little point in keeping users (and paying to maintain them) who are going to be perpetually at the top of the funnel.

I think it's complicated; the fact that I use a free slack instance for note taking / bots is one thing, but I'm on 2 company slacks right now (paid), 2 non-profits (1 paid 1 not) and a handful of open source communities. Am I a user who won't convert? Everyone on a free slack instance is NOT using a competitor's product. There's a tipping point where having to check multiple apps will push people towards consolidati…

> I think it's complicated; the fact that I use a free slack instance for note taking / bots is one thing, but I'm on 2 company slacks right now (paid), 2 non-profits (1 paid 1 not) and a handful of open source communities. Am I a user who won't convert? Everyone on a free slack instance is NOT using a competitor's product.

I’d suggest the answer to that is probably no - an open source community is by its very nature going to want costs and overheads down, and all but the largest non profits and NGOs are going to try to get by by stitching together free tools and services. The one that is paying in your example is the one in Slack’s target who is going to be most likely to pay. Does Slack care about a few open source communities potentially churning? Probably not. Does it care about lowering average Time to Revenue? Absolutely.

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

#407

Post by tweetle_beetle »

philsnow wrote: post #382
saurik wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet most people I know don't get microdecision fatigue every time they decide whether to turn on a light or use an appliance due to the electricity transactions. I claim that--to the extent to which this was ever an issue--this is due to the notion of "micropayment" really being too large still: the industry has often used this term to describe transactions on the order $1-$10. Instead, this discussion is about h…

Look at tarsnap's pricing: https://www.tarsnap.com/ currently it says "250 picodollars / byte-month of encoded data"

I can't tell what stance is being taken on Tarsnap here, but for the interested the background is worth a read.

https://www.daemonology.net/blog/2018-04-01-tarsnap-pricing-...

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

#408

Post by thejosh »

kristianc wrote: post #361
joshstrange wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I would say they are acutely aware of the sales funnel. They weren’t making any money from those users who were ‘happily using Slack’s free tier for years’ and neither was there any prospect of converting them into paid users in the coming years. Very little point in keeping users (and paying to maintain them) who are going to be perpetually at the top of the funnel.

Salesforce doesn't even care about paying customers. Heroku has stagnated for years. Recent Heroku massive mistakes they've been making have been absolutely terribly handled by them.

They also own Tableau, which has stagnated as well and is pretty badly handled.

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

#409

Post by 3np »

Vardiak wrote: post #345
3np wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here we go again. No, not every single decision (short-term or strategic) in a company is optimized only for $$$ at the expense of anything else. Nor should it, nor does that need to go against the interests of shareholders, nor is there any law mandating so. Just like there exist companies who sell clothes not made in slave-like conditions even if they could legally get away with it and make more money by doing so.

I have to disagree. Nowadays, limited liability companies are literally an optimization mechanism for turning profits. Believe me, if consumers were not aware and the law not enforced, there would be (are ?) companies making clothes in slave-like conditions.

GP is implying that companies that don't are by definition performing poorly by missing out on the margin.

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

#410

Post by tomjen3 »

manquer wrote: post #129
Teckla wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IRC has always been free and you can search as much as you've logged... The biggest problem with IRC has always been its lack of server-side history.

To me it is a feature not a limitation

I have no idea why you wouldn't mind that, but thats fine, you do you. I am curious though, if you don't mind sharing why?

To everybody else who are hit by this, they would not consider it a feature but a pretty serious limitation, since if you didn't care about server side logging in first the place why would you mind messages disappearing after 90 days?

Regardless though, IRC also doesn't persist user names which I think is a serious limitation.

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