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Slack’s free plan change is causing an exodus

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

#501

Post by jylam »

chrisseaton wrote: post #491
hnarn wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everybody understands this. Here’s what companies don’t understand: if you promote your product through a loss leader — which is arguably how Slack became popular in the first place — changing your pricing at a later date will piss people off. You’re trying to put the blame on the consumer here which never makes any sense from a business perspective. If your loss-leading pricing strategy was unsustainable from the st…

> will piss people off Well it pisses off the people who aren't paying you anything. It probably pleases the people who were paying you, because now they don't have to subsidise the people who aren't.

Not that the price will go down. Now they subsidize shareholders, which is quite worse in my book.

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

#502

Post by e3bc54b2 »

matchagaucho wrote: post #423
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.

In Heroku's case, it could be argued the free users were a net-negative liability, causing service outages, DNS issues, etc...

What? Those free users are practically providing free infrastructure testing. Those low-no profit margins are hiding a lot of stuff underneath. Intel and Cloudflare are famous for reaching scale by using cheap/free end of the market to expand and solidify their positions.

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

#503

Post by soraminazuki »

chrisseaton wrote: post #491
hnarn wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everybody understands this. Here’s what companies don’t understand: if you promote your product through a loss leader — which is arguably how Slack became popular in the first place — changing your pricing at a later date will piss people off. You’re trying to put the blame on the consumer here which never makes any sense from a business perspective. If your loss-leading pricing strategy was unsustainable from the st…

> will piss people off Well it pisses off the people who aren't paying you anything. It probably pleases the people who were paying you, because now they don't have to subsidise the people who aren't.

Most paying customers are businesses. Those businesses are definitely not going to be pleased because they have people who personally depend on Slack's free plan. So, they've probably pissed off a significant number of paying customers.

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

#504

Post by dongping »

m8s wrote: post #405
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.

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 th…

Discord's UI is seemly optimized for dopamine release, just like a game.

Some people like this kind of constant distraction, though.

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

#505

Post by morelisp »

HatchedLake721 wrote: post #454
muppetman wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife has 4 business slacks she's a part of. Because she's got the slack client open all day, she setup a little slack for just her and me to use. We use it during the day to plan things, talk etc etc. It's been great to be able to go back and looks at various conversations/details/bits that were often up to two years old. I don't think we were "freeloading" as such, the 4 business ones she uses are all paid. I'm a…

And paying $12 p/m for a tool you and your wife enjoy and have been getting value for years is not an option, because…?

Imagine explaining to someone ca. 2000 that the replacement for a magnetic fridge notepad should cost $140/yr.

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

#506

Post by joshspankit »

bayindirh wrote: post #487
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 think this, combined with Heroku, marks end of an era. These tools built themselves on being free (as in beer) up to a certain extent, and now they're big enough, and trust their momentum, so they change their stance. This will inevitably create some changes, both how they perceived and being developed, but we'll see... However, web application development is much easier and scalable infrastructure is democratized…

They may not immediately recognize it, but they are “cashing out the social capital”

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

#507

Post by nottorp »

fivre wrote: post #88
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…

rather ironic given that, in at least some instances i use, the primary mode of using slack (to the point that some members will complain if you violate it) is as a shitty forum. most discussions are segregated into threads; there isn't really much in channels other than the collection of initial messages that started a thread. i despise this given that there's nothing like the bump mechanic in channels (threads with…

Slack has the absolute worst implementation of threads that I've ever seen. There is one item that only tells you that some of the treads you're in have new messages.

The whole point of having multiple channels is so you can see at a glance which has unreads and check them if interested, isn't it? What use are threads if they're all hidden?

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

#508

Post by joshspankit »

m8s wrote: post #405
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.

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 th…

I think I could be considered as a high openness, hacker-ish type keen to try new things, and my avoidance of discord isn’t that it’s complicated (hard to use), it’s that it’s complicated (unnecessary busy). From the notifications being a lot of noise by default to threads being so much work to catch up on after the fact, it’s just heavy and dense and complicated.

Caveat: It seems much more geared towards users who commit significant brain-space to the subjects they join (for example: catching up on threads is easier if you’re paying attention to realtime notifications), whereas I have a lot of interests and really just want the gems whenever I “sit down” to work with a particular interest.

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

#509

Post by nottorp »

parkingrift wrote: post #498
muppetman wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife has 4 business slacks she's a part of. Because she's got the slack client open all day, she setup a little slack for just her and me to use. We use it during the day to plan things, talk etc etc. It's been great to be able to go back and looks at various conversations/details/bits that were often up to two years old. I don't think we were "freeloading" as such, the 4 business ones she uses are all paid. I'm a…

Its been great for you to use Slack and to be able to go back and view conversations from years ago. It’s so useful to you that you’ve used it for years, and you love it. …but you won’t pay $12/month for it? Yes, you are a freeloader. And you’ll inevitably keep bouncing from free app to free app as services mature and shift focus to making money. You, as a freeloader, are of no economic value to Slack, Discord, or wh…

I'm using Slack for productive purposes and still won't pay 12/month/user for it. We're an outlier org that has a lot of mostly inactive users that get active when something's going on. We don't want to pay 12/month just because one of them said happy birthday in the general channel. And no, the guest user feature won't do.

They should switch to fixed pricing for small teams. Something that ends up at far less than 12/user.

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

#510

Post by nottorp »

HatchedLake721 wrote: post #454
muppetman wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife has 4 business slacks she's a part of. Because she's got the slack client open all day, she setup a little slack for just her and me to use. We use it during the day to plan things, talk etc etc. It's been great to be able to go back and looks at various conversations/details/bits that were often up to two years old. I don't think we were "freeloading" as such, the 4 business ones she uses are all paid. I'm a…

And paying $12 p/m for a tool you and your wife enjoy and have been getting value for years is not an option, because…?

Yeah right, we know, it's cheaper than a Starbucks coffee. All those Starbucks coffees add up you know.
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