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Slack’s free plan change is causing an exodus

blog.zulip.com

511–520 of 790 posts

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

#511

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.

We have been self-hosting Zulip for about 3 years now and it is immensely popular.

It would be nice if there were a good fail over or cluster model so we could run it at multiple sites.

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

#512

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…

There's kinda of a https://xkcd.com/1172/ vibe to that use case. Being able to go back through two years of chats with your wife most likely was never an intended use case for Slack. For a free tier, 90 day retention seems reasonable. The issue Slack has in their pricing, for private use, is that the cheapest tier is pretty expensive. This could be remedied by adding a private tier, for $1 per month per user. I think…

It's irc with the ability to share files and pin stuff to channels :) Felt extremely natural to me from day one.

Except threads. Threads are useless.

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

#513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I understand that approach EF going Discord-forward, it's one that's prevented me from joining many circles now as I've pledged to take my data privacy more seriously and proprietary apps aren't it. I hope you offer at least one alternative (but if you're not targeting open-source users or privacy advocates, there likely wouldn't be a difference).

In this day and age that is simply not possible anymore. Most apps have no good open source alternatives.

Despite the looming narratives that tell us to give up our data, it’s always possible.

There are dozens of products and countless open protocols to base new products on. We could even just use IRC again.

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

#514
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.

But the company was built on that user growth. They were reporting the numbers to the investors and claiming "2.???; 3. Profit" all along. Especially now, with recession coming (interests rise => expectations of profitability increase), it's unfortunately suddenly important to show real profits.

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

#515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's kinda of a https://xkcd.com/1172/ vibe to that use case. Being able to go back through two years of chats with your wife most likely was never an intended use case for Slack. For a free tier, 90 day retention seems reasonable. The issue Slack has in their pricing, for private use, is that the cheapest tier is pretty expensive. This could be remedied by adding a private tier, for $1 per month per user. I think…

It's irc with the ability to share files and pin stuff to channels :) Felt extremely natural to me from day one. Except threads. Threads are useless.

> Except threads. Threads are useless.

That might exactly be my problem with Slack, and Google Chat as well. I understand the desire to wanting to some sort of threading, but it doesn't work in either programs. Instead it just confuses the interface greatly. Slack is super weird, because you can have a thread open, and navigate around, so the thread view is now completely out of context.

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

#516
post #481
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…

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…

I think this should be outlawed. So many industries destroyed by cheap vc money, and then trying to raise prices once everyone else is gone. You can lose money doing research all you want, but the moment you start interacting with the market there should be a time limit until you can get your unit economics to work, or get out.

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

#517
post #373

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…

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 Slack-fluent friend. So why assume it’s positive ROI? The people who make purchasing decisions in the organizations Salesforce plays in don’t typically make them based off recommendations of people happily using a free tier on outsid…

Underneath both, they make those choices based on trust. If a massive sales teams gains their trust it means sales. If employees have gained their trust it means sales.

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

#518

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…

> Everyone on a free slack instance is NOT using a competitor's product.

Arguably this is even worse from slaks POV, no? Everyone on free slack is on free slack because they aren't willing/able to pay and slack would indirectly benefit if those customers were freeloading (and incuring costs) for their competitors.

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

#519
post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I thought github was a "you are the product" sort of deal with Copilot?

How so?

They scraped all the code submitted to GitHub and used it to train the AI behind the now-paid Copilot product

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

#520

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…

By now, I'm pretty sure everyone who was going to use Slack has used Slack.

There’s an XKCD for that: https://xkcd.com/1053/
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