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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

#541

Post by agumonkey »

samstave wrote: post #146
pygy_ wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Digg vs Reddit also comes to mind. https://www.reddit.com/r/business/comments/d78wi/digg_loses_... https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2005-01-01%202... https://mashable.com/archive/reddit-digg-traffic

DIGG blew its userbase by fucking up the UX. Reddit is on path to do same. If reddit ever kills old.reddit, exodus will happen. - But seriously, a designer should be thinking about the consumption/participation model as opposed to just the eyeballs/adwords-please-kill-me-now model... The consumption and participation of a site is direct to the UX - and when DIGG basically made it a 100% consumption push, while also m…

> If reddit ever kills old.reddit, exodus will happen.

Plausible, but if it really does happen it will be a landmark. Modern losing against old and ~crippled UX.

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

#542

Post by throwaway1851 »

turtlebits wrote: post #193
esprehn wrote: post #115

My wife and I have used slack for years for our personal chat. The multiple channels made categorizing the messages easy (ex. #house, #kid1, #kid2, #coding, etc). The change in free retention meant we'd lose important messages so we've given up on slack and moved to a different service. I'm sure our small usage of it won't matter to slack, but the money grab and their insistence that this change was somehow better fo…

I hate this entitled attitude. There is no “money grab”. They own the service, they’re free to set whatever price they want. If you don’t want to pay, don’t use it. In other words, don’t rely on “free”, as there is no such thing.

I don’t think it has anything to do with an entitled attitude. Nobody is demanding that Salesforce provide free services. What I see instead is valid criticism of sleazy business practices. IMO, the fact that Slack won’t unconditionally permit you to exfiltrate your private message data (even after upgrading two tiers to a “Pro” plan!!) says everything that needs to be said.

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

#543

Post by davnicwil »

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…

The free tier usecases don't themselves need to convert for this to work out long term. They do need to convert the same customers for other usecases though - usually work.

Keeping the free tier indefinite (in time, if not in storage) helps to keep the product used, therefore top of mind, therefore the default choice for the latter when those decisions come around. Or, even where the user is not the decision maker, they will likely still be an advocate / non-complaining user at the least.

Just directly trying to convert the free usecases by time-limiting them so as to make many of them unusable feels like more of a short term 'upcoming quarters' geared strategy. For sure they will convert some 'real work' usecases here who are able to function in the current space-limited free tier, as well as saving some costs on compute and storage, and it may boost numbers in the short term.

But long term, is it the best strategy? If all those free users now switch to, say, discord, guess which tool gets picked more for the 'real work' usecases by those same people in 5 years. Over that timeframe, will the savings in resources have been worth it? I guess this analysis must have been done, but it feels very possible the answer will turn out to be no.

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

#544

Post by UweSchmidt »

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…?

The problem is that there are many useful tools and services that most of us are using for free: Text editors, browsers, email, forum software, all sorts of apps, cloud storage etc. It's not realistic to pay 5$ or 12$ a month for each.

Not saying that this is Slack's problem, and we really should cultivate more community organized tooling based on Open Source. But I would say 12$/month is a lot for OP's usecase.

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

#545

Post by bayindirh »

jelling wrote: post #534
bayindirh wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious (I'm using professional for a very long time, and plans page doesn't clarify), can't you just get the ENEX files per notebook and import it to something else? It contains everything, incl. the files as far as I can see. The file format is open, and there are many conversion tools out there.

Yes. But as someone that's been meaning to switch off of Evernote - never has a project bloated their own software with so many unasked for features / desperate attempts to grow valuation - it's a non-trivial project. One needs to have a high degree of trust in the import tool and new repository.

While it's not perfect, I like Evernote and its new incarnation. Feature parity between platforms is what saved it for me, and use almost all of the features they offer. I was getting ready to leave it for good. Nevertheless, I don't expect everyone to share the same sentiment.

On the other hand, you don't need to import anywhere at first. Just convert your files to Markdown, put the files aside and create your local knowledge base. You can import these Markdown files to somewhere new when you find the correct place, why not?

This is what keeps me at Evernote most. I can just move out in 2-3 hours, or in half day if I want.

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

#546

Post by RunSet »

joshspankit wrote: post #513
LunaSea wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

One nice thing about IRC is it is sure to remain an alternative as services which purportedly lack alternatives build paywalls or become the center of scandals relating to mishandling user data.

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

#547

Post by pid-1 »

hnarn wrote: post #481
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…

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…

Does Slack even care if folks not planning to pay are pissed?

My understanding is this sort of strategy wants to archive some sort of network effect so business (which actually pay for services) start adopting a product.

It's meant to kickstart recurring revenue, not to last forever.

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

#548

Post by lmeyerov »

We have a paid slack for our team & customers, and a free slack to support our community, and Slack continuing to kneecap our community zone keeps pushing us towards dropping slack in general.

Just as Slack emerged to fill a social networking gap not quite solved by irc & hipchat, the steady mishandling of community pricing & usage (web indexing, ...) is keeping the door open for a good competitor to knock them out from the bottom. Discord is an obvious possibility, but it can be anyone new too. In a world where Teams is already knocking them out of the enterprise market, Slack intentionally losing their main advantages in community, vs pulling up the ladder on competitors, seems pretty dumb.

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

#549

Post by hollywood_court »

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.

I’ve been “chatting” on the web since the mid 90s when I used IRC.

Discord is the best thing I’ve found. My group and I love it.

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

#550

Post by pid-1 »

kzrdude wrote: post #514
chrisseaton wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

If subsiding free users isn't attracting more paying customers, then slashing free tiers is a no brainer though.
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