Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Slack’s free plan change is causing an exodus

blog.zulip.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

661–670 of 790 posts

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

#661

Post by sweetbitter »

kyrra wrote: post #648
sweetbitter wrote: post #638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn't fully read the post you responded to. They were not suggesting a non-reversible medium.

Oh, I read it. I'm saying that building a system that supports microtransactions that are reversible is cost prohibitive due to the customer service aspect required. If someone could pull it off, it would be a game changer. I believe many people want to do this, but no one has been successful yet. I point out Bitcoin as it is non-reversible, and there is no central agency you can complain to if you get your bitcoins…

That makes sense, it seems that I was the one who didn't properly read your comment.

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

#662

Post by sweetbitter »

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…

I honestly prefer to see sites made by people who don't know how to design anything. The people who do know how to design websites seem to be either malicious or designing in the interest of some alien species from another dimension- see how bad Discourse looks, whitespace galore, too low density. Its modern polish is both its strength and its weakness.

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

#663

Post by gdilla »

ghaff wrote: post #600
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…

>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. I'd argue that most companies understand that perfectly well. They have a generous free tier to drive growth. Once that growth is attained and demand starts to level off, it's time to trim the resources…

Yup, and they think pissing people off is worth it (for their expected benefit). And... they're probably right. People have short term memories and other things to worry about.

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

#664

Post by dasil003 »

joshspankit wrote: post #646
karamanolev wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't mention 1Password. It's a cornerstone for your digital security, if you're using it. As such, I don't want it free, I want to pay for it. My current family plan suits us very well and I'm very happy. Security is hard and I want it done right. Not to say that free tools are bad and paid tools are always good, but it certainly helps. I also do want "easy" things to be free, like a note-taking app.

I think OP is talking about how 1Password stopped letting you use the one-time-purchase version and pushed everyone to the subscription. Personally, I was pretty frustrated at that shift because I successfully and happily used old versions until it was “time” to update (2 then 4 (which was at the upgrade cost), then one more before I was pushed to the subscription). It always worked great. Tbh I’m still frustrated th…

I, too, have fond memories of the old one-time purchase modality of software vending, but I have to admit such an arrangement is largely untenable for any software company which wishes to maintain a high quality product across multiple platforms over the long haul.

Regarding building in their own sync, I think it’s actually a good thing. Naively syncing encrypted files can’t achieve the reliability of conflict resolution that a semantically aware app-level sync can.

On a side note, I moved away from Dropbox a couple years ago as their product became bloated as they seek growth with increased desperation. That is not a trait that I want in a company I allow to install kernel extensions on my machine.

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

#665

Post by rkangel »

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…

> The latest Google Apps fiasco is a great example of this, where Google eventually had to backpedal due to the massive backlash.

In what way have they back-pedalled? I'm affected by this and hadn't heard anything.

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

#666

Post by kennend3 »

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…

> You’re trying to put the blame on the consumer here which never makes any sense from a business perspective.

Consumer:

noun 1. a person who purchases goods and services for personal use.

It is sort of weird that people don't pay for a product, yet expect to be able to use it forever? It should be obvious that companies intend to convert "users" to "customers"?

You call them "consumers" but they are not given the have not paid for the services. Maybe "users" is more appropriate?

Do let us know what products you produce, and give away for free for years and dont want to monetize, it is just a charity thing for you even thought it costs you money to offer the service.

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

#667

Post by chillfox »

p1esk wrote: post #346
chillfox wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish we used Discord for work. It’s superior to Slack, MS Teams and googles chat thing by far.

How is Discord superior to Slack?

Discord is just way more polished. Everything works reliably every time.

The voice channels are flawless, even when there's people on shitty internet connections.

The client is always responsive and snappy.

Their design of how the server/chat/voice/videos/users is laid out is is clearer, easier to see what's going on at a glance and it manages to do that while it fits more information on screen.

Their dark mode is much better.

Their code display/highlighting is better.

The user groups/roles which is more like tags is much better than others.

It's way easier to find where notifications come from.

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

#668

Post by kennend3 »

voakbasda wrote: post #653
dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. This is part of the game: 1) work hard to make something popular by offering a part of it for free, 2) once enough people get hooked, start tightening the terms, 3) most people will be pissed off but yo…

If those companies had a shred of integrity and respect for their customers, they would be upfront about such plans. Without a roadmap, user trust will eventually be shattered by step 2. Most people understand this shell game, and they will put up with it if they know what to expect.

I'm sorry, but are the plans not obvious?

Companies are not some altruistic group, and this pattern of "free to get you hooked then convert to a paying customer" is almost as old as computing itself.

What is odd here people depending on slack for search history and not creating a proper KB?

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

#669

Post by jonathanlb »

kennend3 wrote: post #666
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…

> You’re trying to put the blame on the consumer here which never makes any sense from a business perspective. Consumer: noun 1. a person who purchases goods and services for personal use. It is sort of weird that people don't pay for a product, yet expect to be able to use it forever? It should be obvious that companies intend to convert "users" to "customers"? You call them "consumers" but they are not given the ha…

Users generally don't like surprises.

As a user or consumer, it an unpleasant surprise that feels like a bait and switch when the free product you used now requires payment without prior warning.

At least smaller apps are upfront about the duration of the free trial, and there are no surprises (or uproar) there.

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

#670

Post by redler »

TheFlyingFish wrote: post #659
daniel-cussen wrote: post #644

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes sense. It was a race to the bottom. Now we're at the bottom. It's like 2001 in a lot of ways. Spesh the terrible economics of websites, or apps, or call them almost whatever they want, platforms, anything. Giveaways bring users. Free beer people show up. Like there's no business here. No excludability. It was a prettification of IRC, which of course nobody pays one fuck of a cent for, and now they want to…

>It was a prettification of IRC, which of course nobody pays one fuck of a cent for It's a lot more than that. Addimg a persistent message history and multi-device identities to IRC is pretty huge, otherwise bouncers would never have existed. And the number of paying customers shows that people are, in fact, very willing to pay for it. Slack just really sucks at b2b marketing, which is why Teams eclipsed them so quic…

Regardless of their B2B marketing strategy, it's hard to compete with "this Slack-like thing is included with the mega-expensive Microsoft license your company already pays for every year, around which you've built a Microsoft-specific IT group".
Post reply on HN