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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

#671

Post by madeofpalk »

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…

> if you promote your product through a loss leader

To be fair, I don't think Slack ever actually did this. Slack has always been pretty terrible for semi-public communities, and I don't think they did anything to promote this. Free slack has always had pretty annoying retention and storage limits, and others like limits on how many integrations you can add.

I think Slack's problem has been that reasonably (at least in the beginning before Discord got popular and copied all of Slacks features), people liked Slack from their experience at using it for work. Indeed, Slack's advantage has/had been in appealing to the hundreds/thousands of employees making something they would want to use.

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

#672

Post by distances »

dasil003 wrote: post #664
joshspankit wrote: post #646

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 resolu…

The "naive" apps, like KeePassXC/Keepass2Android do have app-level syncing of conflicting files. Granted it's more cumbersome than it would be to use a cloud service, but works very well. I end up using it more often than I'd like to.

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

#673

Post by madeofpalk »

gdilla wrote: post #663
ghaff wrote: post #600

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. 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.

What's the cost of pissing free-tier people off? None of this has really impacted paying customers, right?

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

#675

Post by kube-system »

jonathanlb wrote: post #669
kennend3 wrote: post #666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

If those people wouldn’t have purchased the product, does it matter that they’re pissed off?

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

#677

Post by julianlam »

masklinn wrote: post #397
philliphaydon wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue with discourse is it isn’t infinite scroll. They break up the timeline into the right side and if you have an exceptionally long timeline it will skip time periods thinking you just want the original post and the new stuff. It makes it difficult to follow the conversations. Pagination also makes copy pasting links easier.

> Pagination also makes copy pasting links easier. Not necessarily, pagination is often configurable, so either way you need a per-comment permalink for linking to be reliable.

This is correct. A problem with a sensible solution. When you scroll through NodeBB your address bar updates with the context of where you are. Copying that address will return you to where you were.

Likewise each post has a permalink in the timestamp. It will also return you to that post.

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

#678

Post by cge »

twicetwice wrote: post #288
pleb_nz wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm interested in matrix, how can I learn more and can you choose providers or clients, any recommendations?

Element [0] is the main/most popular client. FluffyChat [1] is also good. They both have web, Android, iOS, and desktop (Electron) apps. There are at least a dozen other clients but those are the only two I've tried so far. For hosting, I believe the flagship host is Element Matrix Services [2]. It's made by the same organization that leads development (it is all FOSS) of Element and the reference server Synapse. You…

I'm on the matrix server of a research group that self-hosts matrix (Synapse). It has been quite low maintenance, has around 15 users, and as it's on a server that's already running the group's website, the running costs other than the time maintaining it are minimal.

As an additional advantage over per-user-priced options, it has very low barriers for loose collaborations. There's no reason to fret over giving someone an account if they might ever use it. And if someone already has a matrix account elsewhere, federation means we can just add their accounts to our rooms.

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

#679

Post by wpietri »

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…

> If your loss-leading pricing strategy was unsustainable from the start, that’s on you.

Yes, exactly. Companies can't tell consumers "it's free" and then be surprised people get upset when they change the terms. Do sufficiently sophisticated people know that free plans are always at risk? Yes. But clearly a pretty small percentage of people have fully internalized that, or there would be a lot fewer companies talking up their free plans in ways that suggest they're unlimited along important dimensions like time.

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

#680

Post by chillfox »

soraminazuki wrote: post #503
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.

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.

Yeah, people tend to forget that companies are just groups of people working together.
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