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

691–700 of 790 posts

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

#691

Post by mdaniel »

zenith035 wrote: post #603

If people have small communities on slack they can use Niche Community https://niche.community

I find that landing page insulting to anyone who might want to learn what that product is and why I should use it. So your webpage allows me to play basketball or go hiking together, is that what it does? Only by going to "the changelog" link, because I'm a curious fellow, does one find the discovery page and see an actual implementation: https://niche.community/niche/pzd3x67l0gmqn/hackernews/

> What is the current stage of Niche Community?

> Niche Community is in the early stages of its development.

Yeah, no kidding

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

#692

Post by Macha »

mdaniel wrote: post #684
Macha wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, discord threads are siloed off into their own world. They're effectively more so temporary channels (and discord itself enforces the temporary nature - they get locked after disuse). Parent poster seems to like it, but for my use case I'd rather slack threads.

> they get locked after disuse Yikes, here's hoping you mean "after a year" or something, because having to make a fake new thread just to comment on an existing locked thread would make me rage quit

Nope, it's after 24 hours of inactivity.

Someone with the manage threads permission can unarchive it, but like the pinning thing that also comes with permission to delete it, so you can't just grant that to everyone in your server.

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

#693

Post by mdaniel »

Macha wrote: post #692
mdaniel wrote: post #684

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they get locked after disuse Yikes, here's hoping you mean "after a year" or something, because having to make a fake new thread just to comment on an existing locked thread would make me rage quit

Nope, it's after 24 hours of inactivity. Someone with the manage threads permission can unarchive it, but like the pinning thing that also comes with permission to delete it, so you can't just grant that to everyone in your server.

Then that squares with my mental model of discord being for the gaming community, because imagine one's surprise about coming in to work on a Monday to have something to add to a thread made on Friday but unable to contribute to it. Or, what's this "vacation" stuff I keep hearing about?

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

#694

Post by jorl17 »

Gatsky wrote: post #442
nmcela wrote: post #412

I'm grateful to Slack for their changes in the free plan, it forced our hands. We realized it's obvious we can't trust any of these external SaaS services, in the long run they will ALWAYS change the terms and somehow fuck the customers, paying or not. And then you will lose all the invaluable information and data that belongs to you. This has happened with other services we've used in the past too. So we decided to…

This should be the top comment.

While I agree with the sentiment that external dependencies are a risk, why should this be the top comment?

This person was having a service for free, having the possibility to pay and have better guarantees and is shocked that the service has changed its terms? How is this not an absurd mentality?

If gmail suddenly became paid, I would be pretty pissed, but I would have no real reason. It's a service I have for free!! Not even my taxes pay for it.

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

#695

Post by michaelvmata »

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…

That's not necessarily true.

I have several free Slack groups that I've used for years. I haven't paid a cent. But it means I've also have Slack installed by default. At every company I've worked, I've supported using Slack because I'm a happy user and these companies have shelled out for paid plans.

It feels similar to how MS Office is given out for free to students and sold to companies.

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

#697

Post by staindk »

nottorp wrote: post #635
staindk wrote: post #606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO Slack threads are quite good. I'm sure it depends on your use case etc., but in my work context I find they function really well. I did try test some concepts around Slack/Discord threads serving as entire "discussions" for a literary community (so you e.g. post a topic and discuss it in the thread under the topic), and in the end there were a bunch of small pain points that all added up and made it unfeasible. A…

> but in my work context I find they function really well. You have only one channel? We have zillions, per topic.

Besides the default/obvious channels, we generally seem to have a channel per "team", a channel per "division" (group of teams), and then some channels for "division collaborations" e.g. data science + engineering. Then we also often set up a channel for big new features/projects and invite stakeholders to them.

EDIT: I guess the last type could be what you mean by "topic" - we are a startup so perhaps the number of feature/project type channels will balloon out over time, but doubt we would end up with "zillions" haha. And loads of them would be old and essentially archived.

A lot of the channels become somewhat bloated over time, with people joining because they are interested in keeping up with stuff in a broad context, but have no need to click into each thread and read over everything.

I would choose threaded discussions over PM groups or short-lived channels any day tbh.

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

#699

Post by antifa »

BeetleB wrote: post #352
SXX wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discourse can be hosted on $15-20 VPS since it's need docker and fsr more disk space due to using containers.

I could run phpBB just fine on my $5-10/mo shared hosting. It's one thing I don't like about many new tools (Slack alternatives, a lot of ActivityPub stuff, etc) - they require a lot more resources than shared hosting can provide, so you need a VPS, and all the headaches that go along with it.

Most phpBB-like forums will run fine on your $10/year shared MySQL hosts.

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

#700

Post by watwut »

webmobdev wrote: post #626
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…

Very true. Reminds me of what Seth Godin wrote on how the internet has changed people's behaviour: > Most people, most of the time, don't buy things if there's a free substitute available. A hundred million people hear a pop song on the radio and less than 1 percent will buy a copy. Millions will walk by a painting in a museum, but very few have prints, posters or even inexpensive original art in their homes. (In the…

One obvious difference is that hairdressers don't run around yelling "free haircuts we will give you free haircuts look at us how we give away free haircuts".

What the companies are doing here is that they are trying to kill paid competition, hold on longer and raise prices once competitors don't exists. They really dont have a standing to complain about situation they themselves created in the hope that competition will die sooner and in the hope users will be locked too much without any chance.

> Millions will walk by a painting in a museum, but very few have prints, posters or even inexpensive original art in their homes.

Now, this analogy does not work at all, because going by the painting in the museum in no way implies you would want it at home. And that many people dont go to the museums in the first place ... and those who go are more likely to buy some serious art. The other reason it does not work is that people have tons of inexpensive art in their homes. It is ridiculously competitive market. Posters, cups bought only for their pictures, figurines, people buy all of that.

Post reply on HN