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> It's free(ish) The free tier has a very limited history, which defeats the point of using Slack, since you lose your history. And there's really no point in

> It's free(ish) The free tier has a very limited history, which defeats the point of using Slack, since you lose your history. And there's really no point in using Slack if you don't have a history you can rely on, might as well use IRC. And once you start paying, $7-$15 per user/month is not what I'd call cheap. It's cheap compared to a salary, but such costs pile up. > Voice/Video via numerous integrations including Bluejeans, Appear.in, Skype, Hangouts, you name it. Which is another way of saying that it doesn't solve the problems that Skype does, so it's not an alternative.

kuschku 11y ago
> might as well use IRC. Worse: For IRC you can use quassel (self-hosted) or IRCCloud (4$/month). So with IRC you get more, but even cheaper.
- balabaster 11y ago
  The problem with IRC is that the plugins aren't as discoverable and more of a pain in the neck to integrate. When you're not in channel on IRC, you don't have access to anything that was said prior to joining the channel which means you don't even have any immediate history, or context to a conversation that is ongoing when you join. At least with Slack you have 10,000 messages of history, which is at least enough to give you the context of the discussion. Also while probably irrelevant on a technical level, it's just not as pretty and user friendly as Slack.
  - kuschku 11y ago
    All these issues you mentioned are solved by using IRCCloud or Quassel – I currently have a backlog for the channels I’m in via Quassel back to 2014 – available in the app, over the webapp, via the program on Windows, Mac and Linux. The only issue with IRC is discoverability.
balabaster 11y ago
For most people, the limited history isn't really an issue. For most enterprise tools you're looking at paying thousands to tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. In comparison, the cost to get the enterprise features out of Slack is a drop in the ocean. The joy of adhoc plugins is that you don't need any specific one to get the benefits. It's like a directory of alternatives to Skype that all do an appropriate job. It's more discoverable than say trying to find an alternative to Skype via a Google search. New apps/integrations are added daily, giving you visibility to alternatives every day.
- pluma 11y ago
  > For most enterprise tools you're looking at paying thousands to tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. That seems a bit of a strawman considering we're talking about Slack as an alternative to Skype which brings the non-limited history for free.
  - balabaster 11y ago
    It's hardly searchable. I've used Skype for years, and I can honestly tell you that while Skype may have an unlimited history. In practice, that unlimited history is a pain in the ass to search, to the point that it may as well not have unlimited history. So from my perspective I'd equally say that the "non-limited history for free" of Skype is an equally straw-man argument. They used to have bot integration which was awesome and allowed us to pipe information in and out from our other systems, but they terminated bot integration which was a huge nail in the coffin for us.

kuschku 11y ago

> might as well use IRC. Worse: For IRC you can use quassel (self-hosted) or IRCCloud (4$/month). So with IRC you get more, but even cheaper.

balabaster 11y ago
The problem with IRC is that the plugins aren't as discoverable and more of a pain in the neck to integrate. When you're not in channel on IRC, you don't have access to anything that was said prior to joining the channel which means you don't even have any immediate history, or context to a conversation that is ongoing when you join. At least with Slack you have 10,000 messages of history, which is at least enough to give you the context of the discussion. Also while probably irrelevant on a technical level, it's just not as pretty and user friendly as Slack.
- kuschku 11y ago
  All these issues you mentioned are solved by using IRCCloud or Quassel – I currently have a backlog for the channels I’m in via Quassel back to 2014 – available in the app, over the webapp, via the program on Windows, Mac and Linux. The only issue with IRC is discoverability.

balabaster 11y ago

For most people, the limited history isn't really an issue. For most enterprise tools you're looking at paying thousands to tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. In comparison, the cost to get the enterprise features out of Slack is a drop in the ocean. The joy of adhoc plugins is that you don't need any specific one to get the benefits. It's like a directory of alternatives to Skype that all do an appropriate job. It's more discoverable than say trying to find an alternative to Skype via a Google search. New apps/integrations are added daily, giving you visibility to alternatives every day.

pluma 11y ago
> For most enterprise tools you're looking at paying thousands to tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. That seems a bit of a strawman considering we're talking about Slack as an alternative to Skype which brings the non-limited history for free.
- balabaster 11y ago
  It's hardly searchable. I've used Skype for years, and I can honestly tell you that while Skype may have an unlimited history. In practice, that unlimited history is a pain in the ass to search, to the point that it may as well not have unlimited history. So from my perspective I'd equally say that the "non-limited history for free" of Skype is an equally straw-man argument. They used to have bot integration which was awesome and allowed us to pipe information in and out from our other systems, but they terminated bot integration which was a huge nail in the coffin for us.