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There's a perfect alternative: * Free * Handles thousands of users seamlessly * Archived via bot same as free Slack * No noticeable performance hit for high

There's a perfect alternative: * Free * Handles thousands of users seamlessly * Archived via bot same as free Slack * No noticeable performance hit for high user volumes * Wide variety of interfaces and integration bots to choose from * Widely deployed and trusted across tech communities It's called IRC. Edit: I can tell more people are encountering challenges using Slack these days. In the past, a suggestion to use IRC would have been downvoted to hell and back! A lot of people seem hung up on the history, file sharing, or some other feature that Slack has, so I thought I'd take a moment to expand on my ideal setup and how they translate from Slack: * Long-lived documentation and important team knowledge: Wiki pages (which I prefer even when using Slack and pins or history search are available). Full history of edits is visible and it's easy to access/search. * Discussions involving a large number of stakeholders: Email. Threads and the async nature of the protocol make it well-suited to discussions when users aren't all online at the same time and the discussion is more thoughtful and isn't moving quickly. Slack threads suck replies aren't very visible and history scrolls quickly in active channels. * Discussions involving outages, current tasks, and other immediate needs: IRC. It's real time, cross-platform, etc. History can be archived for later searching, but CHAT HISOTRY != DOCUMENTATION. Post-mortems and that sort of thing should end up in a wiki or similar. * File sharing can be done via some other service with a link pasted into chat. One extra step to paste the link manually isn't a big deal.

ATsch 10y ago
It's a shame there has not been an easy, free way to solve the major problems with IRC for everybody: - no history while you are not in a channel - lack of modern features like sending images and lack of good UX - no mobile notifications Matrix.org solves these problems very well IMO, but it's adoption is abysmal too.
- lorenzhs 10y ago
  All of these problems are solvable, though: - Commonly addressed with logging bots and a link to the log in the topic - Some clients have this: when you drag an image into Glowing Bear (a web frontend for WeeChat that I'm working on), it gets uploaded to imgur and a link to the image is pasted in the channel. It can also display images and videos inline if you wish. - Easily handled with services like push{over,bullet} The problem is that these things don't work out of the box and that there's a learning curve. It's just not a very friendly experience for newcomers.
pavel_lishin 10y ago
There are drawbacks, though: * no built-in file uploads * a bot is required for archiving * a bot is required for notifications * no native scrollback/history - IRC bouncers solve this problem, but it's not a plausible solution for most non-techies * the last two issues also mean that mobile solutions are going to be lacking. It's possible to have IRC as fully featured as slack, but it does mean either rolling your own solution, or using a lot of other software to accommodate everything and everyone.
- brandon272 10y ago
  IRCCloud solves a lot of these problems and you'd think there's a market opportunity for them to step in and offer their enhanced IRC experiences to "teams" and "communities" with an appropriately optimized fee structure.
- a_imho 10y ago
  Why not just email?
  - pavel_lishin 10y ago
    Email implies a different sort of latency. If I want to ask my coworker René for a quick bit of knowledge, a phone call is too disruptive and too urgent, and an email might not be answered for a few hours. Slack/hipchat/irc are the perfect medium for "hey, do you know off the top of your head why X is Y?"
    - a_imho 10y ago
      Sometimes I fail to answer slack messages for a good chunk of time, with email I only have to pay attention to one notification and can handle all communication from the same interface (and you have to use email anyway). I don't think there is anything inherently slow about email, or that firing off one without a carefully crafted subject would be bad manners. Might be a personal preference, nevertheless I don't think there is any technical advantage in using an instant messaging service.
- 10y ago

ATsch 10y ago

It's a shame there has not been an easy, free way to solve the major problems with IRC for everybody: - no history while you are not in a channel - lack of modern features like sending images and lack of good UX - no mobile notifications Matrix.org solves these problems very well IMO, but it's adoption is abysmal too.

lorenzhs 10y ago
All of these problems are solvable, though: - Commonly addressed with logging bots and a link to the log in the topic - Some clients have this: when you drag an image into Glowing Bear (a web frontend for WeeChat that I'm working on), it gets uploaded to imgur and a link to the image is pasted in the channel. It can also display images and videos inline if you wish. - Easily handled with services like push{over,bullet} The problem is that these things don't work out of the box and that there's a learning curve. It's just not a very friendly experience for newcomers.

pavel_lishin 10y ago

There are drawbacks, though: * no built-in file uploads * a bot is required for archiving * a bot is required for notifications * no native scrollback/history - IRC bouncers solve this problem, but it's not a plausible solution for most non-techies * the last two issues also mean that mobile solutions are going to be lacking. It's possible to have IRC as fully featured as slack, but it does mean either rolling your own solution, or using a lot of other software to accommodate everything and everyone.

brandon272 10y ago
IRCCloud solves a lot of these problems and you'd think there's a market opportunity for them to step in and offer their enhanced IRC experiences to "teams" and "communities" with an appropriately optimized fee structure.
a_imho 10y ago
Why not just email?
- pavel_lishin 10y ago
  Email implies a different sort of latency. If I want to ask my coworker René for a quick bit of knowledge, a phone call is too disruptive and too urgent, and an email might not be answered for a few hours. Slack/hipchat/irc are the perfect medium for "hey, do you know off the top of your head why X is Y?"
  - a_imho 10y ago
    Sometimes I fail to answer slack messages for a good chunk of time, with email I only have to pay attention to one notification and can handle all communication from the same interface (and you have to use email anyway). I don't think there is anything inherently slow about email, or that firing off one without a carefully crafted subject would be bad manners. Might be a personal preference, nevertheless I don't think there is any technical advantage in using an instant messaging service.
10y ago