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His point, which you have missed, is that although the archive thing was a problem, it may been their own fault. However, the number of users allowed was not, p

His point, which you have missed, is that although the archive thing was a problem, it may been their own fault. However, the number of users allowed was not, plus paying for the service wouldn't change that the cap exists.

dahart 10y ago
My point, which you have missed, is that the author should have uncovered this cap before moving his community. It was clearly on sketchy ground before he did it. You can't say anything about what paying would have done, because he had no intention to pay. And if he had paid the 0.5 million, I'd be willing to bet that Slack would attend to his needs. But none of that happened, so it's a straw man.
- Nomentatus 10y ago
  Please share your method of uncovering, in advance, undocumented limits inherent in software; it's desperately needed. The guy left a free trial for another free trial; if he's at fault we're all at fault every time we change our go-to software. The lesson might be that "there be dragons" - you should guess that any "better" program or SaaS out there is less that half of what it says once unknown limits have been discovered.
  - Spooky23 10y ago
    Customer: Hello vendor, we're a customer with tens of thousands of active users and no intention to pay. How many users can you support in your free tier? How do you handle situations with high message volumes? You should engage with the vendor. Perhaps there are intangible benefits to the vendor for you to use them even at no cost (PR, testing opportunity, etc) Generally speaking, if you are dependent on a free service to do your business, you are fucked. A friend is a policy consultant who relied on Google Reader to be his knowledge repository. He bills the equivalent of $800/hr and was nearly paralyzed as it went away.
  - dahart 10y ago
    It's called "due diligence", and people do it all the time. He didn't change his own personal go-to software, we're not talking about a trial of a video game here. He changed the software for thousands of his users. He put thousands of people on a free trial for something that was not obviously going to work. You do have the option to investigate before you make that kind of move. If you choose not to exercise it, you don't have that much ground to stand on when things don't work out.
    - zedadex 10y ago
      The due diligence in this case would have been researching the user limits which (as others have pointed out) were not published or advertised anywhere.
      - dahart 10y ago
        There's a reason it's called "diligence", because it typically involves trying. Personally, I don't count reading a company's ad copy on their own web page as being even remotely diligent or doing much research. Normally 'due diligence' involves talking to the party you intend to engage with, as well as talking to others who have experience with that party. The author didn't mention any of that. Other users here also pointed out that there is a known specific API error message for the user limit. That kind of thing could be uncovered with a little diligence. Author could also have setup a fake team and tried to add many users before putting 8k real users on the team and just hoping. He did finally start talking directly to Slack only after he started having trouble, and they responded and disclosed the existence of a team size limit. This obviously could have happened before hitting the limit. The author expressed incredulity at what would be a $500k price tag, and yet completely fails to see why that is a massive glaring red flag. That alone should have been enough signal that his plan was skating on thin ice, but instead he drove right past all the warning signs and then blamed Slack for it.
        Nomentatus 10y ago
        Trying a huge number of users? How without migrating? He could have asked innumerable questions all of which contradicted the description of what he was getting. He couldn't have known which was the right question. I very rarely query in person before a purchase; I did recently and was given a flatly wrong answer on one question, and then a very positive answer that wasn't logically coherent (strongly suggesting a no, in truth) on a second question. I'm buying anyway, but unless you can phone a corporate head, querying customer support for arcane technical information is rarely a great way to get the right answer, in my experience (sorry to say.) UNLESS you already have a proven fail, of course - which he did. If it were my program there'd be an error message in there no matter what the upper limit was; I assume others are as competent. I also don't follow your logic re the high price tag somehow logically entailing a secret limit on the free product - unless you're implying that it's a trap, a way of phishing for phools. (In my country, an illegal bait and switch, actually.) That's something that doesn't work too well when you're peddling to corporations, the pool is small and word gets around too fast.
- sucrose 10y ago
  > It's called a team and marketed for internal use, not as something you 're-sell' or offer customers. Do you have a source for that information? One of the roles of Slack[0] is named "Member" not "Coworker". > the author should have uncovered this cap before moving his community. He tried: Slack said there was no limit, yet there was. Even Slack themselves mention starting with a "pilot team"[1] to demo; which wouldn't have discovered the limit either. How would you discover it? [0] https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/201314026-Roles-and-permissions-in-Slack https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/201314026-Roles-and... [1] https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/217626298-Tips-for-team-creators-and-admins https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/217626298-Tips-for-...
  - dahart 10y ago
    How about "Slack for Teams is a single workspace for your small- to medium-sized company or team."? https://limnu.slack.com/pricing https://limnu.slack.com/pricing But your question presumes that the word "team" isn't enough, and that the implied team size that comes with a 10k message limit also isn't enough. Why?

dahart 10y ago

My point, which you have missed, is that the author should have uncovered this cap before moving his community. It was clearly on sketchy ground before he did it. You can't say anything about what paying would have done, because he had no intention to pay. And if he had paid the 0.5 million, I'd be willing to bet that Slack would attend to his needs. But none of that happened, so it's a straw man.

Nomentatus 10y ago
Please share your method of uncovering, in advance, undocumented limits inherent in software; it's desperately needed. The guy left a free trial for another free trial; if he's at fault we're all at fault every time we change our go-to software. The lesson might be that "there be dragons" - you should guess that any "better" program or SaaS out there is less that half of what it says once unknown limits have been discovered.
- Spooky23 10y ago
  Customer: Hello vendor, we're a customer with tens of thousands of active users and no intention to pay. How many users can you support in your free tier? How do you handle situations with high message volumes? You should engage with the vendor. Perhaps there are intangible benefits to the vendor for you to use them even at no cost (PR, testing opportunity, etc) Generally speaking, if you are dependent on a free service to do your business, you are fucked. A friend is a policy consultant who relied on Google Reader to be his knowledge repository. He bills the equivalent of $800/hr and was nearly paralyzed as it went away.
- dahart 10y ago
  It's called "due diligence", and people do it all the time. He didn't change his own personal go-to software, we're not talking about a trial of a video game here. He changed the software for thousands of his users. He put thousands of people on a free trial for something that was not obviously going to work. You do have the option to investigate before you make that kind of move. If you choose not to exercise it, you don't have that much ground to stand on when things don't work out.
  - zedadex 10y ago
    The due diligence in this case would have been researching the user limits which (as others have pointed out) were not published or advertised anywhere.
    - dahart 10y ago
      There's a reason it's called "diligence", because it typically involves trying. Personally, I don't count reading a company's ad copy on their own web page as being even remotely diligent or doing much research. Normally 'due diligence' involves talking to the party you intend to engage with, as well as talking to others who have experience with that party. The author didn't mention any of that. Other users here also pointed out that there is a known specific API error message for the user limit. That kind of thing could be uncovered with a little diligence. Author could also have setup a fake team and tried to add many users before putting 8k real users on the team and just hoping. He did finally start talking directly to Slack only after he started having trouble, and they responded and disclosed the existence of a team size limit. This obviously could have happened before hitting the limit. The author expressed incredulity at what would be a $500k price tag, and yet completely fails to see why that is a massive glaring red flag. That alone should have been enough signal that his plan was skating on thin ice, but instead he drove right past all the warning signs and then blamed Slack for it.
      - Nomentatus 10y ago
        Trying a huge number of users? How without migrating? He could have asked innumerable questions all of which contradicted the description of what he was getting. He couldn't have known which was the right question. I very rarely query in person before a purchase; I did recently and was given a flatly wrong answer on one question, and then a very positive answer that wasn't logically coherent (strongly suggesting a no, in truth) on a second question. I'm buying anyway, but unless you can phone a corporate head, querying customer support for arcane technical information is rarely a great way to get the right answer, in my experience (sorry to say.) UNLESS you already have a proven fail, of course - which he did. If it were my program there'd be an error message in there no matter what the upper limit was; I assume others are as competent. I also don't follow your logic re the high price tag somehow logically entailing a secret limit on the free product - unless you're implying that it's a trap, a way of phishing for phools. (In my country, an illegal bait and switch, actually.) That's something that doesn't work too well when you're peddling to corporations, the pool is small and word gets around too fast.
sucrose 10y ago
> It's called a team and marketed for internal use, not as something you 're-sell' or offer customers. Do you have a source for that information? One of the roles of Slack[0] is named "Member" not "Coworker". > the author should have uncovered this cap before moving his community. He tried: Slack said there was no limit, yet there was. Even Slack themselves mention starting with a "pilot team"[1] to demo; which wouldn't have discovered the limit either. How would you discover it? [0] https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/201314026-Roles-and-permissions-in-Slack https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/201314026-Roles-and... [1] https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/217626298-Tips-for-team-creators-and-admins https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/217626298-Tips-for-...
- dahart 10y ago
  How about "Slack for Teams is a single workspace for your small- to medium-sized company or team."? https://limnu.slack.com/pricing https://limnu.slack.com/pricing But your question presumes that the word "team" isn't enough, and that the implied team size that comes with a 10k message limit also isn't enough. Why?