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by throwmeaway222 268 days ago
Probably worth it and possibly a great lesson for others.

Back in 2006 everything was self hosted, and chat was - everyone sharing each others AIM accounts around the room. Everything should probably go back to self hosting, including our servers.
2 comments
jcul 268 days ago
The data and searchability is slacks main selling point. A lot of people don't get that.

I've been using slack for years, since they didn't have video chat or any of that.

There are countless chat apps, including IRC. Slack's offering is that I can find messages or files on some subject from years ago with little effort in a matter of seconds. The history is the product IMO. The free 90 day version is worthless IMO, and barely better than IRC etc.

Slack's name is supposedly derived from "Searchable Log of All Conversation and Knowledge".

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paulcole 268 days ago
> The free 90 day version is worthless IMO

I strongly disagree. The company I work at (sub-50 people) has never paid for Slack over our entire history (founded in 2009).

It's chat and it works fine. That's all it needs to be for us. We don't need to switch to IRC or one of the other countless chat apps.

We're never going to need to be indignant that Slack is suddenly asking us for more money and then rush to migrate. When they shut down the free tier, we'll take our ephemeral chat somewhere else.

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paulcole 268 days ago
I think the lesson is more to not to pay for ephemeral chat. If Slack will let you chat for free with 90 days history, don't get sucked into the paid version if you can at all avoid it.
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rhetocj23 267 days ago
Yeah this. Do not pay for something that is absolutely integral to your operations, when viable alternatives exist.
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