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What is it about free services that brings out the worst complaints from people? I understand the paid plans aren’t cheap for small projects, but then maybe don

What is it about free services that brings out the worst complaints from people? I understand the paid plans aren’t cheap for small projects, but then maybe don’t rely on a free service for archiving important information.

bombcar 4y ago
In general your worst customers are the ones who see no value in your service; which tends to collect in the “free” tier.
verdverm 4y ago
The CUE team was looking at a $8k monthly bill for keeping Slack. The money Slack wants can be pretty outrageous when most users don't even chat. Add on top that a single user is likely in several orgs, the money they make per user is approaching usury, if you'll pardon the pun CUE is keeping Slack for now and accepting limited history https://github.com/cue-lang/cue/discussions/1839 https://github.com/cue-lang/cue/discussions/1839 has an overview of the situation and a discussion of alternatives being considered
- stavros 4y ago
  Zulip is a very good fit for open source communities, and much much better for communication than Slack. I hate how Slack encourages you to say everything in the main channel, threads are close to impossible to use. They're a tiny section off to the side and you can't easily navigate between them, it's really badly done.
  - verdverm 4y ago
    It's improved and is now resizable, still much much better than discord The main problem with alternatives is integrations, bots, and similar. The ecosystems are not as available, at least that is the impression
    - stavros 4y ago
      Yeah, the ecosystem and integrations is definitely where Slack has the advantage. Still, I'd rather give up the integrations than the much improved communication.
      - verdverm 4y ago
        I think the real problem is that people can only really support having one chat application open continuously at a time. Maybe two for some, if you account for the non-chat things like text & email. Notification / source burnout. I have to use slack professionally, I'm not going to add another tool. That's why someone was suggesting mattermost (iirc on a friday), as something that bridges all the chat platforms and gives you a single tool
        stavros 4y ago
        Hmm, what do you mean? I'm talking about using Zulip instead of Slack. If I'm going to use another similar service, I might as well use Slack itself. Zulip is miles ahead.
        verdverm 4y ago
        I'm saying my employer, who pays for slack so this whole thing is a no-op, means I have to have slack open. I'm not adding another chat platform to my repertoire, that is the real problem of incumbent If you read the CUE discussion I linked, you will see several people making this same point
        stavros 4y ago
        Well yes, how could you? If the rest of the company is on Slack, you using a different service wouldn't work. The question is where does the employer (or, specifically, the CUE team) go if they don't want to pay for Slack any more.
        4y ago
  - gspr 4y ago
    I've been super impressed with Zulip's thread system in technical chats. But how is Zulip itself in situations where you mostly want channel-wide banter, with the odd thread spawning off of that?
    - stavros 4y ago
      It's been fine for us, just detach that thread or create a new one and link.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
ravenstine 4y ago
People don't value things that are cheap or free. Anyone who has spent enough time doing work on commission knows this. If you set your price too low, you'll get customers of quality proportional to that price, some of whom will believe it's their right to ask the moon of you (or their money back). By raising your price, you won't have as many customers, but the customers you do keep will likely be high of quality and much easier to work with. Even if they request more work of you, they will likely make it worth your while. I noticed this as an independent web developer. When I charged very little, all my clients believed they could make unlimited changes to the expectations of the project, no matter how impractical or time consuming. When I charged what at the time I thought was way more than I was actually worth, someone still ended up paying me and they actually respected my expertise while leaving me alone most of the time.

bombcar 4y ago

In general your worst customers are the ones who see no value in your service; which tends to collect in the “free” tier.

verdverm 4y ago

The CUE team was looking at a $8k monthly bill for keeping Slack. The money Slack wants can be pretty outrageous when most users don't even chat. Add on top that a single user is likely in several orgs, the money they make per user is approaching usury, if you'll pardon the pun CUE is keeping Slack for now and accepting limited history https://github.com/cue-lang/cue/discussions/1839 https://github.com/cue-lang/cue/discussions/1839 has an overview of the situation and a discussion of alternatives being considered

stavros 4y ago
Zulip is a very good fit for open source communities, and much much better for communication than Slack. I hate how Slack encourages you to say everything in the main channel, threads are close to impossible to use. They're a tiny section off to the side and you can't easily navigate between them, it's really badly done.
- verdverm 4y ago
  It's improved and is now resizable, still much much better than discord The main problem with alternatives is integrations, bots, and similar. The ecosystems are not as available, at least that is the impression
  - stavros 4y ago
    Yeah, the ecosystem and integrations is definitely where Slack has the advantage. Still, I'd rather give up the integrations than the much improved communication.
    - verdverm 4y ago
      I think the real problem is that people can only really support having one chat application open continuously at a time. Maybe two for some, if you account for the non-chat things like text & email. Notification / source burnout. I have to use slack professionally, I'm not going to add another tool. That's why someone was suggesting mattermost (iirc on a friday), as something that bridges all the chat platforms and gives you a single tool
      - stavros 4y ago
        Hmm, what do you mean? I'm talking about using Zulip instead of Slack. If I'm going to use another similar service, I might as well use Slack itself. Zulip is miles ahead.
        verdverm 4y ago
        I'm saying my employer, who pays for slack so this whole thing is a no-op, means I have to have slack open. I'm not adding another chat platform to my repertoire, that is the real problem of incumbent If you read the CUE discussion I linked, you will see several people making this same point
        stavros 4y ago
        Well yes, how could you? If the rest of the company is on Slack, you using a different service wouldn't work. The question is where does the employer (or, specifically, the CUE team) go if they don't want to pay for Slack any more.
        4y ago
- gspr 4y ago
  I've been super impressed with Zulip's thread system in technical chats. But how is Zulip itself in situations where you mostly want channel-wide banter, with the odd thread spawning off of that?
  - stavros 4y ago
    It's been fine for us, just detach that thread or create a new one and link.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

ravenstine 4y ago

People don't value things that are cheap or free. Anyone who has spent enough time doing work on commission knows this. If you set your price too low, you'll get customers of quality proportional to that price, some of whom will believe it's their right to ask the moon of you (or their money back). By raising your price, you won't have as many customers, but the customers you do keep will likely be high of quality and much easier to work with. Even if they request more work of you, they will likely make it worth your while. I noticed this as an independent web developer. When I charged very little, all my clients believed they could make unlimited changes to the expectations of the project, no matter how impractical or time consuming. When I charged what at the time I thought was way more than I was actually worth, someone still ended up paying me and they actually respected my expertise while leaving me alone most of the time.