Open Sourcers Race to Build Better Versions of Slack

Re:Open Sourcers Race to Build Better Versions of Slack by foolfoolz on Wednesday March 16, 2016 @11:27PM (#11302399)

i think the #1 value add from slack/hipchat is that it's hosted for you. we spend thousands of man-hours each month and year keeping our servers up. uptime is hard. chat is not hard. historical chat is not hard. when chat is down, your business is at risk. there's other services at my company we pay for that aren't very complicated - we just don't want to host it. paying $5/user/mo for chat that is always up is easier than keeping it up yourself.

your use case is very different, and i wouldn't expect any pay-for-chat service to make any sense for it

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Re:Open Sourcers Race to Build Better Versions of Slack by bphogan on Thursday March 17, 2016 @12:10AM (#11302519)

Makes sense.

Although I take issue with "when chat is down your business is at risk."

Pick up a phone. Use Skype. Send email.

Business was done for thousands of years before chat apps. :D

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Re:Open Sourcers Race to Build Better Versions of Slack by thenomad on Thursday March 17, 2016 @06:25AM (#11303536)

That works less well if, for some reason, your business is significantly built around chat (Live Chat for sales, for example).

It's perfectly possible to pivot your sales funnel, but it's not something you can do in two hours whilst the chat server's down.

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Re:Open Sourcers Race to Build Better Versions of Slack by bphogan on Thursday March 17, 2016 @09:50AM (#11304294)

So you plan for it. We just had this whole discussion on HN a few weeks ago when Mandrill changed and everyone was scrambling.

If you rely on a third party for business, you need to plan for it.

The rule always applies: You will pay now or you will pay later.

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