Obviously you can create IRC integrations for anything. But how many are installable with one click, like Slack integrations are? Having to write custom implementations is yet another extra task and point of failure compared to just paying someone to manage it all for you.

another "but".

First "but it doesn't scale". Now "but integrations".

There will always be another "but", and there will always be a link on the internet showing that it's been done already.

"but shiny web gui" - https://thelounge.chat/

"but mobile app" - https://github.com/MCMrARM/revolution-irc

"but it's complicated" - https://www.mirc.com/ since 1995

IRC does have limits. Some. One is that to make it "modern" it needs a bouncer - that said znc is spectacularly simple to set up with it's web interface.

Integrations were never one of those limits. Just google IRC bots.

> another "but"

That's my entire point. It's death by a thousand cuts. Now I'm responsible for an IRC server, a web frontend, a mobile app and a bouncer.

The OP said "just run an IRC server". There is no "Slack or just an IRC server". There's "Slack or a number of connected, interdependent services you need to maintain". I'm not saying it can't be done, or that it isn't the right answer for some people, but it's also a lot more work (and thus, expense) than just paying for Slack. It absolutely makes sense that people do it.

Why is paying another company better than getting employees and paying them the same or even less money?!

When did this madness start?

In what world is it going to be "the same or even less money" to hire one or two sysadmins on a full-time basis than paying for a Slack subscription?

Tbh., if you need two full-time sysadmins to run your IRC server + bouncer + log backup + web frontend, you're doing something really wrong. It's more like an after-school job for a bored CS student.

I don't know how large your company is, but with 10k+ employees, it's suddenly a reasonable option.

With that many employees you're signing up for Slack's enterprise tier, and you can bet they price it so that they come out the right side of this cost/benefit calculation for a lot of companies.

I have seen those numbers. You could easily afford paying sysadmins with those numbers.

But managing an IRC server cluster for 10.000+ users is no simple task.

Paying experts in their field (chat tools in this case) is most of the time the most reliable and cheapest variant. You must also include that Slack has plenty of features that are not available in IRC and mean the productivity is not as good.

Since when is running any service for a number of people something people compare with running google?

30 years ago, efnet was (apparently) 35k users.

How do you make it possible for people to view the IRC channel history when they were disconnected? I know you can have a bot that saves a log, but can it be made seamless?

I think it's really sad how the world has migrated away from an open protocol to a closed one, but I remember IRC having some very real annoyances, well beyond stuff like integrations.

The answer is in at the bottom of my previous entry. It's called an IRC bouncer.

bouncer, or web client that persists chats, like TheLounge or Convos.

Features is not the only thing, does it have well funded sales team and strong corporate support ? Slack itself did support IRC till recently, the product is not just a sum of its features

> does it have well funded sales team and strong corporate support

Get 2 sysadmins. 2 because of redundancy. Pay them to maintain your service.

"well funded sales team and corporate support". F that. Trust your employees.

What happens when your sysadmins say "Maintaining IRC is a waste of time and gets us 1% of the features Slack does, let's just get Slack?" (At my last company, it was the sysadmin team, including myself, who decided to switch to Slack and killed our IRC server.)

Do you stop trusting them then?

2 sysadmins will cost considerably more than a few slack accounts. Unless your company is huge.

> Unless your company is huge.

Yes. Someone above have mentioned ibm using slack though. I think that's huge enough for the argument.

Yes at that scale it may be useful to roll out a custom system. However I'd count into account that large customers probably have different pricing and that maintaining custom systems is always bothersome because you are always the largest customer.

"Well funded sales team" is unfortunately what makes closed products win over open ones.