Ask HN: Is there a real reason to pay for things like Slack or Jira?

Re:Ask HN: Is there a real reason to pay for things like Sla... by Shinmon on Tuesday January 03, 2023 @04:02AM (#34229420)

It's not just installing a chat server though. It's setting up the server in general, securing the chat server, make the chat server work with your companies choice of auth, updating the chat server, updating the underlying server, .... How about file transfer in chat? Pictures? Gifs? ... That's what you gotta do with every solution you want so self-host. It takes time, costs money, and is likely still leading to a worse user experience.

Are there companies who self-host their chat and project management? Pretty sure there are. In the end, that's why slack is has a free option that works well for small teams that do not need to keep old messages.

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Re:Ask HN: Is there a real reason to pay for things like Sla... by jesuscript on Tuesday January 03, 2023 @04:12AM (#34229485)

I certainly don’t want to go back and forth, but I’m pretty sure xmpp and matrix support sso/files/images/emojis. Might take a day of setup, but one day of setup vs per year/per user subscription for something that’s been around (for free) for ages fails my this-is-bottled-water-we-are-paying for test.

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Re:Ask HN: Is there a real reason to pay for things like Sla... by pxcse on Tuesday January 03, 2023 @04:45AM (#34229658)

It's not that the things you say can't be done. Of course they can.

But simply buying a product takes a lot of effort away. I've used XMPP messengers and it worked. But I'm a tech savy person. If you have colleagues who aren't then you need someone to support them in installing the client, setting up everything, etc.

With solutions like Slack there is a lot less friction. People know how to use it in a browser. People know how to install the client.

You pay for the convenience of the product, no necessarily for the features themselves.

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