Hacker News Reader

Comment by JustSomeNobody | Hacker News Reader

Does Slack even understand that there are MANY enterprise companies that don't use Slack simply because it's NOT Microsoft?

Hubris is rarely a good quality.

View on HN

Actually, they don't use Slack because Slack would be the most expensive piece of software they license. The enterprise model from Slack is so prohibitively expensive it's like they're intentionally trying to drive away large customers.

More likely because it's not available on-premise. Check into how many use HipChat instead, because it is.

Either way, this is a HUGE market Slack hasn't even begun to touch. (Although I see they now have a "coming soon!" banner on their homepage.)

> More likely because it's not available on-premise. Check into how many use HipChat instead, because it is.

Just one data-point, but: my employer went with HipChat because we needed an on-premise solution. (We were moving away from IRC because we needed persistent chat history for remote employees. Using IRC bouncers was considered too high of a barrier-to-entry, given we wanted non-technical employees to join the conversation too).

Does that really matter, since those companies by definition would never be Slack customers? It's not like Slack could ever become a Microsoft product -- barring the obvious buyout, which is not likely to ever happen since Microsoft rolled their own.

So if they aren't buying now because it's not Microsoft, I don't see how Slack hubris changes anything in that equation.

If (when, likely) Teams gets momentum, other companies will start making a choice between Slack and Teams. This could start cutting into Slacks market share.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com