Skype is bad though? Like, I want a near-real time asynchronous messaging system that has all the features a messaging system should have... and you can't get that with Skype/Outlook. The two alone are a pain to use.
From what I can see It's pot luck which machine a message will go on The ios client is terrible There's no channels There's no history half the time (if it pops up in webmail for example), if there is, it's client based not server based
We also use irccloud and slack, they are actually useful - irccloud from a standards base, slack from an ease of use. I don't understand why people have so many problems with them.