This was noticed not just by me but by my entire team.
So, at this point, it makes sense to move away from Slack.
What are some alternatives? In terms of features: * channels and private messaging * share images and files * (maybe) support for some of the automated commands you can integrate with Slack.
IMO there's value in pushing for decentralized, federated alternatives. Would be interested to hear from people who have used it in anger.
[0]: https://mattermost.com/ [1]: https://rocket.chat/ [2]: https://matrix.org/ [3]: https://about.riot.im/
Watch out though, the MM database is not backed up by the GitLab backup scripts.
The script I wrote: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/omnibus-gitlab/issues/2493
The general issue tracking vendored software backup: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/omnibus-gitlab/issues/1927
I like that you can choose to use the smartphone app, desktop app or the web app - just like slack except you host it.
The mobile apps weren't brilliant 9 months ago, but they were in the early stage of a rewrite in react native, so the situation has likely improved as that has matured.
It has been designed to be used with the topics and there is no workflow that allows you to avoid topics. I'm not sure what you mean by using topics by accident.
Otherwise, have you tried contacting Slack? They've done a lot of improvements recently. My memory usage in FF barely goes over 30mb normally. If you're way over that, maybe you're running into some specific bug they'd want to fix.
What we have:
Apps for every platform
Voice calls and conferences
Group chats and channels
Mentions, replies, forwards
Emojis, emoji reactions, and stickers
Threaded comments
Link previews
Rich text formatting
Keyboard shortcuts
File attachments and previews
Message search
I think few people (especially on HN) are okay with giving away their email without seeing at least a glimpse of what your app is doing.
Use the invite above to sign up and bypass the waitlist.
We've been using Teams for about 18 months since switching from Slack due to its prohibitive cost across our whole org[1]. Whilst Teams is far from perfect, it's got considerably better during that time.
[1] We'd reached the point where the 10000 message limit on the free plan meant our history was down to a few days, which meant that important messages were getting lost whilst they were still needed.
Why not pay for it? It's $6.67 per person, per month. Doesn't seem very expensive for a company.
For us, we need single sign-on, so Slack's £9.75/user/mo. For 200 users that's nearly £2000/month, or £24000/year.
We're now nearly 300 people. That's about £35000/year. And it only gets worse as the company grows.
That's more - I mean, way more - than it costs us to license SQL Server (amortised annually on a 3 year upgrade cycle). It's more than the licenses for several of our other business critical systems and services combined.
In terms of priorities then, we're about to embark on a series of infrastructure improvements and I'd much rather use that £35,000 there, where for us it can add more value.
The problem with Slack is it sounds cheap but the cost creeps up to quite substantial levels for even relatively small organisations. It then needs to be weighed against other costs, and the value it provides versus the value they provide.
Whereas on the other hand we're already paying for Office 365, which everybody in the company uses heavily every working day of the year, and Teams is bundled with it, and it does everything we need, so why not use it?
This isn't a slack alternative, per se, but I really like quip. It lets you create and share documents. You can then leave comments on a part of a document and tag other people, who will then get alerted. It lets you have conversations entirely within in the context of, for example, a design document. It would be perfect if it also had tight integration with a task tracker.
https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/25/16360072/microsoft-teams-...
Share images and files: There are many ways to do this and it can be done independently of the chat system in use. (However, it would also be possible for a IRC client to include such integrated features, sending the URL so that other users can download whether or not they are using the same software as you do.)
Support for some of the automated commands you can integrate with Slack: Unfortunately, I do not understand.
Real time Chat feature (Campfire) is built in which is great and intuitive.
However most of our team members are somehow still used to Slack chat interface.
1. IRC, and share files and images through web-based sharing platforms and links.
Simple, low resource consumption, excellent instrumentation and automation possibilities, logging, etc. Downside - not as convenient as pasting shared content onto a channel. There are web-based IRC clients as well, but they're the opposite of private, and few of the benefits of standalone clients.
In extremely extensive use by many groups and organizations, despite not being fashionable.
2. Telegram (using the groups feature)
Kind of in the middle between Slack and IRC, I guess. Not sure you can use it from within the browser though.
Used, for example, by the LibreOffice development community (from which I noticed this kind of Slack-like use - the LTR/RTL QA volunteers have their own group.)
No problem with Teams so clearly it isn't Electron.
Covers most of the use cases of Slack, though a bit less automated commands.
It's cheaper and designed for a lot of enterprise things like factories, hospital, food industry. They don't advertise so much to the tech industry as it's hard to peel people from Slack.
disclosure: was paid to help them expand to SE Asia
It's marketed for gamers yes but bots, darkmode, all the features, all the compatibility, destroys slack in everyway imo
I guess if you're already a gamer then it makes sense.
What if your team just used a number of email mailing lists for channels, direct emails for private messaging, and having bots send notifications via email?
Emails give you rich content, asynchronous messaging, cross-platform support, history, threads, and more.
Twist seems like a good alternative.
Also it's nice to be able to search through history for things like error messages, or just keywords related to what I am working on. Plenty of times I have just searched for an error and found the solution right away, also not possible with email unless every single time you discussed an error message, those emails were sent to everyone (and then new hires still won't have access to data before they were hired).
No knowledge base/wiki system to share solutions and tips?
Or you can solve all the above by just archiving the mailing lists.
If anything, OP should consider jumping on IRC.
We've been using it for years in our company with excellent results
- group chat and private messaging - video conferencing - share files - integration framework
Okay, buddy. Guess you'll need to "move away from" every web browser that loads Slack too, right?
Riiiiiiight...