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Comment by sl1ck731 | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure why they haven't tried the business communications angle with an alternate branded Slack competitor.

As a remote worker on an almost entirely remote team, we would benefit from a sort of voice channel huddle on-demand or even just watercooler chatting. There is something more casual about jumping into a premade voice channel where people may already be chatting than starting a Webex or initiating a Slack call that could introduce more "togetherness".

Something with this functionality was on my list when we were evaluating SaaS for our team and I really wanted something similar to Discord.

Of course no one would go for it as its branded, but having a forked version that doesn't bear any resemblance should be doable with minimum work.

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> Of course no one would go for it as its branded, but having a forked version that doesn't bear any resemblance should be doable with minimum work.

Exactly this. I'd likely pay for a corporate branded Discord software that was named different and didn't use my personal Discord ID.

Yeah my company has the worst time with Skype, but nobody takes you seriously if you mention Discord even though it’s much more reliable and has more features.

Bring up Microsoft Teams maybe.

Teams is pretty good (and I suspect partly ripped off from Discord), but I don't believe it has the casual voice channel feature the parent wanted. You still have to manually initiate calls, like with Skype.

-> Teams is pretty good (and I suspect partly ripped off from Discord)

I think Teams is much closer to a Slack ripoff than a Discord ripoff.

True. I think it might take inspiration from both, though.

What enterprise support plans exist for Discord? Is there a support person you can call if something goes down during a business-critical timeframe? Can HR or other staff access chat logs of their employees? If so, how far back do the chat logs go? A day? A month? Forever? How long will it take to train staff on using this software? Some people get really freaked out by a new UI - they don't think about what they're doing, they just memorize button clicks. So if you change from Skype to Discord, they need to re-memorize the button clicks / patterns / flows, which can take weeks. Some employees really are that slow. Does discord work with existing VOIP phones the company has purchased? Or will those assets need to be retired early due to not being compatible?

There's more to choosing enterprise software than just the features and reliability. My guess is that Skype was included for free in an existing Microsoft contract (Windows 10 PC's, or Office), whereas discord would require an entirely new contract.

Good thing we're not an enterprise.

Sounds like you just manufactured a bunch of problems for yourself with no benefit. Talk about an enterprise state of mind.

They are vehemently against this. There is still no way to turn ON email notifications once you "unsubscribe".

I'm not sympathetic to Discord,but talk about (probably) shooting yourself in the foot.

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