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Comment by TylerE | Hacker News Reader

Seems to be missing the one feature I'd actually want - IRC server emulation so I can connect via my normal IRC client.

This is a shameless plug, but with IRCRelay[1] we focus on the "I want to use my client" crowd. It seems to be a different group of IRC users (also, IRCCloud I think is a fair bit larger and more successful then us) but we have been running in that niche for a year and a bit and it's been going well.

We were on the HN frontpage when we first launched[2]. It went ok, but we got a strong message that we needed a free plan.

After holding out for a year, we've finally added one. You should try it out! :)

[1]: https://www.ircrelay.com/

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4877626

I recently hopped on your service (found with a quick Google search) and it seems to work well and does exactly what I need it to do. I recently started getting big into the Freenode chatrooms for several projects hosted there and realized I needed to setup a bouncer again to catch some of the chatter that goes on during my offline hours. I'm glad your service was there to fill my need.

One question: how do you compete with some of the other IRC bouncer services that seem to offer their bouncers for free? It seems like there are at least a couple that are running on just donations (found with the same search 'irc bouncer hosting').

Hopefully not too late but:

I think it comes down to reliability. We offer a service with very little downtime (only a few hours in 2013 during a large, planned transition we were doing).

Additionally, we do a lot of support for folks, usually with fast response times.

I've talked to a few folks coming from community hosted bouncers and I hear, anecdotally, stuff in line with the above.

Check out ZNC. I run it on my server and proxy my connections to IRC through it. It'll play back messages when I reconnect, etc.

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