Hacker News Reader

Comment by Cthulhu_ | Hacker News Reader

Doesn't any IRC server ever do this? I mean 8500 users... isn't actually that much. Even if the free IRC servers don't support this amount of users, you could just set up a reasonably cheap server (for way less than half a million (!) a year) to do exactly the same thing.

And that's just the thing. Most people will see Slack as IRC chat, but a bit better. And nobody will consider IRC chat worth $5 / user / month. Doubly so if your chat channel is open for everyone and you don't know who your users are.

View on HN

Slack is a lot better than IRC when used as intended.

Also, my favourite IRC client (IRCCloud) is, in fact, $5/user/month, and I know I'm not even close to their only paying customer.

I recognise you're engaging in hyperbole when you say "nobody will consider IRC chat worth $5 / user / month", but when you're saying stuff which is so blatantly wrong (and trivially disproven), it undermines your entire argument.

$5/mo for an IRC client? That's just silly.

Geek cultured called -- they want their technology back. Apparently startup culture has corrupted our industry to a degree that people think $5/mo for a hosted IRC client is a fair exchange of value.

I pay shy of $5/mo for a VPS to run a BNC with my preferred config and serve a few files.

If someone prefers IRCCloud or Slack's features and support, it can absolutely be worth more than the sum of bandwidth, storage, and CPU.

The market determines prices based on what people are willing to pay. Apparently the companies who are paying Slack $5/month think it's a good value, since they've chosen Slack over all the alternatives. They may even buy it for purely intangible reasons, like their employees enjoy using it and thus communicate more effectively.

If you think you can offer the same services that Slack does for $1 a month, maybe you have an opportunity to start a business that successfully competes with them.

You talk about a "fair exchange of value". Is it fair for Apple to charge you a 50% markup on an iPhone? Is it fair for Starbucks to charge $4 for a latte? Do you know of any for-profit business that sets its prices based on an abstract notion of fairness rather than supply and demand? If your company was fortunate enough to make a 50% profit next year, would you offer to return some of it to your customers?

> And nobody will consider IRC chat worth $5 / user / month.

Considering they have tens of millions in ARR, the market has proven you wrong.

A single IRC server can trivially handle 8500 users in total, but most ircds would explode horribly on 8500 users in a single channel. There's probably at least one that can support it, but it's not really a use-case they're designed for.

What makes you believe that? 1,000+ user channels are common on Freenode.

Slack comes with more features than IRC though, but you raise a good point. Maybe this customer should use IRC.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com