Choosing a chat platform for public online communities

My motivation to talk on this topic was to highlight that IMHO Slack is not the ideal platform for public communities because there are serious restrictions with the free plan. I researched some alternates to Slack and shared them through this talk.

Transcript

1. Choosing a chat platform for public communities Wahib Ul Haq @wahibhaq @DevRelMunich 26.11.2019
4. Domains of Chat Platforms Internal Organization Teams Slack, Microsoft Teams And many other...
5. Domains of Chat Platforms Internal Organization Teams Slack, Microsoft Teams And many other... Customers Community around your website, brand or digital service Running an Online course community Offering paid help, mentorship or consultancy Paid memberships Do checkout: https://www.mightynetworks.com/
6. Domains of Chat Platforms Internal Organization Teams Slack, Microsoft Teams And many other... Customers Community around your website, brand or digital service Running an Online course community Offering paid help, mentorship or consultancy Paid memberships Do checkout: https://www.mightynetworks.com/ Communities Side projects, Knowledge sharing, Open-source etc.
7. https://standuply.com/slack-chat-groups
8. Motivation
11. 250 users X € 7.50 / month = € 1875 / month
12. Problems with Slack
14. Slack is great for internal teams, but it just isn’t built for large public communities
15. Barrier to entry
16. Barrier to entry Short-lived channel history (10k limit)
17. Barrier to entry Short-lived channel history (10k limit) Walled Garden
18. Barrier to entry Short-lived channel history (10k limit) Walled Garden Problematic search
19. Requirements
20. Must have Hosted Free for unlimited messages and members count Easy to use Threads Easy to invite and join Markdown Code highlighting 3rd party app and bot Integrations Browser support Admin and Access management
21. Good to have Opensource Posts are Discoverable Easier to share posts with outside world and easily accessible Emoji reactions One account instead of account per community Client apps for desktop Client apps for mobile Option to integrate with Slack (help with migration and inviting existing members) Analytics Real names (less trolling)
22. Paid but Good Options Available Rocket.Chat (need to host) Zulip Chat (free tier up to 10k message history) Matrix.org Mattermost (free with self-hosted) Riot.im
23. Free & Hosted Options Available Facebook Groups Spectrum.chat Discord Discourse KeybaseIO Gitter
24. Facebook Group: The algorithm that sits between you and your members
25. Free & Hosted Options Available - Facebook Groups - the noise, clutter, and questionable practices - frustrating things about running a Facebook Group is the algorithm that sits between you and your members - Spectrum.chat - Discord - Discourse - KeybaseIO - Gitter
26. Spectrum Community platform for the future
28. Spectrum https://spectrum.chat/openui5/general/a-better-place-than-slack~490f6aec-12c0-4418-8e61-6325b42335a1 https://blog.apollographql.com/goodbye-slack-hello-spectrum-8fa6b979645b Betting even more after joining Github team https://spectrum.chat/features
31. Open-source Strong backing: Spectrum joined Github last year Content is accessible without any wall, via link as well Easy to join with just one account needed Robust search, and Indexed online Thread based But still a young company: some bugs, stability issues and less fancy interface
33. Who else is using Spectrum https://zeit.co/blog/spectrum
34. Discord Free Voice and Text Chat for Gamers
36. Spectrum Look less mature but minimalist Different interface than Slack Mac app but No mobile app Threads Indexed and discoverable Discord Older, Mature and More fancy Similar interface as Slack Mobile apps + Desktop client No Threads Impression is that is is for gamers Not indexed by Google
37. Happy Community Building Thanks for Listening @wahibhaq