Like Slack or MS Teams, but better?
February 7, 2021 8:09 AM Subscribe
I am in a group that uses Slack. But we have two overlapping subgroups that we want to split up. Maybe you can help us with the best way to do that?
We have maybe 25 people in the Slack workspace now (and possibly that number could grow over time). We realized that we want to keep subgroup A out of the space for subgroup B.
We can't do that on the free Slack plan, and the paid plan costs too much (I think $5 per person per month).
I am wondering whether there is something more or less like Slack (or maybe an easy forum?), free or minimal cost) that would allow us to have separate subspaces for subgroups A and B (and possibly other subgroups). Otherwise, we'll probably just get a new Slack workspace.
We do have a Wordpress website, in case that helps. We also have Facebook, but I prefer to avoid making members make an account with any social media channel.
We have maybe 25 people in the Slack workspace now (and possibly that number could grow over time). We realized that we want to keep subgroup A out of the space for subgroup B.
We can't do that on the free Slack plan, and the paid plan costs too much (I think $5 per person per month).
I am wondering whether there is something more or less like Slack (or maybe an easy forum?), free or minimal cost) that would allow us to have separate subspaces for subgroups A and B (and possibly other subgroups). Otherwise, we'll probably just get a new Slack workspace.
We do have a Wordpress website, in case that helps. We also have Facebook, but I prefer to avoid making members make an account with any social media channel.
Response by poster: Can you make a private channel for subgoup B?
That requires a paid plan, which is too costly for us.
posted by NotLost at 8:21 AM on February 7, 2021
That requires a paid plan, which is too costly for us.
posted by NotLost at 8:21 AM on February 7, 2021
Yeah, you can do this with Discord and role permissions (channels/sections visible depending on whether or not your profile has a special setting given by the admins) for free.
I will say a disadvantage of Discord is you can’t easily switch accounts like Slack. So if someone wants to keep their personal and professional Discord profiles separate, they’ll have to use one in the browser and one in the desktop app. And there’s no way to do that on mobile, so if the nature of your work would require people to be using their phone a lot to respond, it might not work out for anyone who already has a Discord account they want to keep separate from work. But that’s a pretty small possibility, I think.
posted by brook horse at 8:24 AM on February 7, 2021
I will say a disadvantage of Discord is you can’t easily switch accounts like Slack. So if someone wants to keep their personal and professional Discord profiles separate, they’ll have to use one in the browser and one in the desktop app. And there’s no way to do that on mobile, so if the nature of your work would require people to be using their phone a lot to respond, it might not work out for anyone who already has a Discord account they want to keep separate from work. But that’s a pretty small possibility, I think.
posted by brook horse at 8:24 AM on February 7, 2021
Best answer: I was going to suggest Discord as well. That being said, you can definitely create a private channel on a free Slack Plan. I'm looking at it right now. All you'd have to do is to make sure you invite Subgroup B to the private channel.
posted by pyro979 at 8:41 AM on February 7, 2021
posted by pyro979 at 8:41 AM on February 7, 2021
Response by poster: You can definitely create a private channel on a free Slack Plan.
I had been misinformed. Thank you. This thread is now moot.
posted by NotLost at 8:56 AM on February 7, 2021 [1 favorite]
I had been misinformed. Thank you. This thread is now moot.
posted by NotLost at 8:56 AM on February 7, 2021 [1 favorite]
Keybase has a well thought out team chat model. Any Keybase user can create teams, which can be invite-only or open, with or without team name discoverability. Teams can be set up to give newly joined members various degrees of control over the team, from read-only to full admin and a bunch of useful gradations in between. A team administrator can create subteams, and either keep full administrative control over those or assign various degrees of responsibility to other people; you can also create named discussion channels within any team or subteam, which team members can choose to subscribe to or not. Works well.
It's also end-to-end encrypted, with sync over multiple devices in a way that requires you neither to trust other people's new devices on first use nor jump through safety-number verification hoops for them, works across iOS, Android, Windows, Mac OS and Linux, and comes with generous amounts of free end-to-end encrypted online storage. And the client code (though not the server code) is open source.
I often find myself sounding like a shill for this outfit but I am not getting anything from them kickbacks-wise, I just like their product. I'd like it a lot more if it allowed the use of federated self-hosted open-source servers, but even as-is it's pretty bloody good.
posted by flabdablet at 9:26 AM on February 7, 2021 [1 favorite]
It's also end-to-end encrypted, with sync over multiple devices in a way that requires you neither to trust other people's new devices on first use nor jump through safety-number verification hoops for them, works across iOS, Android, Windows, Mac OS and Linux, and comes with generous amounts of free end-to-end encrypted online storage. And the client code (though not the server code) is open source.
I often find myself sounding like a shill for this outfit but I am not getting anything from them kickbacks-wise, I just like their product. I'd like it a lot more if it allowed the use of federated self-hosted open-source servers, but even as-is it's pretty bloody good.
posted by flabdablet at 9:26 AM on February 7, 2021 [1 favorite]
This thread is closed to new comments.
Inside the video game development industry we all use private discords for internal company chat, and there are several 10,000+ member free professional discords you can join for different professional groups. As a contractor this is way easier than having to be manually added to each company's internal slacks. As long as you never go into a public Discord you won't be exposed to teenagers who want to offend you
posted by JZig at 8:17 AM on February 7, 2021