Comment by koziserek

16 hours ago

can someone tell me why won't a matrix server suffice in most situations?

stable protocol, ability to federate, rooms/channels... what is lacking?

Matrix is technically impressive, but the friction for non-technical teams is still too high.

We are building for the teams that just want to sign up and start working immediately, without choosing a homeserver, verifying keys across devices, or dealing with the UI quirks of federated clients.

Our bet is that a vertically integrated, highly polished UX ("It just works") is the differentiator. We want to be the choice for teams that want the experience of Slack without the bloat, rather than just the protocol of chat.

For example, a 10-person marketing agency in France just needs to collaborate on campaigns today, they shouldn't have to understand the Matrix protocol or manage server infrastructure to get started.That's simply not their core business.

matrix, element.. too confusing

i use slack with one other person. we've been using it for 10 years. we pay every once in a while and download our archives. but i haven't found anything that's as useful, media-friendly, preview-friendly, and thread friendly as slack. we keep looking, but we always stay on slack.

  • Honestly, if I had to start from scratch in my own company, I would pick zulip. That is thread friendly for real, for proper async communication. Slack threads were bolted on as a feature, and it shows. I know that in 2 this is not a problem, but the way that - for example - notifications work for threads when you have 10s (or 100s) of threads is a pain. Finding back threads you were involved with is a huge pain.