logoalt Hacker News

withtoday at 2:50 AM2 repliesview on HN

Slack but better UX/pricing, sure, but the real reason everyone is on Slack is network effects and integrations. External partners force you onto Slack even if you hate the pricing, and there is other lock-in (CI/CD webhooks, monitoring alerts, support ticketing).

I like the concept, but there are reasons why everyone doesn't just switch to something like https://once.com/campfire which is self-hostable and completely free.


Replies

strikingtoday at 2:52 AM

I think Campfire used to have a one-time cost of $200 or something per domain, when did it switch to being free?

Edit: found it, it was in August 2025 https://github.com/basecamp/once-campfire/commit/df76a227dc1...

show 1 reply