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"The one single real advantage of Slack is marketing."

Respectfully, NO.

Providing a very useful turnkey set of features out of the box that are technically possible but fiddly and hard to use in IRC is in and of itself a huge advantage. This is why they're successful. This is why people use it. This is why people use it who barely know what a command line IS.



If you want that, you can just use IRCCloud, it has all that in a single solution. Just like Slack.

IRCCloud can even connect to Slack workspaces.

The only advantage Slack has over IRCCloud is marketing.

It's relatively ironic that I have to end up praising IRCCloud here, considering I'm contributing to a competing IRC client.


But when you use IRCCloud you don't use the IRC protocol anymore, you use the IRCCloud protocol. Which is the same as using the Slack protocol. Your features aren't available outside IRCCloud. Your account, your data, your history, everything is tied to IRCCloud. You haven't gained anything compared to Slack. You're advocating for the _exact_ same model and you don't realize that the only way to have the same features as Slack in an easy way is to basically do what Slack does. You're just agreeing with what the parent is saying.


IRCCloud can connect to normal IRC servers, and normal IRC clients can connect to IRCCloud servers — and you can export your logs and import them elsewhere.

That makes it much closer to the open ideal than Slack is.


I use both. IRCCloud isn’t close to slack in terms of features or feel.




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