choosing discord for our community

[Drew-Macgibbon]

Purpose:

1. converting warm leads to customers
2. growing an audience for future products
3. providing value to a large number of people

Consider

• is forcing GitHub sign-in acceptable?
• is owning our user data essential? (emails)
• do we have to have our business and private chat in the same area?
• could we afford Slack Pro if we require an application to join?

Criteria

• free or minimal cost for up to ~1k users and budget-friendly to scale.
• granular permissions, we need public channels, semi-private for customers, and private for internal Incubrain use.
  • we probably don't want private messaging by default, only for elected users (harassment could be an issue)
• easy automation such as:
  • programmatic notifications
  • moderation
  • resharing
• must be easy to start
• moderation functionalities
• polls / questions post types

Nice to have

• video conference
• group calls
• good for business communications as well

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Decision:

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Researched Options:

Rocket Chat

Pros

• open-source/self-hosted and infinitely scalable
• shared inbox for other apps like WhatsApp Business
• embeddable chat rooms, this could be helpful when I create a login for users.
• granular permissions
• good for business/community
• in-app chat for customer service
• huge open-source community
• UI is basically Slack

Cons

• hosting costs $28 USD PM to start (that should cover at least 10k people though)
• some setup is required, although it's basically one click
• data security is in our hands
• users will have to download a new app

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Discord

Pros

• made for communities
• lots of automation options
• popular among the programming community
• most people will already have discord. (~10x more downloads in app stores than Slack)
• courses for starting your community
• some familiarity

Cons

• less of a professional perception (I think this is less so now with Midjourney etc)
• not amazing for business use
• not white-label (although you can customize themes)

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Slack

Pros

• familiar professional option
• easy automation
• lots of plugins available

Cons

• the investment for Slack’s Pro plan is ₹245.25/mth, per person. So just 1,000 people would be over 2.4 Lakh/mth (messaged support about this)
• free option has 90-day life for messages
• not made for communities

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Microsoft Teams

Pros

• first party support for other microsoft apps
• lots of ai integrations
• good for business
• recognised brand, although not as popular as Slack/Discord

Cons

• ₹110/mth, per person for paid plan.
• not made for communities

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Circle

Pros

• paid memberships
• unlimited users for base plan
• white label
• group chats / personal chats
• embeddable components

Cons

• $99 USD PM base plan
• More of a focus on community, we need a blend of business/community
• 1-4% transaction fee on memberships
• new app to download/learn for most people
• 20 spaces limit for base plan
• lots of features we will never need

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Mattermost

Pros

• open-source/self-hostable (very popular)
• good documentation for deployment
• group presentations
• granular permissions
• unlimited users for free
• project management

Cons

• requires additional setup/maintenance
• not built for communities, more of a project/team management software