I'm not a Slack fanboy but this whole article reads like it was written in an echo chamber where the word "free" has no definition.
> Ryver is entirely free. We give away what Slack charges a lot of money for.
> We’re a freemium model. We offer Ryver Team Communication for free and we will be charging money for add-on products such as a Task Manager.
So it's not "entirely free" the proper description would be "freemium".
Also from the FAQ:
> Then we will ship Ryver Enterprise for big companies. These will be priced very creatively and competitively.
BUT I THOUGHT THAT TEAM COMMUNICATION NEEDED TO BE FREEEEEEEE!
So once again, very clearly not free. Also "creatively" and "competitively", is that another way to describe: "hard to understand"? Reminds me of sketchy mattress dealers...
> The difference is that their free tier is a crippled product whereas our free level is a full product without limitations…
Okay..? I'm mean I see what they are saying but if I consider "task manager" to be a requirement for team communication, then you too are selling me a "crippled" product.
My key take away from this article is that Ryver is apparently the Donald Trump of the team communication world. Lots of smoke and mirrors and very few, if any, features that distinguish it from their competition.
But congrats, I guess... I now know the name of your company.
Team Communication does need to be free and does not "require" task management. You will be able to mix and match so only the ones who need tasks pay for it. The "creatively" word means we intend to price it so an Admin does not have to make a decision on adding cost EVERY TIME one more person needs Tasks.
Since Ryver team comm matches up very well against what Slack charges for, it seems a reasonable (at least) claim to be entirely free vs Slack.
Hmm... I strongly disagree with your assumptions. But, hackers have long debated the meaning of the word "free", so who am I to say?
I guess we will have to update the Jargon file to include your curious new definition, "free as in free when compared to specific things that Slack Technologies Inc. sells".
I do not use Slack, Ryver or any other similar product, so I think I can safely say I don't fall in to the "slack fanboy" demographic that this article claims are upset by their ads.
That said, I think that running negative ads about your competition only shows weakness in a company. Don't use your marketing to tell me negative things about your competition, use it to tell me positive things about you. If you can't do that, then the problem isn't that Slack is bad, it's that Ryver is not strong enough to stand on it's own.
Negative ads can make sense if you're going up against one or two entrenched competitors that own most of the market share.
That being said, the example ad shown in the article ("Slack is so last year. Now it's Ryver") just made me angry. Anyone who has been in tech a while has experienced this neurotic, senseless need to switch tooling every year because some middle manager decided to.
As you say, it hits a nerve... But what's there to be angry about, when that happens anyway?
I suspect that said "neurotic, senseless need" to keep up with the corporate Joneses is what drove many organizations to adopt Slack in the first place. That leaves them feeling vulnerable about the next thing that might be coming up, which they don't want to miss out on. IMO Ryver is being rather clever by playing on that insecurity so openly.
I am now required to use Slack for communication at work. It replaces the previous chat tool I was required to use to communicate at work and is, in fact, the fourth communication tool that I have been required to use for work in the past 12 months. Needless to say, I can't communicate with anybody.
The only killer feature I would have any interest in would be syndication across various communication tools.
Our Ads saying positive things about Ryver are ignored. Why spend money on those?
And if the product sucked no one would use it which would be the ultimate slam against Ryver. But the opposite is true. Some Slack teams are converting and most because they like it better not just because it is free.
Then why didn't you just say that? You wrote a whole article defending your negative campaign when in reality you are doing it because it is the only campaign that works for you.
This is a smoking gun for in that you are only justifying your actions.
Here's the thing: Slack already won. Slack won before you were even on the scene. Slack has won so thouroughly that it's winning converts from IRC, which is largely the hardcore crowd, and is somewhat outside of Slack's target market (team chat).
Bashing Slack isn't going to win you much in the way of customers, because all it tells them is that you want to be Slack. They already know that. Everyone on the playing field wants to be Slack, except IRC, which mostly doesn't care. Instead, show your customers all the ways Slack is better. Ask them if Slack has your awesome new feature that will increase their productivity tenfold.
If you want to kill the leader in the field, you have to give us a reason you're better. And "they're so last year" isn't a reason, unless you're a fashion product.
When I read "Slack is so last year", my first thought was "Oh, so Ryver is just this year's Slack." That's not a win, because I already have Slack and I don't need this year's trendy new version. That ad might have a high click-through rate, but you need something better than click-through to sell an enterprise client.
Pitching new features would be more appealing, but you have to actually have new features that are good. Task management is nice, but there are lots of Slack-integrable options already going.
As is, I'm really not sure what this pitch is supposed to say: "our well-established competitor is well-established"? Sounds good to me.
Yeah. If there's one well-established option that works well, why would I convert? As it stands, there are up to 3 well-established options, depending on your domain: Slack, XMPP, and IRC.
Maybe you are right that the game is over and Slack won. I don't think so. I believe they uncovered a market not even they knew was there. If I am correct there will be quite a few winners in what I believe to be a huge market. Over the next decade EVERYONE will gradually stop using email for their team communication. That is 1 Billion business users of email.
When I took SalesLogix public in 1999 there were other CRM companies that went public around the same time. Multiple winners. And where I am going with differentiation ultimately I don't care what Slack does. I only care now in order to become a known brand. Something we have pretty good start on.
Your comparison to Tuft and Needle is not very good. Everybody hates mattress stores for their sleazy business practices; it's a given.
There's no unanimous hatred for Slack, however, so your ads come off as pretty ignorant. We use slack at my company and have 0 problems with it. I am perfectly aware of its limitations and I am fine with them.
Also, I have to download a desktop client to use Ryver? 2004 called and wants their software back.
Tuft and Needle also doesn't call out anyone by name. Nobody would care if Ryver's ads said "Chat programs are greedy," rather than specifically naming a beloved company.
And it's made worse since Ryver just seems to be an (inferior) Slack clone.
Actually I would find a desktop client more appealing. I'm not a fan of browsers-as-poorly-functioning-userlands-on-userlands that seems to be the modern fad.
But Slack's desktop client is excellent. Furthermore, Ryver makes a big point about guest access - and a browser client would be much better for guests than a dedicated client they may only use once.
Yeah, not having a desktop client was one of the reasons we went with Hipchat over Slack. I can understand not everyone wants to use a native app, but it sure would be a nice option.
The first thing that stuck me watching TV in the US was negative ads. Drug ads came next. It was so new to me at that time I was puzzled how they could even use their trademarks[1]. I never felt compelled by any of these negative ads - not a single one. It exposes more weakness in the attacking company and more importantly it felt like - "Why are you guys buying that other product? We make so much better product." - as if the customer does not know what they are doing (even if that were the case).
> I was puzzled how they could even use their trademark
Important point about trademark law: it is intended to prevent you from fooling customers into thinking they are buying someone else's product, NOT to prevent you from talking about someone else's product.
The me this ads makes me think that Ryver is claiming that all these services are disposable products, to be thrown away for for the latest glittering gem.
While this may be true to a certain extent, I can't imagine that most companies want to think that the pain it took getting everybody over to Slack was disposable effort, and that now they should be happy to move to Ryver, and some other glittering ball next year.
To me, this makes me think Ryver itself is admitting it's just aiming to be the latest buzz, and it expects some other buzz to be around next year.
...but the article claims it's their most effective ad, so I must be in the minority there.
I guess it's hard to be relevant and get attention when your business model is Yet Another Chat System. This sort of Bro- marketing, however, tends to linger in the back of my head as a telling sign of how usable the product will be, and what customer service will look like.
Striking up controversy in advertising is very effective for going viral. Doesn't have to be a competitor, it can be an idea or methodology widely held in an industry as well.
Readit News
> Ryver is entirely free. We give away what Slack charges a lot of money for.
> We’re a freemium model. We offer Ryver Team Communication for free and we will be charging money for add-on products such as a Task Manager.
So it's not "entirely free" the proper description would be "freemium".
Also from the FAQ:
> Then we will ship Ryver Enterprise for big companies. These will be priced very creatively and competitively.
BUT I THOUGHT THAT TEAM COMMUNICATION NEEDED TO BE FREEEEEEEE!
So once again, very clearly not free. Also "creatively" and "competitively", is that another way to describe: "hard to understand"? Reminds me of sketchy mattress dealers...
> The difference is that their free tier is a crippled product whereas our free level is a full product without limitations…
Okay..? I'm mean I see what they are saying but if I consider "task manager" to be a requirement for team communication, then you too are selling me a "crippled" product.
My key take away from this article is that Ryver is apparently the Donald Trump of the team communication world. Lots of smoke and mirrors and very few, if any, features that distinguish it from their competition.
But congrats, I guess... I now know the name of your company.
Since Ryver team comm matches up very well against what Slack charges for, it seems a reasonable (at least) claim to be entirely free vs Slack.
I guess we will have to update the Jargon file to include your curious new definition, "free as in free when compared to specific things that Slack Technologies Inc. sells".
That said, I think that running negative ads about your competition only shows weakness in a company. Don't use your marketing to tell me negative things about your competition, use it to tell me positive things about you. If you can't do that, then the problem isn't that Slack is bad, it's that Ryver is not strong enough to stand on it's own.
That being said, the example ad shown in the article ("Slack is so last year. Now it's Ryver") just made me angry. Anyone who has been in tech a while has experienced this neurotic, senseless need to switch tooling every year because some middle manager decided to.
Like what Gett is doing: "We pay more than Uber!"
I suspect that said "neurotic, senseless need" to keep up with the corporate Joneses is what drove many organizations to adopt Slack in the first place. That leaves them feeling vulnerable about the next thing that might be coming up, which they don't want to miss out on. IMO Ryver is being rather clever by playing on that insecurity so openly.
The only killer feature I would have any interest in would be syndication across various communication tools.
And if the product sucked no one would use it which would be the ultimate slam against Ryver. But the opposite is true. Some Slack teams are converting and most because they like it better not just because it is free.
This is a smoking gun for in that you are only justifying your actions.
Bashing Slack isn't going to win you much in the way of customers, because all it tells them is that you want to be Slack. They already know that. Everyone on the playing field wants to be Slack, except IRC, which mostly doesn't care. Instead, show your customers all the ways Slack is better. Ask them if Slack has your awesome new feature that will increase their productivity tenfold.
If you want to kill the leader in the field, you have to give us a reason you're better. And "they're so last year" isn't a reason, unless you're a fashion product.
Pitching new features would be more appealing, but you have to actually have new features that are good. Task management is nice, but there are lots of Slack-integrable options already going.
As is, I'm really not sure what this pitch is supposed to say: "our well-established competitor is well-established"? Sounds good to me.
When I took SalesLogix public in 1999 there were other CRM companies that went public around the same time. Multiple winners. And where I am going with differentiation ultimately I don't care what Slack does. I only care now in order to become a known brand. Something we have pretty good start on.
There's no unanimous hatred for Slack, however, so your ads come off as pretty ignorant. We use slack at my company and have 0 problems with it. I am perfectly aware of its limitations and I am fine with them.
Also, I have to download a desktop client to use Ryver? 2004 called and wants their software back.
And it's made worse since Ryver just seems to be an (inferior) Slack clone.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advertising
Important point about trademark law: it is intended to prevent you from fooling customers into thinking they are buying someone else's product, NOT to prevent you from talking about someone else's product.
The me this ads makes me think that Ryver is claiming that all these services are disposable products, to be thrown away for for the latest glittering gem.
While this may be true to a certain extent, I can't imagine that most companies want to think that the pain it took getting everybody over to Slack was disposable effort, and that now they should be happy to move to Ryver, and some other glittering ball next year.
To me, this makes me think Ryver itself is admitting it's just aiming to be the latest buzz, and it expects some other buzz to be around next year.
...but the article claims it's their most effective ad, so I must be in the minority there.
(edited for clarification of comment)