Anyone aware of a user community product that has the simplicity of chat threads without the complexity of Discord/Slack? We’re trying to build a space where people can give feedback and meet other users but most in our audience don’t already use Discord (and wouldn’t find a ton of value in it to make it worth the download).
If most of your audience doesn't use Discord, you're in a good spot. In the web dev world, so many projects use Discord that it's a massive benefit to just be in the server list with them. I felt my project had to use Discord.<p>It's been a while since I investigated solutions, but I really wanted Matrix to be viable at the time. I would check out <a href="https://element.io/" rel="nofollow">https://element.io/</a> and see if it works for you.
Saw that another user linked to Hall (<a href="https://usehall.com" rel="nofollow">https://usehall.com</a>).<p>I'm the founder and we're building a customer community platform exactly for the use case you describe.<p>Our focus is on a simple and intuitive user experience that is familiar to non-technical end-users. We've also tried to make it as frictionless for them to sign up and start contributing (nothing to download, passwordless sign up and login). You also maintain full control and data ownership of your users (unless Discord).<p>Keen to hear any feedback, and why / why not if what we've built would work for you?
Have a look at Discourse
<a href="https://www.discourse.org/" rel="nofollow">https://www.discourse.org/</a><p>Also, BuddyPress has a new major update (v14) that's worth checking out.
I'd also say Matrix, as this is where the most communities are today that are not on propietary platforms.<p>Although the UX is not that great, when logging in via a new device, as it takes long to do the first sync (the new syncv3 protocol is supposed to fix this but it's still in beta)<p>A direct Slack alternative would be mattermost.<p><a href="https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost">https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost</a>
I honestly don’t get chat for communities (and I spent a lot of time in IRC). Without starch and structure, knowledge is constantly being lost and there is no way for newcomers to quickly get up to speed if they happen to be a timezone or two away from the “core” community. Forums and Discourse are so much better that I have to ask why it isn’t obvious.
The Todoist folks also make Twist, which is in this family and looks simple and pretty nice. Not sure why it has so little uptake. <a href="https://twist.com/home" rel="nofollow">https://twist.com/home</a>
Just one correction that Discord does not have to be downloaded as it works in the browser also. And you don't even need to provide an email address at first. As such, the barrier of entry is quite low.
when I was building finclout, I thought it makes more sense to organize conversations horizontally and vertically instead of the current UI paradigm where everything is vertically scrolling.
Have you looked at Telegram?<p>I do believe it might cover everything you need, very simple compared to Slack/Discord. Has groups and bots.<p>I started using Telegram after trying to setup Slack as a family platform.