Why we migrated our community from Slack to Circle

A few reasons why it was time to make a change.

Photo by Julia Craice on Unsplash

You may have noticed that we recently deleted our Careers in Tech Slack. Our community was born on Slack, and many of our members are well-acquainted with the tool, given their work in tech. But, after some difficult deliberations, we are migrating to Circle. Why?  

1. Slack Is synchronously asynchronous

We first started with Slack because that is where many of our community members were already hanging out. Additionally, many tech companies use Slack to communicate, so we thought it was a great tool for people to learn as they broke into tech.

For teams, Slack makes sense. Slack makes it easy to chat and communicate with others. Most companies use other project management software to share files and coordinate activities, where Slack’s platform helps connect us with our teams for purposes of communications. Most often, Slack users check every message, and assume every reach-out has a reason. But in community, there is a mix of information that is relevant and not-so-relevant to each member. To stay up to date with Slack you need to check all communications even the not-so-relevant reach out. Worse, I find that if I leave for a week or two, I have so many messages that it’s hard to get back into the mix of the community.

Overall, messages in Slack degrade much quicker than in community platforms, which feature more of a forum approach. The content and learnings that are shared stick around longer, and can be documented and benefitted by more members.

2. Bundling features

Previously, we used Slack for community, Lu.ma for events, and Google Drive for resource sharing. We found that people had a hard time finding each of these and often came back asking how to find these.

Using a platform like Circle allows us to host our community, events, and resources all in one place, streamlining the experience for the member, and keeping us together.

3. Member Directory

In communities, the core is the members themselves and the relationships between them. On Slack it is difficult to find people. The member directory is not great and most people are unaware of it. It lacks the tags needed to find people, while having true member directory allows our members to find each other and support each other.

4. Branding

Slack is inherently on the Slack brand, where Circle has our branding throughout the platform, helping  people feel like they are within the CITI community instead of another Slack channel.Also, since there are so many free Slack channels, it’s a mental jump for members to pay for membership.

5. Analytics

At the free tier of Slack, few analytics were available, whereas now we have analytics so we can track our progress and adjust where needed. This is particularly helpful to know which areas are working and other areas are not. Also identifying which members are contributing and in what ways, and which members have disengaged.

6. PayWalls

Effectively running a business requires a business model. Paywalls help us grow our business by providing us the opportunity to analyze churn without extensive man hours. It allows us to collect payments in an easy way for all involved so we can reinvest into our community.

7. Community

Circle has done a great job creating a community around their product. Being part of other communities on Circle allows me to learn the benefits of using Circle appropriately. Their heavy investment in community is apparent and appreciated, particularly as a community platform ourselves. 

Final Remarks

Circle isn’t a perfect platform either, but these are the main reasons we switched. We hope to see improvement of many features, including the Android mobile app. Circle’s forum structure is a larger barrier for members to overcome, reducing some engagement compared to Slack.

Overall, we are happy with the change and we hope you are too. We look forward to what the future has in store.