The ODDS team has utilized Slack since our very early phases to streamline chatter, organize tasks, and communicate with the community. Recently, we’ve come to the limits of our free version, and evaluated the pros and cons of Slack vs Discord, and have decided that Discord fulfills all of our needs, adds functionality, and is a more secure client.

Features Comparison

Both platforms have features that are unique to them. Slack’s business focus and integrations give it an edge for enterprise users, but voice, video, and text are all a much more intuitive experience with Discord.

Messages

Slack — 10,000 in Free Plan

Discord* — Unlimited

Storage

Slack — 5gb free, 10–20gb in Paid Plans

Discord *— Unlimited

Video Conferencing

Slack — Only 2 ways in free plan, up to 15 in paid

Discord* — Up to 8 persons

Channel Limits

Slack *— Warnings start at 8.5k users

Discord — Up to 5k concurrent, online users

Threaded Conversations

Slack* — Yes

Discord — No

Pricing

Slack — Standard $6.67 per user per month, Pro $12.50 per user per month

Discord* — Most core features are free, additional but non essential features are $4.99 per user per month.

Discord benefits for Cryptocurrency projects

Discord will allow our team to be more involved with our community by shifting our focus from messaging limits, and adding granular control that we were missing with Slack.

Some unique Discord features we are finding particularly useful are:

Better Server Management

Discord has many more ways to customize and manage your channels and servers. The Roles system adds the ability to easily manage permissions with just a few taps, and channel categories are something we were definitely missing with Slack.

Roles make it easy to assign permissions to groups of users

User Management

Unfortunately there are a lot of scammers within the cryptocurrency industry. On most social networks, it’s extremely easy to create lookalike accounts of blockchain influencers to defraud unsuspecting users. Discord allows admins to change the display names of users within their channel. This greatly mitigates the risk of being scammed by a cloned team member account.

There are many options to help manage users within Discord

Voice Specific Channels

Group calling is oftentimes cumbersome. Discord allows us to create voice channels for any topic we’d like. There are so many options, permissions, and uses for voice channels, it’s admittedly daunting at first. ODDS has a general voice chat, an internal team voice line, and a Community Huddle which is our way of talking live as a team to the community.

Voice features galore. Granularity is Discord’s strong suit.

Webhooks

Slack has a ton of integrations, and a solid API, but Discord’s implementation of webhooks makes that functionality accessible to server administrators who have limited coding knowledge.

Using Webhooks and IFTTT we were able to create these automations in seconds.

Invites

Discord has many options when it comes to onboarding new members to your community. You can easily generate permanent or temporary invite links that even allow you to limit how many users each link allows. At any point you want to disable any of your previously created links, Discord makes it extremely easy.

Discord’s invites are a great way to keep organized, add security, and analyze your server traffic.

Final Thoughts

At the end of the day, what mattered most to us was aligning ourselves with the platform that would allow us to grow and manage our community most effectively. Discord does that, and so much more. As an added benefit, there is a thriving community of cryptocurrency projects, enthusiasts, and information sources that makes Discord an excellent way to stay current with what’s going on in the space.