Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking. Login or Take a Tour!
Seems like they misunderstood Slack itself. Sure it's expensive, but it comes with all of the integrations and capabilities that gitchat doesn't have. I use slack at work and we have about 9 people on it, it's great for that, and it's not as expensive.
I use the free tier for a private group between me and my wife, and it works great then too. And since it's so easy to work with, I have a hubot that the wife and I use to plan things out, set reminders, talk during the day, and to share funny pictures. Why won't they just use a self-hosted IRC server if they are concerned about cost? A $50/mo VPS with some configuration would handle a lot of students pretty easily.