Axiom is a machine-data platform. Alan Pope published Cheerio Slack. Hey Discord! on 17 May 2023. This is Axiom’s own post, not a vendor page.
They had used Slack since before the company was called Axiom. The public community moved to Discord in February 2023.
If you are looking at the same route, start with the Slack → Discord playbook. Alan’s post is the field report for a small, company-owned community. The playbook is the export, archive, and verification path.
Why they left
Alan joined Axiom at the end of 2022. The CxOs suggested Discord soon after. Slack was fine for real-time chat. It did not fit a public community.
Users said search returned invalid results. People asked the same questions again because they could not find the old answers. Someone else then had to hunt and paste a link.
Joining a new Slack workspace had more friction than joining a Discord server they already used. Alan said some people refused to join Slack at all.
Slack also felt like an internal-team tool. Discord felt more open to staff and users sitting in the same place. The developers who use Axiom already knew Discord.
The post does not give a cost number, so I am not quoting one.
How they moved
They gave everyone about a month of notice. Then they flipped the switch.
They created a Discord invite and put a redirect at axiom.co/discord. If Discord revoked the invite, or if they needed a new one, they could swap the redirect with a one-line PR. Discord still documents invite links that you can revoke from Server Settings.
Axiom staff moved first. Regular users followed. The wider community was slower.
They owned the Slack workspace, so they shut it down. There was no dual community to linger in. If you stayed on Slack, you would not get answers from the people who run the product.
Alan does not describe a Slack export, a message import, or a file copy. Slack will export public channels on every plan, as JSON plus file links. Private channels and DMs need a higher plan and an application. Discord has no first-party Slack archive importer. The playbook says to keep a read-only archive and move only the operational context you still need.
The post never describes an import. Their move was a notice, a Discord server, a redirect, and a Slack shutdown.
What they gained
Two months later, Discord’s “human count” was higher than Slack’s had been. That is Alan’s phrase. He does not publish the two numbers.
Support questions that needed more than a one-line answer went into Discord’s forum-style channels. Those posts stay attached to a topic, so the next person can find them without scrolling a chat.
They run a moderation bot against community guidelines. Discord also ships AutoMod on Community servers, which can block words and spam before a message lands. Alan does not name the bot.
Users started telling them, in public, what to fix in the product and in Discord itself. Some of that became quick wins. Some went on the backlog.
Axiom’s support page still sends how-do-I questions to Discord. Enterprise plans get a private channel and an SLA on top.
What they left behind
They expected people to refuse the move. Alan said that fear was unfounded, because the community was small and already knew Discord. He does not describe a failed launch, a missing archive, or a rollback.
The Slack backlog they could not search is the thing that went away when they shut Slack. Unless they kept an export, those threads are gone. The post never says they kept one.
Slack apps, workflows, and Connect channels do not become Discord bots. Alan does not list which Slack integrations they ran, so I am not listing replacements.
Forum channels need Discord Community enabled. That is a different server shape than a private staff Slack.
What I would copy
Give a month of notice, then pick one home. Axiom shut Slack so support could not hide in the old room.
Put the invite behind a URL you own. axiom.co/discord meant they could rotate Discord’s invite without editing every blog post and email.
Do not promise Discord will hold your Slack history. Export Slack first if you still need those answers. Keep that zip even if you never import it.
Stand up the forum channel before you point users at Discord. That is the place for the questions Slack search used to fail on.
The Slack → Discord playbook is the checklist I would run. Use Alan’s post for the hard cutover of a company-owned community.