Ivi
How one of Russia's largest streaming services moved 1,000+ employees to Pachca
About the company
I'm Dima, deputy CTO for processes at Ivi, one of the top 3 streaming services in Russia*. We were also among the first in Russia to start producing our own original content, and we keep making it successfully.
Before Pachca
For five years, we used Slack and were perfectly happy with it. But in 2022 we realized there would be trouble on the vendor's side. We found a way out, set up a new workspace, but knew it wouldn't last forever, so we started looking for alternatives in advance.
We tried self-hosted apps and even set up Rocket Chat. At the same time, we looked at Russian team chat apps. Almost all of them were built around an ecosystem of services, while we only needed to replace the chat app. And all the extra services they offered were pretty raw, just like the chat apps themselves. Around that time we discovered Pachca and bought a subscription for 10 seats so we'd have a reliable way to stay in touch if we got cut off from our main app.
In June 2024, we had to say goodbye to Slack. We weren't prepared to work around the blocks, so the choice was between moving to Pachca and a self-hosted solution. We picked the first option because we understood the pros and cons of open source. Sure, the chats live on our own servers and we control how the service evolves. But the downsides far outweighed that. Supporting and developing it takes a dedicated team of developers and a lot of other overhead. We also asked people we know at other companies that had deployed a self-hosted app. They said it took 2–3 years of fine-tuning to get it running reliably. We couldn't afford that.
The moment we knew Pachca was the one
It matters to us that the whole Pachca team is focused not on an ecosystem, but on one product that companies like ours need. It offered lots of room for automation, which is very important to us, plus all the basic features we had in Slack. It was also important that they listen to our requests and feedback. It was great to get a genuinely good service, not just a product subscription.
How Pachca changed the way we communicate
What matters is that all our workflows and communication stayed at the same level. I no longer worry about a sword of Damocles hanging over me and our leadership in the form of a sudden block and the loss of all our data. That's priceless.
Personally, I like cross-chat threads. In the middle of a conversation, you often need to bring in someone who isn't in the chat. Another great thing is the interface itself: there's a dark theme, nice fonts and so on. Sure, Pachca doesn't have every feature we used in our previous service. But our requests get addressed pretty quickly thanks to how often updates ship.
Tips for switching
It's best to think through your whole plan in advance: prepare the data export, schedule an announcement in the old app, decide how long the transition period will be and so on. Be honest with employees about why you're moving: we explained our reasons and how the new app compares to the old one. That way, employees will be more ready for the migration.
During the move itself, it helped that we had set up a test environment in Pachca in advance. Employees tried out the app there and shared their feedback right away. That let us clear up a lot of questions before moving all our data and employees to Pachca.
- *According to TelecomDaily for 2022–2023
