I’ve started paying for IRCCloud.

It is the first ‘service’ I am paying for as a subscriber, I think. I’ve considered doing that for a long time, but ‘paying for IRC’ just felt… odd. I’ve been using ZNC + LimeChat. It’s decent, but sucks on Mobile. Keeping a socket open all the time on a phone just kills the battery, plus the UX on most Android clients sucks.

So after seeing Sam Smith use IRCCloud during Wikimania, I made the plunge and paid for IRCCloud. It is still connecting to my bouncer, so I have logs under my control. It also has a very usable Android client, and syncs ‘read’ status across devices, and is quite fast.

Convenience and UX won over ‘Free Software’ this time.