So what is Discord's path to profitability? They tried selling video games and closed the store not too long after launching it. Nitro/Server Boosts definitely don't come close to the cost of operation.
That's not surprising to me. Discord offers free hosting for a feature-rich IRC and group voice service. Nobody else did that.
A gaming clan no longer needs to maintain their own Teamspeak/Ventrilo server + their own website and forum. The convenience of having it all in one centralized program wins out over Discord's UX oddities, privacy concerns and more recent bloat. This ease of use also lowered the barrier to create a clan, so it captures a larger audience than its predecessors ever did. And yet it still provides powerful tools for moderation and user permissions, an API for chat bots, video streaming...
To be fair, I think everyone always thinks about that regarding the incumbent(s). Xfire / Ventrilo / TeamSpeak all likely seemed like a daunting adversary at their peaks.
I would imagine it's something similar to Gmail where they'd want to monetize the great deal of information they have about people who use the platform.
Possibly expand into enterprise or education and tread on the toes of slack or teams. I suspect server boosts actually could cover a large percentage of costs, especially if they either feature gate things like file uploads or chat history.
IRC is cheap because the servers don't keep any history. The only cost is you might get ddosed and have to keep some mods happy. Discord and Slack have to host a lot more.
For starters, storage costs. Free users can upload files, images, and videos up to 8MB (25MB for Nitro members). Storing and serving those in perpetuity adds up, plus bandwidth for voice and video chat and 800+ employees.
