Tag Archives: Slack

Slack Is Increasing Prices And Changing Its Free Plan

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Slack announced changes that will likely cause some confusion for businesses that use Slack on a regular basis. Slack posted news titled: “Everything you need to know about our first price change and plan updates”. It describes how these changes may affect people.

…today we are announcing our first price change increase since we launched in 2014 – at 75 cents or less per user. This increase will only affect users on our Pro plan. In addition, we’re updating our Free plan to make it easier than ever for users to try out new features. Both changes will go into effect September 1, 2022.

Here are the changes for Free users:

Starting September 1, 2022, customers using the Free plan will get access to clips, which allow anyone to share audio and video messages in Slack as a way to provide asynchronous team or project updates, and reduce the number of meetings needed.

After September 1, 2022, all messages, files, and clips from the last 90 days will be accessible, and those older than 90 days will be hidden. At any time, you can upgrade to a paid plan to unlock access to your workspace’s entire message and file history.

If your free workspace has been invited to use Slack Connect to work with another organization, messages and files older than 90 days in Slack Connect channels will be accessible. However, in Slack Connect direct messages, messages and files older than 90 days will be hidden for teams on the free plan.

Starting September 1, 2022, Workplace Owners and Admins can adjust retention settings automatically delete messages and files older than 90 days. Deletion is permanent: deleted message and files cannot be restored if you upgrade to paid plan later on, and deleted content won’t be included in a workspace data export.

Here are the changes for Pro users:

On September 1, 2022, monthly Pro plans will increase from $8 USD to $8.74 USD per users per month, and annual Pro plans will increase from $6.67 USD to $7.25 USD per user per month, and annual Pro plans will increase from $6.67 USD to $7.25 USD per user per month (pricing for other countries available here).

Current customers on an annual Pro plan can lock in the existing annual rate of $6.67 USD per user per month for another year by early-renewing the annual Pro plan before September 1. Customers currently on a monthly Pro plan can also lock in the existing annual rate for one year by switching to an annual Pro plan before September 1.

Anytime a service decides to change how much it costs to use it, it will require users to make some decisions. Businesses who feel that Slack is extremely useful for their employees might continue to use it (especially if they can lock in the existing annual rate).

In my opinion, it is good that the free plan is staying free. This is important for small businesses who can’t afford the per user per month fee. Overall, there will likely be a learning curve in September, as people try to re-learn what Slack offers at that point.

Slack Confidentially Filed Proposed Public Listing

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Slack announced that it has confidentially submitted a draft registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) relating to the proposed public listing of its Class A common stock. It is expected that the public listing will take place after the SEC completes its review process.

Reuters reported in December of 2018 that Slack hired investment bank Goldman Sachs to lead its initial public offering (IPO) in 2019. According to Reuters, Slack is hoping to fetch a valuation of well over $10 billion in its IPO.

Crunchbase recently reported that Slack disclosed that it had 10 million daily active users. Slack also noted it has 1,500 apps in its directory and penetration into 65% of the Fortune 500.

What does this mean for Slack users? So far, the most notable change is Slack’s new logo. It is understandable for users to become a bit nervous after hearing that Slack, something many people use for work-related projects and communication, may go public. We are just going to have to wait and see what happens next.

Slack Apologized and Restored Access to Some Blocked Accounts

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Slack posted an apology and an update after its controversial decision to block accounts of users who had visited and logged on from Iran. Slack acknowledges that it did not handle communication well in regards to their decision to block some users.

The problem appears to have happened when Slack updated its system for applying location information to comply with U.S. trade embargoes and economic sanctions regulations.

Soon after updating, we discovered that we made a series of mistakes and inadvertently deactivated a number of accounts that we shouldn’t have. We recognize the disruption and inconvenience this caused and we sincerely apologize to the people affected by our actions. In fact, we also apologize to the people whose accounts we intended to disable in order to comply with these regulations. We did not handle the communication well and in both cases we failed to live up to our own standards for courtesy and customer-centricity.

Slack says it did not block any user based on their nationality or ethnicity. What happened was, at least in part, because Slack uses location information principally derived from IP addresses to implement required blocks.

In my opinion, Slack did the right thing by publicly apologizing for its mistake and also for providing an explanation of what happened. They are being transparent about what led to their mistake. In addition, Slack says it is working hard to restore access to users who access was blocked in error. Slack also provided an email address where users can let Slack know if they made a mistake in blocking a specific user’s access.

It is worth noting, however, that Slack will continue to update their systems over the next few weeks and will be blocking service to IP addresses associated with an embargoed country.

If you travel to an embargoed country, you will temporarily lose Slack access while you are there. I suppose this could potentially affect people who travel to certain countries to visit family over the holidays.

Slack Collaborates with Marriott and Starwood

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Slack simplifies communication for people who work for the same company. It provides a shared workspace where conversations are organized and accessible. Slack is now collaborating with Marriott and Starwood to make it easier for co-workers who need to attend a conference to figure out which hotel to stay at.

Slack has collaborated with Marriott International and Starwood Rooms. You can now compare and book Marriott and Starwood rooms directly through Slack. (This is possible because Marriott and Starwood merged in 2016.)

To do it, you need to add the Marriott Rewards app to Slack. Type /Marriottrewards and the city where you want to book hotel rooms into any Slack channel. You, and everyone else who is in that channel, will be able to see all available rooms and rates.

Not sure how it works? Slack has put together an example of a group of people looking at hotel information and voting on which one to pick. Personally, I found that watching the example made it a lot easier for me to understand how to book a hotel room on Slack. This might be very useful for people who are planning to attend BlizzCon this November.

Slack had a Security Incident

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Slack LogoSlack has confirmed on it’s blog that there was unauthorized access to a Slack database that was storing user profile information. If Slack didn’t contact you about this situation, it means they do not believe your account was among the ones that were impacted by the security incident.

The unauthorized access took place during 4 days in February. No financial or payment information was accessed. Slack says there is no indication that the hackers were able to decrypt stored passwords. Slack is using a one-way encryption technique on passwords (called hashing).

As a result of this security incident, Slack has released two new features. Two factor authentication (2FA) is now available for all users and teams. They strongly recommend that everyone use 2FA “both on Slack and everywhere else it is available”.

Team owners will now be able to use a “Password Kill Switch”. It does two things. It allows for instantaneous team-wide resetting of passwords. It also causes forced termination of all user sessions for all team members. This means that everyone is signed out of the team owner’s Slack team on all apps and devices.