Slack has revealed it will raise the price of subscriptions for its popular collaboration platform for the first time.
In a blog post, the company explained that pricing will increase across the globe for organizations on its Pro plan, starting September 01, 2022.
Affected customers will see their monthly subscriptions rise in price from $8/£5.25 to $8.75/£7 per user, while annual subscriptions will be charged at the equivalent of $7.25/£5.75 per month.
The price of Business+ and Enterprise plans will not be affected by the update.
Slack price
Perhaps sensing that a price rise is unlikely to go down well in the current economic climate, Slack has moved to head off complaints with a detailed justification for the policy change.
Broadly, the company argues that the quality of its product has improved markedly since it went live in 2014, evolving from a simple messaging app into an “indispensable digital HQ for hundreds of thousands of customers”.
The blog post makes no mention of rampant inflation, which is expected to reach almost 10% in the US and UK this year, but this is likely to have factored into the decision too. With inflation comes a reduction in spending appetite, an increase in the cost of borrowing, demands for salary increase and other factors likely to dent the bottom line.
“A lot has changed in Slack – and the world – since we launched. Over the years, we’ve released so many innovations and expanded our offerings, including flexible tools to allow connection in more ways, robust security features, app integrations, workflows and much more,” wrote the firm.
“To reflect all of that added value and ensure that we can keep investing in innovation, today we are announcing our first price increase.”
Alongside the pricing update, Slack is also making changes to its free plan that will come into effect on the same date in September.
Most significantly, the current 10,000-message and 5GB cloud storage limit will be replaced with full access to the past 90 days’ worth of messages and files. This way, users won’t have to play a guessing game as to the availability of old content, Slack says.
Users on the free plan will also gain access to some of the latest functionality introduced to the platform, including Clips, a feature designed to promote asynchronous working by replacing traditional video calls.
The move to bolster the free offering is likely designed to take some of the sting out of the price increase, by giving businesses unable to stomach the change a more viable alternative to their existing plan.
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