Slack went down again - here's what happened

Slack outage hits thousands of users

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The slack logo on a mobile phone in front of a purple wall with the slack logo on it
Slack - nu med lite mer (artificiell) intelligens.
(Image: © Shutterstock)

Top online collaboration platform Slack saw a major outage hit users across the UK and Europe earlier today.

Reports of issues with Slack began to surface around 10.00am BST, with thousands of users signalling problems on outage tracker site DownDetector.

The company later confirmed there were problems with messaging, meaning users are unable to send or receive messages. We followed the story live, so if you want to relive the morning - read on...

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DownDetector Slack outage

(Image credit: DownDetector)

This morning's Slack outage appears to have come out of the blue, with a huge spike in alerts sent to DownDetector so far around 10.00am BST

Slack status page

(Image credit: Slack)

Despite the huge spike in outage alerts, Slack is saying there are no problems on its side - with the company's status page reporting no issues.

We've contacted the company to get a comment, and will upload here when we receive anything.

Slack status page

(Image credit: Slack)

Scratch that - the page has just updated, with Slack now confirming there are some problems.

"Something's not quite right," the company says in its error field for issues concerning "Messaging" - meaning users are unable to send and receive messages right now.

We've had a little more information on the "incident" from Slack itself, via the status page:

"Users may be experiencing trouble with sending messages in Slack. We’re investigating and will let you know as soon as we know more. We appreciate your patience in the meantime."

The issue has now been upgraded from an "incident" to an "outage" on the Slack status page - although there's no change in the wording, or updated information, this does show that the company is suffering a serious problem right now.

However incident reports are starting to fall on DownDetector, so we may be over the worst of the outage now....

Slack outage status

(Image credit: Slack)

Whatever the issue is, it's getting more serious - the Slack status page is now showing issues not just with sending and receiving messages, but also problems with search, connections and workflows - all of which appear to have suffered outages too.

Ironically, our workplace Slack here at TechRadar Pro has now returned, around an hour after first going offline.

We're seeing messages send and received, but anything sent during that outage time is obviously lost....

A further update from the company:

"Slack experiencing an outage across the app. Users may be experiencing trouble with sending messages, using workflows and various other actions in Slack. We’re investigating and will let you know as soon as we know more. We appreciate your patience in the meantime."

And just like that - the outage is over.

Slack has confirmed it fixed the issues, and the DownDetector incident graph is heading downward at last.

"Slack is now back up and all features are functional. Users may need to reload their apps to see this restoration", the company wrote. "We appreciate your patience during our investigation of this outage."

Thanks for sticking with us too!