Business communications platform Slack is hiking up its monthly price and changing the way its free tier works.
The changes, which the company announced via its blog, will go into effect on 1 September 2022.
Current customers can lock in their existing payment plans for an additional year, according to the blog, provided they renew before September. However, if they fail to act, users on the 'Pro' plan will see the price increase from $8 per month to $8.75 (£7). For the yearly 'Pro' subscription, users will see an increase from $6.67 per month to $7.25 per year (£5.75).
The reasoning behind the increase has been put down to new features; Slack has pivoted slightly since the pandemic, now advertising itself as a 'digital HQ' for hybrid workers. This has seen a host of new features and improvements, such as Slack Connect and more investment in Slack Huddles. This is the first time the cost of Slack has increased since its inception in 2014, which has coincided with a global cost of living crisis.
"To reflect all of that added value and ensure that we can keep investing in innovation, today we are announcing our first price increase since we launched in 2014," Slack said in its blog. "This increase will only affect users on our Pro subscription. In addition, we're updating our Free subscription to make it easier than ever for users to try out new features."
For those that are on free Slack plans, there will be changes to the way messages are saved. Previously Slack would show the last 10,000 messages and 5GB worth of uploads. However, this will change to a time basis rather than an amount with Slack showing 90 days' worth of messages or uploads, regardless of how much or how little is sent.
Free users will also have access to some of the newer Slack features, such as Clips, which allows anyone to send audio, video or screen-share messages in direct messages or channels. This is mainly used to provide updates and important info when a recipient(s) is ready, rather than having extra meetings. This will also include a 'retention' period for messages and files.
