Slack reports almost 40% Q1 growth as Salesforce deals nears closure

Slack has reported 13,000 more paid customers in its first-quarter results, taking its total to 169,000, which represents a 39% increase year-on-year.

The comms platform reported Q1 total revenues of $273 million - a 36% increase from last year - which is in stark contrast to its performance towards the end of 2020 where it struggled to capitalise on the greater adoption of cloud services amid multiple lockdowns.

The company now has 1,285 paid customers with annual revenue greater than $100,000. What's more, it also has 113 paid customers with greater than $1 million in annual revenue - which is an increase of 45% year-on-year.

The results are likely the last Slack will announce before its acquisition by Salesforce closes. Earlier in the week, reports surfaced that Salesforce customers had already begun integrating Slack into their businesses, which could be the reason its paid customers had increased.

Unlike several other software providers, Slack didn't manage to pull in more users during the pandemic. While Zoom and Microsoft Teams rapidly increased, Slack saw its stock actually downgraded ahead of the autumn lockdown as it stagnated.

However, the firm did record traction with its Slack Connect service, which is a feature that lets users chat with other organisations via Slack. Over 91,000 paid customers have used the service adding more than 950,000 connected endpoints.

"Companies globally are racing toward a digital-first way of working to attract talent and to win," said Stewart Butterfield, the CEO of Slack.

"Slack is not just embracing this trend, we are enabling it. In Q1 we saw a near-record number of paid customer additions, a record number of paid customers adopting Slack Connect, and approached one million active developers on our platform."