Slack Is Increasing Its Prices and Changing Its Free Plan

Slack, the popular messaging platform, is increasing the prices of its “Pro” plan and making some major changes to its free service too.

To cut the platform some well, slack, this is the first price hike since they’ve introduced since they first launched in 2014.

Yet, as the price of business software continues to surge across the country, it’s unlikely that the 100,000 US businesses that rely on the messaging app will be opening these changes with open arms.

What Changes are Coming to Slack?

In a recent blog post, Slack announced that it would be upping the price of its “Pro” plan from the first of September this year.

Specifically, the price of Pro subscriptions will increase from $8 to $8.75 per month when charged monthly, and from $6.67 to $7.25 per month when charged annually.

Since price changes are being rolled out in September, current Pro plan customers are able to lock in the annual rate of $6.67 per month if they renew their subscription before the first of the month.

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’s recent blog post

Slack also announced some pretty major adjustments to its free plan. As of September, free users will have expanded access to new features including clips — sharing tools that allow users to pass on audio and video messages — and be able to set up a retention period for their messages and files.

The storage limit for free users will also change from 10,000 messages and 5GB of uploaded content to the last 90 days worth of history, in a bid to simplify its subscription limits.

Slack’s Price Hike Reflect an Industry Standard

Slack’s pending price rises aren’t too major, but they do follow a wider trend of rising costs within the business software industry.

From project management to web conferencing software, the price of IT services is expected to grow a further 3% throughout 2022, according to a recent study by Gartner.

When quizzed on these surges, many software providers pointed to the rapidly rising issue of inflation. However, with most businesses likely to feel the brunt of inflation sometime soon, passing these cost hikes down to smaller enterprises will only hinder their finances even more.

Fortunately, if your business wants to benefit from smart software without loosening its purse strings, complimentary services do exist too. Read our breakdown of the best free project management tools if you’re interested in connecting your team without spending a cent – or take a glance at our table below: