Slack

What it is

Slack is messaging for teams, organized into channels instead of inboxes. A channel is a topic, a project or a client, and everything about it lives in one visible stream that people can join, leave and search. Alongside that sit direct messages, huddles for quick audio and video calls, and Slack Connect for talking to people outside your company.

The second half of Slack is the app directory: over 2,600 apps, including Salesforce, Jira, Google Drive and ChatGPT. That is what turns it from a chat tool into the place where notifications, approvals and tool output land, so people stop switching windows to find out what happened.

Who it's for (and who it isn't)

It fits teams whose work is spread over several tools and who currently coordinate over email or a group chat that was never designed for work. The moment you can say "everything about client X is in the client-X channel" instead of "it is in someone's inbox", the tool has paid for itself.

It is a weaker fit for very small teams that already sit in the same room, and for organizations where the real problem is unclear ownership rather than slow communication. Slack makes conversation faster and more visible, and it can make an already noisy culture noisier. If what you actually need is to see who owns what and when it is due, that is a work management job, see Asana or monday.com.

Pricing

Slack is freemium. The free plan keeps 90 days of message history, allows up to 10 apps from the directory, and limits huddles to 1:1. Pro is EUR 8.25 per user per month billed monthly, or EUR 6.75 billed annually, and lifts message history and app limits. Business+ is EUR 18 per user per month, or EUR 15 billed annually, and adds more AI and security features. Enterprise+ is quoted on request. Prices as shown here were quoted in euros.

The 90-day history limit is the one that decides most upgrades. It is comfortable until the first time someone needs a decision that was made four months ago and finds it is gone.

Set it up

Official guide: Getting started for workspace creators

1. Create a Slack workspace (the shared space for your team) on the Free plan, which keeps 90 days of message history. Go to slack.com/get-started#/createnew, enter your email address and click "Continue". Enter the confirmation code from your email, click "Create a Workspace", and follow the prompts. Your workspace now exists.
2. Click the plus sign in the sidebar, select "Channel", enter a name, choose public or private, and click "Create". A channel is a chat room for one topic. Slack suggests starting with #announcements, #project and #social, and new members join #general automatically. Your new channel now shows in the sidebar.
3. In the Slack desktop app, click your workspace name in the top-left corner and select "Invite people to..." from the menu. Each person you add gets an invitation, so invite only the people who will use Slack, not the whole company at once. Invited people now show in your workspace once they accept.
4. In the sidebar, open "Agents & tools" (under "More" if you do not see it), select "Apps", search for the app, and choose "Add". Then select "Add to Slack" and follow the prompts. Add only the one or two tools whose updates your team keeps looking for. The Free plan allows up to 10 apps. The app is now added to your workspace.
5. Set a reminder that repeats, for the routine you keep forgetting. In a channel, type /remind #general What is on this week? every Monday at 9am and press Enter. The message posts for everyone in #general, and "every weekday" or "every two weeks" also work. Slack now posts the message in that channel on its own.

When this works, your team has a channel for each topic, the people you invited are in the workspace, and a weekly reminder posts itself.

On Pro (EUR 8.25/user/mo billed monthly or EUR 6.75 billed annually): a new channel can start from a template (a ready-made setup for one purpose), and a reminder can notify a user group (a named set of people you can mention together).

Strengths and limitations

The strength is visible, searchable context. Conversations that would have been private emails become a record that a new colleague can read, which is quietly the biggest operational gain most small teams get from it.

The limitations deserve honesty. Slack raises the volume of interruption, and teams that adopt it without agreeing on norms often trade email overload for chat overload. The free plan's 90-day history means your record has an expiry date. And the per-user price makes it one of the tools that gets meaningfully more expensive with every hire, so decide who really needs a seat.