Slack has raised our charges by $195k per year • Hacker News Board

Re: Slack has raised our charges by $195k per year

#181

Post by layman51 » Thu, Sep 18, 2025, 4:45 AM UTC

Kirth wrote: post #100

randyrand wrote: post #40

Wow, Slack does not allow business customers to export their chats. WTF. Found this: "Workspace Owners can apply for Corporate Export. This lets you export all messages (including DMs and private channels), but only if your company has legal or compliance requirements and Slack approves the request. Once approved, exports are scheduled and delivered automatically." So they have the tech built, you just aren't allowed…

Let's be honest; how many Slack messages or conversations older than 2-3 weeks still have value?

I'm actually part of some Slack workspaces that are on the free plan which hides messages (including DMs) older than 90 days. It is actually quite cumbersome then because if someone sends a valuable message, I have to remember to screenshot or better yet copy-paste it into a durable spot or else I'm going to have to ask again about the same thing.

Re: Slack has raised our charges by $195k per year

#182

Post by aurareturn » Thu, Sep 18, 2025, 4:45 AM UTC

MontyCarloHall wrote: post #143

flunhat wrote: post #37

For whatever reason, Salesforce has failed to capitalize on the AI excitement/craze [1]. Its earnings growth is just not what it used to be (i.e. during the peak cloud era of 2010s-202x). A move this aggressive (e.g. pushing companies on Slack to pay 10x more, immediately, or get lost) is not isolated and probably the result of institutional forces. It's not like the random sales person in charge of this decided to b…

It's really surprising -- Slack is the poster child of an app where AI-based semantic search (e.g. RAG) would be incredibly useful. Yet despite Marc Benioff's grand proclamations about AI [0, 1], you barely see any AI integration into one of Salesforce's most universally-used products. [0] https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2025-09-02/salesforce... [1] https://www.fastcompany.com/91359024/salesforce-using-ai-art.…

I don't understand why Slack hasn't fully implemented LLMs. Imagine as a new comer, you don't understand why a product decision was made 3 years ago. You ask Slack to summarize the conversations on why this choice was made based on messages 3 years ago. How powerful is that?

Slack can probably charge an extra $10/month/user for this.

Re: Slack has raised our charges by $195k per year

#183

Post by mkhalil » Thu, Sep 18, 2025, 4:48 AM UTC

Unpopular opinion: I think it's wild that ANY ORG would pay $200k for a chat app. If I ever ran an org that needed a chat app and the costs came even close to $200k a year, I would rather hire an engineer, contract a designer, and create our own, or more likely, contribute/fork an open source project like Matrix; providing us with the ability to *really* integrate it into our company/tools - as oppose spending it on IRC+ for "good enough" integration. PLUS ... our data stays on under our control.

Re: Slack has raised our charges by $195k per year

#184

Post by vjeux » Thu, Sep 18, 2025, 4:52 AM UTC

We had the same issue many years ago with the reactiflux community. We ended up moving to discord and that was the best decision ever. Discord has been an extremely welcoming place for all these kind of communities.

Re: Slack has raised our charges by $195k per year

#185

Post by cj » Thu, Sep 18, 2025, 4:55 AM UTC

randyrand wrote: post #40

Wow, Slack does not allow business customers to export their chats. WTF. Found this: "Workspace Owners can apply for Corporate Export. This lets you export all messages (including DMs and private channels), but only if your company has legal or compliance requirements and Slack approves the request. Once approved, exports are scheduled and delivered automatically." So they have the tech built, you just aren't allowed…

The application process is a short form and a few clicks. They don't have a high bar for being accepted.

Re: Slack has raised our charges by $195k per year

#186

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Sep 18, 2025, 4:57 AM UTC

fn-mote wrote: post #57

I was ready to be unsympathetic - too bad for the company - but then I read TFA and it's a rug pull on a nonprofit teaching coding to kids.... https://hackclub.com/ (They do help clubs sell things, taking "7% of income", so they do have a revenue stream, but the money that Slack wants would pay a veritable army of student interns.)

[deleted]

Re: Slack has raised our charges by $195k per year

#187

Post by insane_dreamer » Thu, Sep 18, 2025, 5:00 AM UTC

Kirth wrote: post #100

randyrand wrote: post #40

Wow, Slack does not allow business customers to export their chats. WTF. Found this: "Workspace Owners can apply for Corporate Export. This lets you export all messages (including DMs and private channels), but only if your company has legal or compliance requirements and Slack approves the request. Once approved, exports are scheduled and delivered automatically." So they have the tech built, you just aren't allowed…

Let's be honest; how many Slack messages or conversations older than 2-3 weeks still have value?

We use Slack extensively and I'm searching for info in conversations from months or even years ago regularly.

Re: Slack has raised our charges by $195k per year

#188

Post by ainiriand » Thu, Sep 18, 2025, 5:04 AM UTC

wpm wrote: post #15

I can sympathize, but this was always the end deal for cloud SaaS apps. Give em a taste, get em hooked, get years of institutional knowledge and process embedded in the app, refuse to let them export it, and crank the price up. It's not only guys named Larry who are lawnmowers. Don't stick your hand in. *Own* your shit. Be suspicious of anyone who tries to convince you not to. If it's "easy" it might come back to bit…

Seriously, 40 bucks a month gets you a great server at Hetzner then you can have mattermost there and many other office utilities.

Re: Slack has raised our charges by $195k per year

#189

Post by chrisasquith » Thu, Sep 18, 2025, 5:14 AM UTC

fn-mote wrote: post #57

I was ready to be unsympathetic - too bad for the company - but then I read TFA and it's a rug pull on a nonprofit teaching coding to kids.... https://hackclub.com/ (They do help clubs sell things, taking "7% of income", so they do have a revenue stream, but the money that Slack wants would pay a veritable army of student interns.)

Hi! Ty! And Hack club is totally free to teens and we provide travel stipends, hardware, electronics and more. (We don’t charge 7 percent to clubs to sell things :)) hack club run a fiscal sponsorship and adult-orgs using it pay us 7percent- which we use to make more things free to teens. - hack club cofounder here

Re: Slack has raised our charges by $195k per year

#190

Post by p0w3n3d » Thu, Sep 18, 2025, 5:20 AM UTC

We're using teams in my new company, which is awful for textual communication (lacks threads in chats, groups are more like old forums than new IM). I've been experimenting with self-hosted Mattermost but it seems that it also requires paid license in some situations (e.g. does not have groups for some reason in the free version).

I was unable to find another system. Would anyone recommend me something?