As someone who helps run another volunteer tech nonprofit that relies on slack, is there a reason they kicked you off the free nonprofit plan? Asking to have a good backup plan for our community.
Slack has raised our charges by $195k per year
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Re: Slack has raised our charges by $195k per year
#752Thousands of teen coders now hate Salesforce in advance . This is very shortsighted.
That's the best thing that could happen, more people should think poorly of salesforce. It's important to remind up and coming programmers that the big companies are not their friends.
Re: Slack has raised our charges by $195k per year
#753It's not like Slack is even that well-designed anyway. By design, it results in conversation fragmentation, with similar conversations happening all over the place. Once you have more than ~5 employees, people have a hard time keeping up. My dream work chat app: 1. Conversations happen adjacent to internal documentation, with agents constantly writing and updating the docs based on natural human conversations 2. Crea…
This is close to a lot of what's happening at Glue. Threads are first-class, so you can start a thread within a group - let's talk about our GraphQL schema and that thread should live in the API Development group. You can also start a thread without a group - just me and another 2 coworkers need to discuss a specific point that would be noisy for everybody else.
Glue AI can be invoked at any time in any context and you can choose whether or not you want to share your conversation with other people after the fact. MCP is also well supported so you get good integration with lots of services like Linear or Notion.
The agent isn't quite as proactive as updating documentation without being prompted right now, but it's regularly done by telling Glue AI to update pages in Notion with info from a thread.
Re: Slack has raised our charges by $195k per year
#754Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was cancelling my annual slack premium last month and had to click to acknowledge that some of my members are using the AI features and they will lose access to them. They then offered me a discount and if I refused there was another checkbox where I accepted that I was about to cause disruption for other staff. I was tempted to take the deal until that point, but I'm the only member of the organisation and I absol…
It's just incredible that billion dollar companies are copying the dark patterns from last decade's shadiest developers.
On the contrary it is extremely natural that they do this - when the only thing that matters is revenue and morals are just a roadblock this is a perfectly reasonable thing to do
Re: Slack has raised our charges by $195k per year
#755Based on California’s Automatic Renewal Law and contract principles, what you’ve described raises serious concerns:
In California, companies must provide clear written notice of any material change to renewal terms and obtain consent before billing under new terms. Changing pricing from a staff-only basis to billing every user—without a new contract or notice—appears inconsistent with that law.
Telling you to ignore invoices, then demanding immediate payment with a threat of total service shutoff, could be construed as coercive and in bad faith.
Recommendations:
Put everything in writing. Send Salesforce/Slack a formal letter citing Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code §§ 17600–17606 (Automatic Renewal Law) and demanding they extend service during resolution.
Request a 90-day transition period to migrate, framed as reasonable and legally necessary under consumer protection standards.
Escalate to Salesforce legal/compliance. If necessary, copy the California Attorney General’s consumer protection unit.
Preserve evidence. Save all communications, invoices, and contract copies.
This doesn’t mean you should stop negotiating, but you have a strong basis to demand more time and push back on the sudden payment demand.
Re: Slack has raised our charges by $195k per year
#756Hi, I’m Christina, cofounder of Hack Club. We just announced this news to our community, and this post is from one of the teenagers in Hack Club. It’s an accurate description of what’s happened, and we’re grateful to them for posting. Slack changed the terms of a special deal we were given last year to charge us for staff and volunteers (not for every teenager coding), and we built programs around that special rate.…
Hey, I'm Rob, the CPO at Slack (for real tho, this is my 3rd time posting this so please don't flag :pray:).
This was a mistake. We're fixing it. We appreciate you, Hack Club, along with all of you that are Slack users following along :heart:.
Re: Slack has raised our charges by $195k per year
#757Earlier quoted context omitted.
Haven't you heard? Sales force doesn't hire programmers anymore. AI is all their CEO needs. ;p. Seriously though, this behavior reminds me of Oracle, and is a great reminder that proprietary software can very quickly become a big liability.
Oracle is exactly who sprang to mind. Throughout my history as a software developer, even Microsoft has had a ton of interest in being involved in the community. Yes, they've wanted to extinguish much of it, when it didn't align with their financial goals... but they were always interested in being part of the "software development conversation". Oracle on the other hand has never extended an olive branch. They're qu…
Microsoft was _awesome_ to deal with as a small company and/or an educational institution. They had special programs for startups where you could get basically anything for free, and their business side was a pleasure to deal with.
They very much understood the "Developers! Developers! Developers!" mantra.
Re: Slack has raised our charges by $195k per year
#758It's not like Slack is even that well-designed anyway. By design, it results in conversation fragmentation, with similar conversations happening all over the place. Once you have more than ~5 employees, people have a hard time keeping up. My dream work chat app: 1. Conversations happen adjacent to internal documentation, with agents constantly writing and updating the docs based on natural human conversations 2. Crea…
Found the manager.
I would go mental without DMs
Re: Slack has raised our charges by $195k per year
#759According to the Slack HQ account on Reddit, the situation has been resolved: https://old.reddit.com/r/Slack/comments/1njuchb/why_is_slack...
>We made a mistake. >This was the result of an oversight in our billing process, and we are returning Hack Club to its previous nonprofit pricing while we work with them directly to ensure their workspace remains fully accessible. We value the work Hack Club does to inspire and educate young people in coding and technology, and we regret the concern this situation has caused. We will be reviewing our billing and communications processes to provide nonprofits clearer guidance and adequate grace periods as they grow.
Re: Slack has raised our charges by $195k per year
#760Hi, I’m Christina, cofounder of Hack Club. We just announced this news to our community, and this post is from one of the teenagers in Hack Club. It’s an accurate description of what’s happened, and we’re grateful to them for posting. Slack changed the terms of a special deal we were given last year to charge us for staff and volunteers (not for every teenager coding), and we built programs around that special rate.…
(Hi - I'm an engineer at Slack -- reposting from our chief product officer Rob Seaman):
"This was a mistake. We're fixing it. We appreciate you, Hack Club, along with all of you that are Slack users following along :heart:."