Slack has raised our charges by $195k per year
A sudden 40× price hike from Slack to a teen coding nonprofit—demanding $50k within days and $200k annually or loss of 11 years of chat history—has reignited concerns about vendor lock‑in and the risks of relying on proprietary SaaS for core communications. Commenters debate the legality and ethics of such “pay or lose your data” tactics, note similar patterns at Salesforce and other enterprise vendors, and argue that even nonprofits with discounts are vulnerable once embedded. Many advocate migrating to self‑hosted or open‑source alternatives like Mattermost, Zulip, Matrix, or forums, emphasizing data ownership, guaranteed export, and having an exit plan as essential architectural choices rather than afterthoughts.
Slack price hike to Hack Club: what happened
- Hack Club, a teen coding nonprofit, had a long‑running, heavily discounted Slack arrangement: originally a free nonprofit plan, then a special ~$5k/year contract despite very large user counts (tens of thousands of teens plus staff/volunteers).
- This year Slack/Salesforce reinterpreted billing to count every community member as a billable seat, producing a ~$200k/year price and a demand for $50k within about a week, with threat of deactivation and loss of 11 years of history.
- Hack Club staff say they were told to ignore earlier shocking invoices and reassured pricing would be addressed, then abruptly got the ultimatum. Some commenters speculate internal Salesforce processes or automation “lost” the special deal.
Reactions to Slack/Salesforce behavior
- Many see this as classic “enshittification”: bait with generous terms, lock organizations in, then extract maximum revenue once switching is hard.
- Several compare Salesforce to Oracle/CA/Broadcom: focus on enterprise rent extraction over goodwill, even at brand cost.
- Others argue Slack is entitled to charge market rates; the real outrage is the 40× jump plus days‑long deadline and data‑deletion threat.
Vendor lock‑in, data control, and regulation
- Strong emphasis that hosted chat is effectively ransomware if export is constrained.
- People note Slack’s limited, gated exports (especially for DMs/private channels) and recent API rate limits and marketplace bans on archiving apps.
- Some call for laws mandating data export and portability; others insist organizations should have enforced this in contracts or built their own continuous backups.
Alternatives: self‑hosting and open source
- Large support for moving to self‑hosted tools: Mattermost (Hack Club’s choice), Zulip, Matrix/Element, IRC+web frontends, Rocket.Chat, Campfire, or even classic forums (Discourse/Flarum).
- Debate over each:
- Mattermost: AGPL, self‑hostable, but “open‑core” drift and user‑count nags; some forks remove limits.
- Zulip: praised threading model, fully open source, good self‑hosting, but earlier mobile clients were weak (new Flutter app now).
- Matrix: protocol‑level openness and federation vs. operational and UX complexity.
- Discord: great UX and free now, but seen as another proprietary trap.
Broader lessons
- Many treat this as a teachable moment: don’t build core community or institutional knowledge on proprietary SaaS without an exit plan.
- Others stress that executives often choose SaaS for “standardization” and perceived modernity, even when self‑hosted tools are cheaper and better.
- Several note the specific harm: thousands of teens losing community continuity and seeing, early, how large platforms can turn hostile.