Using Slack Free for Community Engagement

hey folks nice to be here - quick question. What are the limitations of using slack for free, for a community. I thought it would be fine for building and blasting valuable, timely content to a small community of say 200-1000 people, but maybe that is a misconception having found this thread, it could cost a lot.. https://www.reddit.com/r/Slack/comments/14ygsqp/confused_about_slack_pricing_with_community/?rdt=33041&onetap_auto=true&one_tap=true

11 comments

James Devlin
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ref Clem (Vera)
Joel Primack
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I’d encourage you to checkout this post from Scott Baldwin on building a Slack-first Community: https://benry.net/how-to-build-a-community-on-slack/
James Devlin
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Great- thank you Joel Primack & Scott Baldwin
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Joel Primack
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Generally speaking the biggest things to be aware of when building a Community on Slack (Free Plan) are:
Lost messages (Tightknit solves this pain)
Data (Common Room solves this pain, a client of mine)
Automations (Common Room or Zapier solves this pain, depending on workflow you’re looking to build)
Scott Baldwin
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Overall I see more upside than downside — especially for B2B communities where your members are already using Slack every day. Rather than “lost messages” I’d position it as data retention. Slack free only retains last 90 days and Tightknit does resolve that. I’d also stress the limitations on the number of integrations (10 max), you just need to make good choices.
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Andrew Claremont
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Joel and Zach Hawtof won me over on Slack as a community platform. I'm a convert. 😅 ++ I'd say analytics instead of data for Common Room.
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Joel Primack
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I’m glad to hear that Zach Hawtof and I have successfully converted you to a Slack community platform fan, Andrew
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Clem (Vera)
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This is awesome help, thank you guys. I also caught up with this company (https://curatedconnections.io/) about their directory and match-making feature. Seems cool too!
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Joel Primack
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I’m a fan of Intros.ai, if you’re looking for a platform like it, Clem (Vera)
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Nityesh Agarwal
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Thanks Clem (Vera)! I’ve had conversations with a lot of folks on my podcast who are building their community businesses on Slack. All of them realise the problems that come with it and have seriously considered migrating to an all-in-one platform. But they still choose to be on Slack because of the low friction it offers to members. There’s no platform that has a slack like adoption. So you need to decide what’s more important for your community - low friction (go with slack) or a branded experience (go with a Circle like platform).
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Andrew Claremont
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It's really hard to compete with platform stickiness for peer/interest groups. If you're already in Slack you're more likely to stay engaged with other communities on the platform. Ditto for folks on Reddit, WhatsApp, FB Groups, Discord, etc... otherwise you need a very strong anchor to pull people out of their existing routines/habits. IMO that's why product support and creator-led learning communities have the best shot at doing well outside of Slack. They're more transactional than conversational. You get in because you're looking for answers or guidance, and you're more likely to go along with whatever you're told to use.
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