Slack’s sudden $200k/yr demand pushes Hack Club to Mattermost

Hack Club says Slack abruptly demanded an immediate $50k and a $200k/year plan, threatening deactivation and deletion of history. The nonprofit calls the short notice unreasonable and highly disruptive, forcing emergency migrations and rebuilds. They are switching to Mattermost and advise others to prioritize data ownership.

Key Points

Slack reportedly gave less than a week to accept an immediate $50k charge and a $200k/year plan, up from $5k/year.
Slack threatened to deactivate Hack Club’s workspace and delete message history if they did not comply.
The author argues a six-month grace period is the minimum acceptable runway for such a drastic price change.
The short notice has caused significant disruption, forcing rapid migrations and rebuilding of integrations.
Hack Club is moving to Mattermost and advises others to prioritize data ownership and consider alternatives to Slack.

Sentiment

The overall sentiment of the Hacker News discussion is overwhelmingly negative towards Slack and Salesforce, with strong agreement and sympathy for Hack Club's predicament. Commenters generally condemn Slack's aggressive pricing tactics and the abrupt nature of the demand, viewing it as a prime example of vendor lock-in and the 'enshittification' of SaaS. There is a strong consensus on the importance of FOSS and self-hosting to avoid such situations. While some comments offer a more critical perspective on Hack Club's prior choices, these are largely overshadowed by the widespread outrage directed at Salesforce's business practices.

In Agreement

Slack/Salesforce's actions are predatory, 'extortionist,' 'ransomware-as-a-service,' and a 'dick move,' reflecting a wider trend of 'enshittification' in proprietary SaaS platforms.
The behavior is short-sighted and detrimental to Salesforce's reputation, especially by alienating a community of future engineers and founders who have used Slack for years.
The incident highlights the critical importance of self-hosting and using Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) to maintain control over data and avoid vendor lock-in.
Many other users and organizations, including the Kubernetes project, have experienced similar abrupt price hikes or unfavorable changes from Salesforce-owned products like Heroku and Slack.
Proprietary chat platforms are not suitable for long-term knowledge retention, and organizations should prioritize owning their data through self-hosted solutions or robust export capabilities.
The massive price increase ($5,000 to $200,000 annually, plus $50,000 upfront) is deemed unreasonable and unjustifiable for a chat service, especially for a non-profit.
Alternatives like Mattermost, Zulip, and Matrix (Element) are viable FOSS solutions that offer more control and avoid the risks associated with commercial SaaS providers.

Opposed

Hack Club should have anticipated the end of 'charity' or special pricing and should have had an exit strategy or chosen a FOSS solution from the start, as relying on a single company's 'charity' is unsustainable.
Storing 'institutional knowledge' and critical documentation exclusively in a chat application like Slack is poor practice; wikis or dedicated documentation systems are more appropriate.
Hack Club's significant annual revenue ($11.4M reported, $5M budget per co-founder) might make them a target for sales teams looking to maximize profit, explaining why Slack might no longer offer heavy discounts.
Even FOSS/self-hosted alternatives like Mattermost and Zulip have their own challenges, such as 'open-core' models, nagging upgrade prompts, user limits on free versions, or perceived clunky UI/poor mobile app performance.
The initial $5,000/year price for 'thousands' of users was already a very low rate, and while the hike is extreme, Slack is within its right to change pricing, albeit with better notice.
Some argue that Microsoft Teams, despite its flaws, is a viable alternative, especially if an organization already has an Office 365 license, offering a more stable (though not ideal) ecosystem.