Slack Product Assortment

Slack leverages vertical product assortment to create different packages that meet the needs of different customer segments. The packages are primarily defined by the features they add. Just like most SaaS applications, those features generally fall into the EnterpriseReady feature categories as illustrated below.

The Free tier limits the quantity of integrations, searchable messages and file storage space. If any threshold is hit then the price bumps up to $8 per user per month.

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The Standard tier removes some of the quantity limits (searchability & integrations). Custom retention policies are enabled which is an example of Auditing/compliance functionality. Guest access allows you to invite team members with limited organizational roles, a key concept of Role Based Access Control (RBAC). Priority support is an obvious Support feature. OAuth with Google is the first example of User Management via single sign on. Mandatory two-factor is a Security enabling feature.

The Plus tier unlocks the User Management compatibility with SAML. Compliance exports are an obvious example of Auditing/compliance. External archiving services is an advanced integration that has been reserved for this tier. Support response times and SLAs are obvious Support features. User provisioning and deprovisioning, Active Directory sync are both User Management features. Finally this plan increases the remaining quantity limit for storage.

The still yet to be launched Enterprise version mainly includes features designed to federate and unify the proliferation of accounts throughout a single organization.

Interest in any particular feature will require that you upgrade to a plan that includes it. You might not have 10 integrations yet, or even 10k messages… but you need a specific feature, or an SLA you have to pay up.

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Notes:

Some amount of conversation needs to be about the app specific features and why are they being pay-walled.

These quantity driven feature limitations allow free users to experience the value without being able to put undo stress on the system and encourage an upgrade to take full advantage. If you’re using Slack with a group of friends, you probably don’t care about any of the features you’re missing. The real drivers for the paid accounts are the administrative features that are only available in these versions & that appeal directly to business buyers.

This was published on Nov. 22, 2016.

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