Slack is increasing its prices and making big changes to its free plan

Slack is putting its prices up in September, alongside some big changes to its free plan. It’s the first price increase since Slack launched in 2014, but will only affect users of Slack’s “Pro” plan. On September 1st, monthly Pro subscriptions will increase from $8 to $8.75 per user per month, and annual Pro subscriptions will increase from $6.67 to $7.25 per user per month.

The price increases will only impact Pro customers worldwide, and not companies on Slack’s Business Plus or custom enterprise plans. There is a way to avoid the price increases for another year, though. Current annual Pro subscribers can lock in the existing annual rate for another year by renewing their subscription early before September 1st. Monthly Pro subscribers can also switch to the annual rate before September 1st and keep the existing $6.67 per user per month rate for a year.

Image: Slack

Slack is also making some big changes to its free plan. Currently, free Slack servers show the last 10,000 messages and up to 5GB of uploaded content. From September 1st, Slack is changing this to show the last 90 days of messages and uploads, with no limit on how many messages have been sent or the amount of uploaded content. “The majority of our active free teams will have access to more of their message history with the new 90-day limit compared to the previous limit,” explains Slack in a blog post. “No matter how much your free team uses Slack, you’ll always have access to 90 days of history.”

Slack’s free users will also get access to the Clips feature that lets users send audio, video, and screen-share messages in channels and DMs. Free teams will also now be able to set a retention period for their messages and files from September 1st.