Team communication tool Slack suddenly notifies nonprofits of a nearly 300,000,000 yen price hike, causing uproar, with an unusually short grace period of just five days



Slack, a communication tool designed for team use, is useful in business situations because it allows users to communicate using chat rooms and channels and connect with other cloud services and task management services. Mahad Karam, a member of the engineering community, reported that Slack had sent a threatening message stating, 'If you do not agree to pay an additional $50,000 (approximately 7.4 million yen) this week and $200,000 (approximately 29 million yen) per year thereafter, we will disable your Slack workspace and delete all message history.' This caused a big uproar, with even Slack's CEO appearing.

Slack is extorting us with a $195k/yr bill increase - Mahad Kalam

https://skyfall.dev/posts/slack



Karam is a member of Hack Club, a nonprofit organization that provides coding education and community to teenagers around the world. He says he has used Slack as a communication tool for nearly 11 years. Slack raised its prices for the first time since its launch in July 2022, but Karam said, 'When Slack eliminated its free nonprofit plan and required us to move to a $5,000 annual plan, we were happy to pay. It was a reasonable price, and we valued the service it provided to the community.'

Meanwhile, on September 16, 2025, Hack Club received a message from Slack stating, 'If you do not agree to an additional payment of $50,000 this week and $200,000 per year, we will disable your Slack workspace and delete all message history.' While the sudden payment of approximately 7.4 million yen and an annual increase of nearly 30 million yen are problematic, the biggest problem is that the grace period was only a few days, 'within this week.'

While communication tools and other services often raise prices or change plans, these increases are often announced several months in advance. Karam stated, 'In my opinion, such a significant price increase requires a minimum of six months' grace period, and in some cases even longer.' A grace period would allow users to choose whether to accept the price increase or service change or migrate their existing data to another service. However, Slack's recommendation, 'by the end of this week,' provided almost no grace period, leaving Karam and dozens of staff and volunteers scrambling to update their systems, restructure new team communications, and migrate years of accumulated data in a very short space of time.



Karam criticized the move, saying, 'The opportunity cost of this forced transition is immeasurable. A company with a market capitalization of several trillion yen is taking such a drastic measure to force a small non-profit organization targeting teenagers to choose between donating a huge amount of funding in less than a week or cutting off all communication. It's completely absurd.' He added, 'This experience has taught me that it is extremely important to use services that ensure data ownership. I would highly recommend a similar transition, especially for small and medium-sized businesses.'

The incident was picked up by the social news site Hacker News, where it garnered attention. Christina, who identifies herself as a co-founder of Hack Club, wrote, 'I urge anyone reading this to please contact Slack and discuss a transition period. Five days would unnecessarily damage the work of Hack Club and the thousands of teenage programmers who are our alumni. We have no intention of offering a free messaging service. If Slack's goal changes to either charging exorbitant fees or permanently destroying our projects and work, that's fine. Please allow a reasonable amount of time for the transition.'

As Christina's post drew sympathy and criticism of Slack, Rob, Slack's Chief Product Officer (CPO), responded, saying, 'This was a mistake. We are fixing it.' He added , 'In this case, a flaw in our billing process was the cause. As we grow and our customer base grow, we cannot guarantee we won't make another mistake. We will review and change our billing and communication processes as necessary to provide clearer guidance and ample grace periods for nonprofits as they grow.' Slack CEO Dennis Dresser also commented on Hacker News, saying , 'We apologize for any concerns this may have caused. As soon as our team became aware of this issue, we made a correction and reinstated Hack Club's nonprofit pricing. Thank you for holding us accountable.'

Slack later issued an official statement correcting the issue and apologizing, saying, 'We made a mistake. This was the result of an oversight in our billing process, and we are working directly with Hack Club to restore our previous nonprofit pricing and ensure their workspace remains fully accessible. We value the work Hack Club does to inspire and educate young people in coding and technology, and we apologize for any concern this situation has caused. We will review our billing and communication processes and provide nonprofits with clearer guidance and appropriate grace periods as they grow.'



Callum, who reported the issue on his blog, said he was contacted by Slack's CEO and offered to fix the problem. 'I'd like to sincerely thank everyone who spread the word about this incident. It was incredibly heartwarming to see so many people supporting us and helping us resolve this issue. However, this incident has made me think more deeply about entrusting my data to third-party software services, and has reminded me that securing ownership of my own data will be an extremely important issue going forward. I hope everyone will do the same,' Callum said.

Meanwhile, even after the Hack Club issue was resolved, comments critical of Slack continued to pour in. One user pointed out that Slack 'has a business model similar to ransomware, selling access to sensitive data provided by users. Companies like this should expect their bills to increase significantly over time. Even if they lose some customers because of this, the high revenue from the remaining customers will make up for the losses.' Similar cases to Hack Club have also occurred with other independent technical education teams, leading to comments lamenting Slack's decline.

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in Software,   Web Service, Posted by log1e_dh