With the Covid restrictions becoming less stringent, people are finding ways to work from home, and the internet has enabled some highly efficient communication platforms. One of these is Slack, which can be used for group messaging, file sharing, and much more. You may have heard of Slack as a platform for entrepreneurs to collaborate, or as a place for employees to have a laugh. However, you may be surprised to learn that Slack is one of the most cost-effective communication tools available, and could potentially be used to run a business. In this blog post, we will investigate how much does it cost to run a business on Slack, as an online marketing consultant in the Midlands.

Cost-effective

If you’re reading this, I assume you’re already aware of how essential remote working is going to be for businesses in the future. Many people are already working from home, and in the next few months, we’ll see more and more businesses adopt remote working strategies to save costs and keep staff connected.

Slack is one of the most popular platforms among remote workers, due to its quick and easy installation, its intuitive UI, and the fact that it’s a free product.

Not only does Slack cost nothing to download and launch, it also provides a free tier that can be used for up to 12,000 messages per month. This equates to around £40 per user, per month. If you’re using the paid-for business plan, you can receive up to 100,000 messages per month, for around £5 per user, per month.

So, as you can see, Slack is a highly cost-effective communication tool. This makes it perfect for use by businesses, as it’s free, and provides all the functionality required to run a business. You may be wondering if there’s anything else you should know about Slack, so let’s take a quick look at the different pricing plans available, as an online marketing consultant in the Midlands.

Pricing Plans

There are four different pricing plans available for Slack:

• Personal (student) – This plan is ideal for individuals who want to keep their personal usage private and don’t want to share their business information with the world. With this plan, you can send up to 15,000 messages per month for free.
• Pro (small business) – If you’re running a small business, you may want to consider this plan as it provides excellent value for money. With this plan, you can send up to 100,000 messages per month for free.
• Business (Agency) – This plan is designed for agencies, marketing consultancies, and the like. It provides excellent value for money as individuals can be extremely expensive to hire. In addition, it has excellent integrations with other platforms, including Google Ads, Xero, Harvest, and more.
• Enterprise (large business) – This plan is exactly the same as the Business plan, with the exception that it provides value to businesses with a minimum of 100,000 monthly active users. This plan is an excellent choice if you’re looking to scale your business.

If you decide that Slack is the best option for your business, you can sign up here.

Features

Slack provides a number of features that make it ideal for businesses. These include:

• Calendars – You can create events on your calendar, which other participants can join. This makes planning meetings easy and fun.
• Lists – You can create lists of people, projects, or things to follow up on. This is great for keeping track of multiple tasks.
• Snooze – If you get a lot of messages, you can snooze messages to come back to them later. This is particularly useful if you’re busy when others want to send you messages.
• Search – You can search for topics or individuals, to find the information you need quickly.
• Notifications – You can configure notifications for when messages are sent to you, via email or Slack itself.
• Timelines – You can create different timelines for different groups of people, projects, or things. This means you can keep track of different conversations and their associated details, in one place.
• Drawings – If you’re a business owner, designer, or an artist, you can attach images in your messages to make things easier to remember. These can be anything from simple drawings, to floor plans, or designs for products.
• Voice Messages – You can also add voice messages to your chats. This can be very effective when communicating with participants as they can hear you clearly despite being in a different time zone or country.
• Video Calls – If you have a video camera, you can use it to record and send short videos, similar to a YouTube video.
• Workflows – You can create workflows to process recurring tasks, such as sending out monthly newsletters or compiling yearly reports. Automating these tasks makes doing them less frequent, which can boost your productivity.
• Appointment Reminders – If you’re using the Business plan, you can set reminders to notify you of upcoming appointments. Being reminded of these appointments promotes more effective task planning and management.
• Time Zones – You can set your time zone to automatically update with the current time in other countries. This can help you to keep track of when events are due, and when you should be doing something about them.
• Offline Read Receipts – If you’re sending out information on a regular basis, but you’ve lost internet connection for a while, you can request read receipts for your emails. This means you can confirm that recipients have actually seen your emails.
• File Sharing – You can also share files with other team members, directly from within Slack. This can be particularly useful if you’re a designer or an artist, as you can show your clients or potential customers the designs or drawings you’ve come up with.
• High Availability – If you’re running a business that handles highly sensitive information, you can choose this plan as it offers enhanced data protection features, as well as the usual 24/7 telephone support. In addition, you can use the free version, which is highly responsive and reliable.
• Custom Domains – If you want to use a different domain name for your Slack account than your website or social media accounts, you can do so with this plan. You’ll need to contact Slack Support, to make this change.
• Multiple Login Accounts – You can have a separate login account for your work and personal usage. This can be handy if you want to check work-related emails, while keeping personal messages on separate accounts.
• Custom Colors – If you’d like to change the color scheme used by Slack, you can do so on this plan. To change the background color, click on the cog in the upper-right-hand corner of the screen. From here, you can select a new background color and click SAVE.
• Two-Step Verification – You can also enable two-step verification for this account. On the login page, you’ll see a small two-step verification image. Keep in mind that this will require you to verify your account with a phone number as well.
• Slack Teams – You can create public or private teams with invite-only settings, to share documents, design templates, and more. You can also choose a custom domain for your team.
• Multiple Integrations – This plan provides excellent integration with other platforms. In addition to integrating with Google Apps, Xero, and Harvest, you can connect Slack to other software, such as Microsoft Office, MailChimp, Salesforce, and more.
• Marketing Landing Pages – You can create marketing pages, using templates, to launch a marketing campaign or a new product. These can then be linked to from within Slack, to create a conversation.
• Data Tracking – If you’d like to keep track of your business’ spending habits, you can use one of the many integrated data tools for that purpose. The Business plan includes some free credits, which you can use to create a data sheet, import CSV files, and more.
• Free Upgrades – You can always renew your plan, and receive free upgrades, as necessary.

With these features, you’d think that Slack was designed with businesses in mind. It has all the functionality required to help you organize your work, and stay connected with your team. If you decide that this is the case, you can sign up here.