[object Object]

The Change

Every Salesforce customer now receives Slack Free Plan with access to Salesforce integrations. Salesforce Channels, basic Slackbot, CRM data access through the Salesforce app for Slack, and the recently extended 90-day free message history — all baseline. Teams can collaborate around CRM data without a separate Slack purchase or per-seat license. The change applies to all paid Salesforce SKUs (Sales, Service, Marketing, Commerce, Industries) and provisions automatically for new orgs and on request for existing orgs through the Setup > Slack Integration page.

What’s Free

Included in the Free tier provisioned to Salesforce customers:
  - Up to 10 integrations active per workspace (Salesforce app counts as 1)
  - 90 days of message history (extended from 14 in 2026)
  - Salesforce Channels for record-linked collaboration
  - Slackbot baseline conversational interface
  - CRM record search and preview from the Slack message composer
  - Read-only Salesforce dashboards via the Salesforce app

What’s Not Free

Slack’s higher tiers (Pro, Business+, Enterprise Grid) still cost. Advanced features — DLP, eDiscovery, compliance exports, larger channels (over 250 members), external Slack Connect channels with non-customers, full message retention, SAML SSO with custom IdP, and Slack AI features — require paid tiers. Free Plan is a starting point, not the full feature set, and most enterprise IT teams will end up on Business+ or Enterprise Grid for compliance reasons regardless.

Tier             Per-seat (mid-2026)   Key add-ons over Free
----             -------------------    ---------------------
Pro              ~$8.75                 Unlimited integrations, full history
Business+        ~$15                   SSO, DLP, eDiscovery, 24/7 support
Enterprise Grid  custom                 Multi-workspace, HIPAA, FINRA

Strategic Signal

Salesforce pushes conversational CRM as the default surface. By making Slack free for all customers, adoption friction drops materially. The “we’re a Salesforce shop but not on Slack” segment shrinks. Expect Slack-native Agentforce surfaces to be designed-for-default rather than designed-for-progressive-rollout in the next 18 months — meaning Salesforce-built features will increasingly assume Slack is present, the way they currently assume Lightning Experience is the UI.

Migration Implications

Teams on Microsoft Teams face a choice: add Slack for CRM-adjacent work, stay on Teams with CRM integration gaps, or consolidate one direction. Microsoft’s Copilot Studio + Teams integration competes directly and is improving. Expect multi-year negotiation dynamics where vendors trade discounts on adjacent SKUs (Microsoft 365 vs Slack/Salesforce) to win the workplace standardization decision. For mixed Slack-and-Teams environments, the pragmatic path is Slack for CRM-anchored work and Teams for everything else, with Salesforce Channels as the bridge.

When to Upgrade Off Free

Upgrade when any of these is true: regulated-industry compliance is required, your workspace exceeds 10 active integrations, message history beyond 90 days has business value, you need SAML SSO with a non-Slack IdP, or you want Slack AI features (summaries, recap). Most disclosed customer profiles upgrade within 6–12 months of starting on Free.

What to Do This Week

If you’re a Salesforce customer not yet using Slack, provision the Free Plan, enable Salesforce Channels for one team’s top 5 active opportunities, and measure activity capture rate over 14 days. Decide based on observed adoption.

[object Object]
Share