Slack’s pricing page lists no price for Slack Connect itself. You pay for the Slack plan on each side, and the plan decides what the other side can do. Figures below were read on Slack’s pricing page and help articles on 2026-11-11. Prices and limits change, so confirm them on the day you buy.
What each Slack plan allows
The table is about your own workspace. The customer’s side follows in the next section.
| Your Slack plan | List price per user per month, as of 2026-11-11 | Outside people | Channels with other organizations |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 (“free forever”) | One-to-one DMs through Slack Connect | Help article: each organization must be on a paid plan |
| Pro | $7.25 billed annually, $8.75 billed monthly | DMs, group chats, dedicated channels | Yes, up to 250 organizations per channel |
| Business+ | $15 billed annually, $18 billed monthly | DMs, group chats, dedicated channels | Yes, up to 250 organizations per channel |
| Enterprise+ | $45 billed annually, no monthly price listed, Contact Sales button | DMs, group chats, dedicated channels | Yes, up to 250 organizations per channel |
The pricing page’s outside-partner wording is the same for Pro, Business+ and Enterprise+, so the difference between those plans is price and admin controls, not who you can reach.
Slack’s pricing page also shows a promotion of “50% off for 3 months” that puts Pro monthly at $4.38 and Business+ monthly at $9. You qualify only if you buy Pro or Business+ online in the first 7 days after your team is created. It excludes annual plans and Enterprise+ upgrades, shows no end date, and says Slack can end it at any point without notice. A team adding Slack Connect to a workspace that already exists will almost never qualify, so budget from the list prices.
The Free plan has a second limit that matters for support. The pricing page says history stays searchable for 90 days, and that an upgrade opens up the previous 12 months. On Free, older messages stop being searchable after 90 days. A support thread that reopens in month four cannot be searched back to its start, though the earlier messages become accessible again after an upgrade.
Who needs what on each side
Slack’s help articles give three rules that matter for a support team:
- Outside one-to-one DMs: the help article says any Slack plan can start a DM, whether you send the invitation or accept one.
- Shared channel between paid organizations: the help article says every organization in the channel must be on a paid plan.
- Shared channel with an Enterprise host and a free-team customer: the free-teams article says teams on the free version can join channels they are invited to by default. It names the admin setting “Free teams can join channels without starting a free trial,” and labels the feature as available on Enterprise plans.
The two articles read differently. The general one states the paid rule for every organization, and the free-teams one describes an exception that the article labels as Enterprise. Until your Slack account team confirms otherwise, plan as if the exception exists only for Enterprise hosts. The free-teams article does not state the default value of the admin setting, so look at it in your own admin screen rather than assuming it.
These rules turn into three decisions:
- If your workspace is on Free, use DMs, and plan an upgrade before you promise a shared channel.
- If your workspace is on Pro or Business+ and the customer is on a free workspace, start a DM now and ask them to move to a paid plan before you send the channel invite.
- If your workspace is on Enterprise and the customer is on a free team, confirm the setting is on, then send the invite. A failed invite usually means the setting was changed, or the invite was sent before the change.
Check the customer’s plan and your own controls
The help article has no step for viewing another organization’s plan, so the practical route is to ask the customer’s Slack admin. Someone who can open their workspace billing or plan page can tell you in a minute. Ask for the plan name, not whether they “pay for Slack.”
On your side, the help article says to manage Slack Connect in one place: from Home, click Directories, then select External. It also says only the organization that owns a channel can invite organizations and manage posting permissions, so decide which workspace owns each customer channel before the first invite goes out. On Enterprise, the free-teams article says Org Owners and Org Admins manage the setting, and a change affects only future invitations sent from your organization.
Send this before the invite:
“Before I send the channel invite, could you ask your Slack admin which plan your workspace is on? If it’s the free plan, I’ll set up a direct message with you for now, so we can keep talking while we sort out the channel.”
If they ask why, you can say: “Slack’s help article says both organizations need a paid plan to work together in a channel, so I’m starting us in a direct message. I’ll send the channel invite as soon as that changes.”
Failure modes and their fixes
- The customer may never see the channel. A likely cause is that their workspace is on Free while your host is Pro or Business+. Confirm their plan before resending anything, and keep the conversation in a DM meanwhile.
- A free-team person cannot bring in another organization. The free-teams article says people from free teams “cannot send invitations to additional organizations.” If your plan needs a free-team member to invite a colleague’s partner organization, have someone in a paid organization send it.
- An Enterprise host cannot get a free-team customer in. Open the free-teams setting and confirm it is on. The article says changes affect only future invitations, so send a new invite rather than resending the old one and expecting it to change.
- The team assumes no Slack Connect fee means free for everyone. Seats are still billed on each plan, and the customer’s workspace follows its own plan rules.
Questions to put to your Slack account team
The public pages leave gaps, so get answers in writing:
- Do guests or external Slack Connect members count as active members for billing? The pricing page defines active as any action within a 28-day period but does not mention outside users.
- On Enterprise, does the free-teams exception apply to our organization, and what is the current value of the setting on our account?
- Does our contract add a minimum term? The pricing page states none for any plan. The only money-back language I found is the prorated credit when a paid member becomes inactive, and the page has no refund policy.
- For Enterprise+, what is the quote? The page shows $45 per user per month billed annually and a Contact Sales button.
Budget rule
Start with the annual list price times your own member count, since that is the number the pages support. For 40 members on Pro, 40 × $7.25 × 12 = $3,480 a year. Billed monthly, the same team pays 40 × $8.75 × 12 = $4,200 a year, which is $720 a year more. Enterprise+ at the annual list price is 40 × $45 × 12 = $21,600 a year before any quote.
If you only need five support people on Slack, 5 × $7.25 × 12 = $435 a year. That figure holds only for a company where the rest of the staff use another tool, so it rarely matches a company already on Slack.
Add outside members only after Slack confirms in writing that they are billed. Re-check Slack’s pricing page and the free-teams article on the day you buy. If either disagrees with this guide, the live page is right. For the wider picture, see the Slack Connect cost guide and the customer support in Slack Connect guide.