Slack Communities: The Good, the Bad, and My Honest Take on the Challenges

I’m Francisco Opazo, Founder of Led by Community and Marketing Lead at ADPList.org. With over 10 years of experience building community programs for tech startups, I specialise in community-led growth marketing. My journey has focused on creating and scaling community-driven strategies that empower people to connect, learn, and grow. In this article, I’ll share my personal experience managing online communities on Slack, the challenges I’ve faced, the tools I’ve used, and my honest take on why Slack might not be the perfect fit for every community manager. Let’s dive into the pros, cons, and shoutouts!

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Advantages of Running Online Communities on Slack

1. Familiar User Interface

Slack’s intuitive design is familiar to many users from workplace environments, reducing the learning curve for new community members. Its simple navigation and structured format make it easy for people to engage quickly.

2. Real-Time Communication

Slack excels in real-time messaging. Community members can communicate instantly through direct messages or channels, creating a fast-paced, dynamic space for discussions, feedback, and collaboration.

3. Segmented Conversations with Channels

Slack’s use of channels allows for categorised discussions, where each topic or project can have its own channel. This ensures conversations stay organised, and members can easily focus on specific topics of interest.

4. Integrations with Tools

Slack integrates with various tools like Google Drive, Zoom, and Trello. These integrations make it easier for members to collaborate on projects and share resources, creating a seamless experience for community members.

5. Heavy Focus on B2B or Professional Business Audiences

Slack is widely used by employees from startups, small to medium businesses (SMBs), and large enterprises, creating a high concentration of professionals and business-focused users in Slack communities. This makes it an ideal platform for community managers looking to engage with a segmented audience of industry professionals, giving the community a more focused, B2B-oriented environment.

Challenges of Running Online Communities on Slack

1. Limited Scalability for Large Communities

Slack is best suited for small to medium-sized communities. When the number of members grows too large, conversations can become overwhelming, leading to overcrowded channels and missed messages.

2. Paid Plans for Full Features

Slack’s free plan is fairly limited, especially in terms of message history (only 90 days are accessible) and integrations. Larger communities may need to upgrade to a paid plan, which can be costly depending on the size and needs of the group.

3. Lack of Community-Building Features

While Slack is highly effective for communication, it lacks essential community-building features that many community managers need to nurture engagement and streamline community activities. Below are several key areas where Slack falls short:

• Onboarding Flows

Slack doesn’t have built-in onboarding features for new members. You’ll need external tools to automate the process when welcoming new users. This includes sending introductory messages, explaining community guidelines, or even segmenting members into different channels based on interests or roles. Without these automations, you manually onboard each member, which can be time-consuming for larger communities.

• Bulk Direct Messaging

Another missing feature is the ability to send bulk direct messages. For community managers, reaching out to multiple members simultaneously, such as for announcements or important updates, requires third-party tools or manual effort. Slack doesn’t allow you to easily select multiple users and send them a direct message simultaneously, which can be a significant hurdle for engagement efforts.

• Learning Management Features

Slack lacks features related to learning and skill development. There’s no native way to create courses, lessons, or modules that track member progress. For communities focused on learning or professional development, this absence is limiting. Similarly, Slack cannot automatically grant certificates or track achievements, so you’ll need external platforms to handle these functions.

• Event Management

While you can create channels for events or discussions around specific topics, Slack doesn’t provide any event management tools. You must rely on external tools to schedule, promote, and manage event attendance. This could be frustrating for community managers who want a seamless experience, especially for communities that hold frequent events or webinars.

• Payment and Monetisation Systems

Slack also lacks a built-in payment system. For communities looking to sell memberships, offer event tickets, or collect donations, there’s no native way to do this within the platform. External platforms like PayPal or Eventbrite need to be integrated manually, which can break the user experience and discourage potential sales or contributions.

• Analytics and Member Insights

Detailed user analytics are crucial for tracking engagement and understanding how members interact with the community. Unfortunately, Slack offers very limited insights into user behaviour. You won’t know how often members are engaging, which topics drive the most interaction, or any trends in participation. Third-party analytics tools are required to gain these insights, but the data from these tools isn’t as rich as what you might find on purpose-built community platforms.

• Recognition and Gamification

Slack doesn’t offer built-in methods for recognising member contributions, such as badges, leaderboards, or rewards systems. These features can help boost engagement and create a sense of achievement among members. Motivating members to contribute or participate actively over time can be more challenging without these elements.

4. Message Overload

Due to Slack’s real-time nature, members may feel overwhelmed by the constant stream of messages and notifications. This can lead to burnout or disengagement, especially if channels aren’t moderated well.

My Personal Experience as a Slack Community Admin

As someone who has run a Slack community of over 500 members for two years, I’ve witnessed firsthand how message overload can affect engagement. As an admin, I sometimes want to ask something important from members—gathering opinions, voting on content ideas, or offering participation in polls. You approach this with the best intentions, but when you send a Direct Message (DM) to all members, there’s often a backlash.

I’ve received responses from members who were irritated by the DM, with some explicitly stating they don’t want any direct communication from me. This leaves me questioning the dynamics: If people are part of a community and know how Slack works, what’s the most effective way to engage with them? Are they genuinely interested in participating actively or merely passive observers?

The frustration doesn’t stop there. I’ve even had members ask to be entirely removed from receiving messages from me, which raises deeper questions: If a member doesn’t want any form of communication, what are they contributing to the community? Are they truly engaged, or are they present in name only? It’s an uncomfortable yet necessary reflection for anyone managing a growing community.

5. Searchable Archives Limited to 90 Days

On Slack’s free plan, conversations, files, and shared resources are only searchable for 90 days. After this period, all that valuable content is deleted and becomes inaccessible to members. This limitation can be particularly frustrating in communities where rich discussions and resources are shared frequently, only to vanish after a short time.

My Personal Experience with Searchable Archives

In my two years of running a 500+ member Slack community, I’ve seen the impact of this firsthand. Many communities run on Slack’s free version, and after 90 days, insightful comments, strong opinions, useful links, and valuable discussions are all erased. Seeing beautiful exchanges sent to the digital bin is frustrating, with no recovery option. Even if you upgrade to a paid plan, the old content won’t be restored.

While some professional communities offer paid memberships that cover Slack’s paid plan, such as Partnership Leaders with membership fees of $1K+ per year, most communities stick to the free version. To address this, tools like Waves and TightKnit help by archiving Slack conversations externally. I’ve used these tools, but the experience remains broken. Since these archives aren’t integrated directly into Slack, it’s unlikely that members will leave the platform to search for something on an external site when the native Slack search comes up empty. Questions like “What’s the URL?” or “Where is it pinned?” make it even less likely for members to use external archives effectively.

6. Fragmented Conversations

Although channels help organise conversations, they can sometimes result in fragmented discussions, especially if members use direct messaging for critical conversations. This can limit transparency and community-wide engagement.

7. Time Zone Challenges

Communities that span across multiple time zones face a unique set of challenges when using Slack, particularly with real-time communication. Since Slack is heavily focused on instant messaging and quick responses, members in different parts of the world might find it difficult to stay engaged in important conversations that happen while they are offline. Key discussions, announcements, or decisions may occur when some members are asleep or unavailable, leading to missed information or delayed responses.

Additionally, live events or discussions scheduled to suit one time zone may exclude members from other regions. For instance, if an event is organized for the afternoon in the UK, members in the US or Asia may find it inconvenient to attend due to time differences. This can create a barrier to full participation and may lead to a feeling of exclusion for those who are unable to join in real time.

While asynchronous communication is possible on Slack—where members respond when they are available—the platform’s default real-time focus tends to prioritise immediate interactions. This can make it hard to foster ongoing, deep conversations that work across different time zones. Members may feel out of the loop if they log in to a flood of messages, potentially missing key moments or feeling overwhelmed by trying to catch up.

Possible Solutions:

• Encouraging asynchronous communication, where members can contribute when convenient, can mitigate some of these challenges. Rather than relying on real-time chats, creating structured threads for important discussions allows members to respond at their own pace.

• Using tools or features that allow the scheduling of messages or reminders at times suitable for different time zones could also help.

• Recording sessions for live events or webinars and making them available to the community afterwards ensures that no one misses out due to timing.

I am wrapping up!

Slack is a powerful communication tool with great potential for building online communities, especially among B2B and professional audiences. Its real-time communication, channel-based organisation, and wide range of integrations make it a compelling option for small to medium-sized communities. However, it does come with significant challenges, particularly for larger groups or communities that need more specialised features like onboarding flows, learning management, event coordination, and detailed analytics.

From my experience as a community admin, it’s clear that while Slack can be a great starting point, community managers often need external tools to fill in the gaps. Tools like Threado.ai, Disco.co, TightKnit and Talkbase have supported my efforts to create a seamless, engaging experience for members. However, managing message overload, dealing with the limitations of the free plan, and handling members like link droppers can present constant obstacles.

Ultimately, with the right tools and strategies in place, Slack can foster vibrant and engaged communities. Community managers must be mindful of these limitations, balance engagement effectively, and leverage external solutions to overcome Slack’s shortcomings.