“Searchable Log of All Conversation and Knowledge” sounds like quite the mouthful, right? Luckily for all of us online busy bees, there is an acronym for it—Slack.
Back in 2014, Slack revolutionized business communication. It offered direct messaging and group chat rooms at a time when corporations relied pretty much on emails only.
With the COVID-19 pandemic forcing work-from-home arrangements on millions of people worldwide, digital communication tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams notched up their popularity score.
Did we manage to pique your curiosity?
We gathered some of the most engaging Slack stats to bear in mind for 2021, so just keep on reading!
The Most Telling Slack Statistics for 2022 (Editor’s Choice)
- Slack was worth $2.8 billion when it launched.
- More than 12 million people use Slack every day.
- 65% of the companies on the Fortune 100 list have active subscriptions to Slack.
- Slack’s retention rate for paying customers is a whopping 98%.
- The number of Slack employees increased 27% in 2021—it’s now 2,500.
- Slack generated $901 million from March 2020 to April 2021.
- Sales teams can get up to 296% ROI from Slack.
- “Power-users” on Slack send 1,000 messages per day.
- The messaging app’s market cap equaled $26.51 billion in 2021.
- Slack offers integrations with 2,000+ other tools.
The Numbers: How Much Is Slack Worth?
Slack stands out as a staple of growth and productivity.
The stats below show the company has come a long way over the years, continually reaching new milestones and breaking its own records.
To be fair, though, Slack has been thriving since its very beginnings.
1. Slack started out with 80 employees and now vaunts more than 2,500.
(Source: Craft)
As of April 2021, Slack’s employee count was 2,597, which marks a 27% increase from 2020.
Slack currently has 17 active offices in nine countries across the globe.
Tempted to sign up?
2. When it launched, Slack was worth $2.8 billion.
(Source: HostSorter)
Slack’s launch date was August 14, 2013, though the platform had been in the making for more than four years prior to that.
At the time of its inception, Slack was already the digital darling of a number of investors who allocated $340 million to help it hatch into the world.
Fun fact: Between 2009 and 2014, Slack was actually called “Tiny Speck”—a name that does little justice to the company’s success.
3. Slack’s market cap amounted to $20 billion on its very first day as a public company.
(Source: MarketWatch)
Slack chose the direct listing approach instead of a more traditional IPO. In other words, Slack sold its shares without a pre-sale.
Slack’s trading stratagem paid off as it ended the first trading day (June 20, 2019) with a market cap amount that was three times above its last valuation before going public ($7.1 billion in 2018).
Initially, the expectations did not soar high. Slack’s reference share price was set at $26, but it rocketed up to $38.50 on its opening. Talk about a trading bonanza.
4. By the end of 2021, Slack’s net worth was $26.51 billion.
(Source: CompaniesMarketCap)
By the end of its first year as a public company, Slack was worth $12.37 billion. Then, after an entire year of ups and downs, the company’s market cap settled at approximately $24 billion in December 2020.
Six months later, Slack finally surpassed the $26 billion mark and hasn’t looked back since. Currently, Slack’s share price is $45.20.
5. Salesforce acquired Slack for a stately $27.7 billion.
(Source: DigitalCommerce360)
The CRM giant paid a couple billion above Slack’s valuation at the time the deal was done (the messaging app’s market cap was $25.01 billion on November 30, 2020).
Salesforce wasn’t the first company to consider acquiring Slack. Amazon, Microsoft, and even Google toyed with the idea before the company went public in 2019.
6. Slack boasts 2,000 integrations and 750 bots.
(Source: MioDispatch)
Do Freshdesk, Mailchimp, or LiveChat sound familiar?
Well, you can locate them on the Slack App Directory.
7. In 2021, Slack’s revenue reached $902 million.
(Source: GoMad)
Slack’s revenue has grown exponentially over the last few years. It went from $12 million in its launch year (2013) to $630 million in 2020.
Projections suggest the upwards trend will continue over the next few years, with the company effectively surpassing the $1 billion mark in 2022.
The Users: Who Is Actively Slack-ing?
Ironically, the term “slack” hardly applies to the eponymous digital platform—both its creators and users have been anything but lax and lazy over the past year.
8. The journey from 2019 to 2021—Slack statistics point to a 190% upswing.
(Source: Okta)
Slack has cemented its place among the overachievers in the digital communication arena.
The app boasts an active integration with Okta, the access management provider that global technology leaders favor. Meaning that it’s easier for Okta’s 10 million users to employ Slack as their favoured communication tool.
In fact, Okta reports portray the Slack user base as ten times greater than that of Workplace by Facebook, which is the second most-preferred collaboration tool on Okta.
9. 65 companies on the Fortune 100 list use Slack.
(Source: Slack)
According to official Slack stats, back in 2017, only 43 of the Fortune 100 companies relied on the messaging platform, but that number saw a 50% increase in just four years.
Fun fact: Household names like Expedia, Netflix, and Uber rank among the highest-paying Slack customers.
10. The United States’ user base accounts for 43% of all Slack subscribers.
(Source: HostSorter)
Surprise, surprise—most of the companies that use Slack are in the North American continent. Together, Canada and the US take up 46.6% of Slack’s entire user base.
Of course, the app is popular in other countries, too. Notably, Japan (13.5% of Slack users), India (5.9%), and the UK (3.4%).
11. There are 12 million daily active users on Slack.
(Source: BusinessofApps)
Slack publicly launched in 2014—and it stole the show. On its first day, the app got 8,000 requests, which increased to 15,000 in its second week.
The popularity surge came as a welcome surprise to the company, which boasted a steady two million new subscribers per year. However, Slack’s user growth doubled from 2018 to 2019, going from eight to 12 million—even before the pandemic hit.
12. Less than 10% of US employees used Slack in 2020.
(Source: Finances Online)
Amid the pandemic, a study about collaboration tools usage in the US revealed that most employees used either Zoom (36%) or Microsoft Teams (19%).
Skype was the third most popular tool (17%), leaving Google Hangouts and Slack the last spots on the top five list (9% and 7%, respectively).
However, Skype is now out of the competition. Plus, forecasts suggest that 70% of all corporate teams will utilize one of these platforms on a daily basis in 2022. So, Slack’s market share is sure to grow.
13. In just six months, Microsoft Teams’ usage rate increased by 894%.
(Source: BusinessofApps)
It only took a six-month lockdown for Microsoft Teams to smash the record for the highest usage growth in such a small period of time—at least in the business-communications sphere. It even beat Zoom to it!
Slack also saw some growth during the pandemic, but it was nothing compared to Teams. The latter went from 20 million DAU in 2019 to 75 million in 2020. For comparison, Slack statistics show the company’s daily active user count only went from 10 million to 12 million.
14. Microsoft Teams vs Slack? Many companies simply use both.
(Source: ComputerWorld)
According to a recent study, more than 90% of businesses use more than one messaging platform. And Teams, Skype, and Slack seem to be most companies’ choice, each used by more than 50% of the surveyed companies.
As many businesses opt for Office 360, Teams is the obvious choice in terms of compatibility. However, many employees—and especially those in IT—prefer Slack and use it anyway.
The Perks: Why Do People Like Slack?
In what is becoming a dog-eat-dog industry, Slack is pitted against some gritty competitors—and we’re not talking about clueless upstarts, but giants like Microsoft Teams, Google Workspace, and Cisco.
But what is it about Slack that keeps customers coming back?
Let’s see.
15. Customer churnover rate is a mere 2%.
(Source: 10beasts)
Slack statistics place the customer retention rate at an astounding 98% despite the increased competition from Microsoft Teams during the pandemic.
Slack has consistently nailed a high rate of customer loyalty—even before half the world suddenly went digital and started working from home.
But what is Slack good for?
16. Slack reduces email overflow by 32%.
(Source: Slack)
Slack does more than just cater to the “balance sheet” needs of a given enterprise. In fact, crunching the numbers paints a positive picture for individual employees as well.
Instead of composing emails and attending (doubtfully productive) meetings for hours on end, Slack users spend an average 90 minutes per day actively chatting away or converging in group meetings.
17. The average user sends 200 messages per week via Slack.
(Source: Vox)
That said, there are some employees who send 1,000+ messages per day—and experts do not deem this imposing number an “exception”.
Back in 2016, when Slack had only two million DAU, the company recorded 1.5 billion sent messages per month.
It makes one wonder if the app is really increasing productivity, right?
18. Most of Slack’s corporate customers allow 70% of their employees to take part in cross-team communication channels.
(Source: Productiv)
But Slack is not only about private chats and intranet-like interaction. Slack usage statistics show that around 74% of users exchange messages on public Slack channels.
Furthermore, 91,000 enterprises use Slack Connect—one of the many off-shoots of the Slack app, which facilitates external collaboration with vendors, clients, and associates.
Slack Connect allows shared interaction for up to 20 companies at a time.
19. Slack’s ROI can spike up to 296%.
(Source: Salesforce)
Official Slack stats show that sales teams notice a 15% increase in the number of successful negotiations after they start using the messaging platform.
Additionally, large companies that use Slack can expect a $2.6-million surge in revenue due to faster client onboarding via Slack.
Wrap Up
Despite Microsoft Teams’ looming shadow, it would be misleading to discount Slack as a well-positioned player in the digital communication platforms market.
Microsoft Teams might have captured the hearts of many companies and individuals, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that they have to abandon Slack.
What can we say? The digital realm allows for strange bedfellows.
But what about you?
After reading these Slack stats, do you consider yourself a Slack loyalist, a Teams aficionado, or are you jumping on the not-mutually-exclusive wagon?
Sources
Unaware that life beyond the internet exists, Nick is poking servers and control panels, playing with WordPress add-ons, and helping people get the hosting that suits them.