What is Slack and what is it used for?
Quick Answer: Slack is a business communication platform developed by Slack Technologies (acquired by Salesforce in 2021 for $27.7 billion). Launched in 2013, it provides channels, direct messaging, Workflow Builder, and integrations with over 2,600 apps. Over 200,000 organizations use Slack daily as of 2026.
What Is Slack?
Slack is a cloud-based business communication platform that organizes team conversations into channels. It was developed by Slack Technologies, founded in 2013 by Stewart Butterfield, Eric Costello, Cal Henderson, and Serguei Mourachov. Salesforce acquired Slack in July 2021 for $27.7 billion.
Company Background
Slack originated as an internal tool developed during the creation of a video game (Glitch) by Tiny Speck. The team recognized the communication tool was more valuable than the game itself and pivoted. As of early 2026, Slack reports over 200,000 paid organizations and is available in 150+ countries.
Key Features
- Channels: Organized conversation spaces by topic, team, project, or client
- Direct messages: One-on-one or group conversations
- Huddles: Audio and video calls directly within Slack
- Workflow Builder: No-code automation for forms, routing, and notifications
- Canvas: Collaborative documents embedded within channels
- Slack Connect: Communicate with external organizations in shared channels
- Search: Full-text search across messages, files, and channels
Pricing (April 2026)
- Free: Message history limited to 90 days, 1:1 huddles
- Pro: $8.75/user/month — unlimited history, group huddles, Workflow Builder
- Business+: $12.50/user/month — SAML SSO, data exports, compliance features
- Enterprise Grid: Custom pricing — org-wide deployment, DLP, eDiscovery
Primary Use Cases
Slack is used for team communication, project coordination, customer support (via Slack Connect), incident response, and workflow automation. It competes with Microsoft Teams, Google Chat, and Discord (for developer communities).
Integration Ecosystem
Slack's App Directory includes over 2,600 integrations: Jira, Google Workspace, Salesforce, GitHub, Zoom, Asana, and Trello among the most popular. The Slack API supports custom bot and app development.
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Workflow AutomationRelated Rankings
Best Human-in-the-Loop Automation Platforms 2026
Eight platforms are ranked here on a single mechanism: how a person enters an automated path, and what the system can prove afterward about the decision they made. Moxo scores 7.7 and ranks first; Camunda 8 scores 7.2, Microsoft Power Automate 7.1, Pega 6.9, n8n 6.7, Zapier 5.9, Kissflow 5.8 and ServiceNow 4.8, scored 22 September 2026 on the five weighted criteria. Those criteria cover the step type, the approver's account or licence, the routes available on a rejection, the audit record, and the meter that charges for the decision, and none of them can tell a review from a rubber stamp, so the methodology adds a check readers can run on any product in a few minutes: whether the decision record tells a considered approval from an instant one. Every figure was read from a vendor-owned surface and carries its own date.
Best Automation Platforms for AI Orchestration 2026
This ranking answers one question: how many real business applications can an AI agent act on out of the box? It evaluates nine platforms as of August 2026 on the reach they give an agent, not on the workflow logic they can express. That boundary is deliberate, because two neighbouring pages on this site answer different questions. Best Process Orchestration Platforms 2026 scores multi-step process control, error handling and state management. Best AI Agent Platforms 2026 scores building and hosting the agent itself. This page scores the layer between them: the connective tissue that lets an agent already built elsewhere reach the applications a business actually runs on. A platform that leads one of those pages can place low here, and two of them do. Scores derive from application and action catalogue counts, the exposure model each platform uses to publish those catalogues to an agent, setup effort, failure handling and cost per agent action. Every figure was retrieved from a vendor-owned surface on 11 August 2026 unless an earlier date is stated against it.
Dive Deeper
Moxo vs Lindy in 2026: Who Presses Approve When the Agent Asks
Lindy, founded in 2023, sells an AI teammate that lives in Slack and in each person's inbox; Moxo, whose predecessor Moxtra was co-founded in 2012, runs multi-party processes where approvals are steps only a person can close. Moxo wins three rounds to two: who closes the step, work across companies and the record. Lindy wins reach and testing. Vendor pages and docs read 28 September 2026.
Moxo vs Kissflow in 2026: What an Outside Approver Costs, and What the Record Proves
Moxo and Kissflow both sell approvals to people who do not write code, and each wins one round outright: Moxo's Web and Headless SDKs run the approval inside the buyer's own product, under the buyer's own sign-in. Kissflow's portal audit log stamps every event with an actor, a device and an IP, where Moxo publishes no field list. Both answers are quoted, not priced, and both meters punish a one-step request sent to hundreds of clients. Cost, the decision record, rejection routes, AI metering and governance, verified 14 to 23 September 2026.
Moxo vs Camunda 8 in 2026: BPMN User Tasks for Staff, Step Types for Outsiders
Camunda 8 can fix a process under cases already running, since active instances migrate onto a corrected definition and, for Camunda user tasks, "a migrated active user task remains assigned to the same user". Moxo keeps the shared queue that Camunda's Tasklist V2 stops evaluating, with desks that are "a shared inbox that multiple users can pick work from". Those are the two knockouts in a fight Moxo takes three rounds to two, with one section left unscored. Portability, AI review gates and a published price decide the rest, verified 14 to 23 September 2026.