Back in October, Slack announced it would be intro’ing a product that would allow any paid user — at any organisation — to directly message each other across the platform. On Wednesday, the company made good on that promise by opening Slack Connect DM’s for anyone currently paying for their Slack subscription.
According to Slack’s announcement about the new feature, all someone needs to do is send over an invite to anyone in any organisation, and wait for them to accept (or decline) the invite. Pretty soon, the company adds, it’ll expand these sorts of DM invitations to all teams, even those that are currently using Slack for free.
The new feature is an expansion of Slack Connect, which the company rolled out this past winter as a way to connect Slackers from up to 20 different companies within a single Slack channel. Thanks to the new DM feature, it looks like contacts across companies won’t be relegated to talking on an open channel, but through private messages, too — sort of like email, but over Slack.
While Connect is meant for paying Slack customers, the company is also inviting non-paying Slackers — or even people who don’t use Slack — to try out these new DM’s for themselves. The company is offering a free 90 day trial for eligible users to connect to a paying user’s shared channel.