[layman51]

Well now I'm convinced that this confusion is the root of the billing issue. Is there not a way that the clients (i.e. the students they are helping) could be added as some kind of "customer" instead of an "internal employee". If not, then yes I could see why it would be expensive.

[SigmaEpsilonChi]

The issue isn't really with being moved to a higher tier of billing. Slack doesn't owe us their service for cheap forever. The problem is that we signed a contract with them earlier this year for our current rate, then suddenly today we were told that we have to pay $50k immediately or all of our 11 years of data will be deleted. That's an absurd demand. It's a shakedown

[phonon]

You need to send them a legal notice asserting that. At minimum it will get you another month or two to plan your exit.

[raxxorraxor]

Requiring a legal notice at any point should disqualify a chat software immediately. Good on them to make the move and other users of Slack should be wary.

Perhaps there is more to the story, but my surprise about the business culture of Salesforce isn't too pronounced to be honest. Had do happen at some point in my opinion.