During the Salesforce developer conference, the community once again had the opportunity to ask questions to various Salesforce executives during the so-called True to the Core session. The limit of 15 messages per week on Slackbot for Business+ subscribers was also discussed here. Parker Harris, Slack’s CTO and co-founder of Salesforce, said they need to revisit this limit.
A few weeks ago, we published an analysis arguing that Slackbot has great potential. It could very well take over the role that Microsoft had envisioned for Copilot. However, there is one major obstacle: the limit that restricts users to sending only 15 messages per week to Slackbot under the Business+ subscription. This limit is far too low; many Slackbot enterprise users report having as many as ten conversations (which often already exceed 15 messages) per day.
During the True to the Core session, Parker Harris stated that they want everyone to be able to use Slackbot and that they don’t want to lock it behind a gate. In its current form, it’s only available to enterprise customers, who receive unlimited access to Slackbot. Harris also said that Slack doesn’t offer usage-based pricing, and they don’t want to implement it either. At the same time, it’s apparently not feasible to offer unlimited Slackbot usage at the price point of the Business+ subscription. So that limits the options.
He noted that the 15-message limit was their first attempt and that they need to revisit this. A middle ground is needed. What that will be is unclear; hopefully, the limit will be removed, or they’ll introduce a more sophisticated calculation.
Slack needs to remove the limit or introduce a different type of limit
The best solution would be no limit at all, but assuming that isn’t feasible in terms of costs, they need to come up with a better alternative. We think that if they raise the limit to 50 messages per week, they’ll get exactly the same feedback. If they truly want everyone to be able to use Slackbot without abusing it, then the limit needs to be raised much higher, or they have to introduce a different type of limit. A message limit is easy but the wrong choice; in that regard, the token or compute limits used by Anthropic, for example, are better. Admittedly a bit less transparent, but better nonetheless.
Not every message to Slackbot carries the same weight. You can send a Slackbot message that triggers a large number of actions. For example, retrieving data from Salesforce and third-party applications; all that data must then be analyzed, and actions must be taken based on it, or output generated. A process that can take several minutes and consume a lot of computing power. You can also ask Slackbot a question about a project that Slackbot can answer within three seconds with a simple search query. A task that costs virtually nothing. Both currently cost the same under the message limit; it would be better if Slack could factor that in. Slack could then answer many more user questions with more generous message limits.
For Business+ customers with many resource-intensive processes who still frequently hit the limit, Slack could introduce an add-on. Those customers will likely be more willing to pay a bit more for more or unlimited usage. We think Anthropic has proven this model, and it gives Slack more control over costs while increasing customer satisfaction.