Why Businesses Should Not Archive Slack Data and Start Fresh With Teams

1. Introduction

When switching from Slack to Teams, migrating past and current Slack data to Teams can be an extra expense for many SMBs and MSPs.

Therefore, to cut the extra expense, many businesses drop the Slack to Microsoft Teams migration plan altogether and decide to archive entire Slack data and start fresh in Teams. But this move comes with additional costs and disrupting operational efficiency as a negative consequence.

Let us see what happens when you archive your entire Slack data and start fresh with Microsoft Teams.

2. Limited Access to the Members to Search the Archived

If you archive the entire Slack business data and opt for a free plan, you will be left with highly limited access, impacting usage limits to consider:

• Message Visibility

Only 10k of your team’s most recent messages can be viewed and searched. This is one of the most frustrating aspects of archiving the data for the end-users, who would have been using Slack for months or years and have to lose their important data.

You can find this disruptive to your team’s operation because your employees will no longer be able to refer to important information that is beyond the 10K limit.

• File Storage

Additionally, users are limited to 5 GB of storage when using the workspace.

E.g., your team members would have uploaded many files that exceed 5 GB of storage. When you archive the data, individuals won’t be able to access the important files they require from channels, search results, or direct messages. Ultimately, you will have to upgrade to the Standard plan (or higher) to see all the archived Slack messages.

CloudFuze migrates Slack direct messages, see how you can move direct messages from Slack to Teams without deleting them from Slack.

3. Paid Plan to Access Archived Data Adds up Extra Expense Over Time

With the Standard plan, you are not limited to 10k messages, and your team members can now search through the entire conversation and see every message they have sent.

Slack Pricing

For instance, if you are a team of 10 members, you will need to pay approximately $66.7 per month and $800 per annum to search and view all the archived data.

This adds extra cost to your business over time than it would cost you for one-time Slack to MS Teams migration. 

4. Unarchiving Public Slack Channels Is Not Possible

Slack allows users to unarchive a channel (public or private) anytime they want. But members will be removed from archived public channels and can’t be retrieved.

If you perceive migrating data from Slack to Teams as necessary for your business after archiving all your Slack channels, you will have to add the members to the unarchived public channel manually. Organizations with multiple public channels would find adding members to the unarchived public channels difficult.

If you are also planning to migrate to MicrosoftTeams, please refer to this Slack to Microsoft Teams migration guide.

5. Switching Between the Clouds Slows Down Your Everyday Business Operations

For end-users (employees), there may be a need to look at previous data which is in Slack. And to do that, they need to go back to Slack again and rigorously go through all the archived Slack channels. Switching back and forth is a tedious task and takes extra time, resulting in lower business operational efficiency.

6. Data Security and Compliance Risks

Team conversations in Slack also include sharing business-sensitive files and other information. Though Slack provides top-notch data security for all its users, it is limited on the free plan.

Regardless of the company’s size, security has always been a constant concern. Hence, robust data security is the need of the hour.

To keep your data secured and avoid additional subscription charges, it is ideal to transfer Slack to Microsoft Teams. 

In addition to enhancing productivity and collaboration, Microsoft 365 offers high levels of security. Its data centers are virtually impossible to hack directly with top-of-the-line security infrastructure and processes.

Rethink and make a wiser decision before you archive your entire Slack data and start fresh.

Click here to contact CloudFuze now for a demo or pricing and see how we can help you with this data migration, saving you cost and making your users’ life convenient.