My company subscribes to Google Apps, HipChat, Slack, Yammer, Zoom, … The costs accumulate.
If you use Slack, your employee now costs you $X + $60 a year. Usually in tech, X is a 6 digit number (or very high 5 digit number). If $60 makes such a difference in that balance, there are probably big things you should worry about.
You will definitely find folks for whom the $100/mo/user is not a big deal and Slack does have that plan with needed features. However if I am bootstrapping with a business with majority of non tech part time employees, its not a quick decision to commit to $8/mo/user.
For comparison, Google Apps provide their complete suite at $5/mo/user. Desk.com provides interfacing with customer starting at $3/mo/agent. With the value they provide I don't think twice before committing to it.
(btw, I could only see their cheapest plan at $8/mo/user paid monthly, where is $5/mo coming from?)
I'm currently seeing $6.67/mo on an annualized basis, with no obvious means to get it monthly. Perhaps they just got caught red handed running an A/B test. ;-)
Whatever their price is, though, it matters little if an employee saves as little as an hour per month using the service.
Slack is operating on three principles.
One, that their product actually has value commensurate with its price. That's a remarkable tenet for any product, and it keeps them honest.
Two, demanding a high value for a product influences customers' perception of that product. By not discounting or downplaying the value at all, Slack builds on the psychological worm that you're getting what you pay for. This has been proven in (consumer) studies to make people like purchases more compared to items of the same price or free.
Finally, they assert that the market exists and their customers have the ability and desire to pay for a better product (ddebernardy's point).
All correct.
On the consumer side, I would say that the jump from $5/mo per customer to $5/mo per user per customer would be pretty significant. The number of users in the organization enters the calculus directly in the latter case, whereas it did not before.
But in another sense, yes, the person who posted the comment you are responding to is probably not a good "qualified lead" for you, whatever it is that you do.