Slack announced a significant change to its platform, saying it will “begin deleting messages and files more than one year old from free workspaces on a rolling basis.”

Slack’s prior policy involved keeping messages and files for the lifetime of a free workspace, although accessing that full history required switching to a paid account. Under the new policy, Slack reserves the right to delete content from free workspaces after one year.

Slack will no longer keep messages and files for the lifetime of your free workspace. Starting August 26, 2024, Customer Data — such as messages and file history — older than one year may be deleted on a rolling basis from workspaces on the free plan, following the terms described in the Main Services Agreement and Trust and Compliance Documentation.

If you choose to remain on a free workspace, you’ll have full access to the past 90 days of message and file history, and the remaining 275 days will become available should you upgrade to a paid plan. If you decide to upgrade, we’ll store messages and files based on your chosen retention period, with an option to keep all history.

Users interested in keeping their full history of content should upgrade to a paid workspace before August 26, 2024. Once deletion occurs, messages and files cannot be recovered.