Slack starts 2021 with a major outage

Slack announcing its public offering in New York

Slack has suffered a major outage on the first full working day of 2021.

Users of the business chat platform are reporting that they are unable to reliably send or receive messages, and some Slack users are struggling to log into the service. Some parts of Slack’s website also appear to be inaccessible at the time of writing.

As per Down Detector, users starting reporting problems with Slack at around 3pm GMT, and the outage appears to be affecting users across the globe. The problems had not been resolved at the time of publication.

“Customers may have trouble loading channels or connecting to Slack at this time. Our team is investigating and we will follow up with more information as soon as we have it. We apologize for any disruption caused.”

The outage comes as employees across the world continue to work remotely as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, and it also comes just weeks after Salesforce announced plans to acquire the platform for £20.7 billion. The deal, which is one of the largest in recent years, will see the two companies form a unified platform for enterprise collaboration with Slack integrated into every Salesforce cloud.

"Together, Salesforce and Slack will shape the future of enterprise software and transform the way everyone works in the all-digital, work-from-anywhere world," said Salesforce CEO Mark Benioff. "I'm thrilled to welcome Slack to the Salesforce Ohana once the transaction closes."

Carly Page

Carly Page is a freelance technology journalist, editor and copywriter specialising in cyber security, B2B, and consumer technology. She has more than a decade of experience in the industry and has written for a range of publications including Forbes, IT Pro, the Metro, TechRadar, TechCrunch, TES, and WIRED, as well as offering copywriting and consultancy services. 

Prior to entering the weird and wonderful world of freelance journalism, Carly served as editor of tech tabloid The INQUIRER from 2012 and 2019. She is also a graduate of the University of Lincoln, where she earned a degree in journalism.

You can check out Carly's ramblings (and her dog) on Twitter, or email her at hello@carlypagewrites.co.uk.