Remote workers and teams relying on Slack for daily communication faced frustration yesterday when the popular messaging platform experienced a widespread outage. Reports poured in around 12:56 p.m. ET, with over 15,000 incidents logged in minutes, according to user-submitted data. Many couldn't send messages or access the app, disrupting workflows across businesses big and small.
The glitch, which peaked in the early afternoon, affected core features like messaging and connectivity. Slack's status page quickly acknowledged the issue, noting they'd identified the cause and were seeing improvements. By late afternoon, most problems had cleared up, though some users hung on a bit longer, reloading apps to get back online. This isn't the first hiccup—earlier this month, on November 8, there were connectivity woes, and November 7 saw a brief downtime lasting about 46 minutes.
With Slack powering collaboration for millions, these outages remind us how fragile our digital lifelines can be. Over the past month, the platform has notched a few bumps, but its quarterly uptime sits at 100% overall, factoring in affected users. Still, for those mid-project or in urgent huddles, even a short blackout stings.
As teams bounce back, it's worth pondering how much we lean on tools like Slack—and what happens when they falter.
