Flickr co-founder's Slack collaboration tool leaves beta, goes freemium for all

Back in August, Flickr creator Stewart Butterfield's Tiny Speck started the digital signup sheet for Slack, its collaborative productivity software. Today, the project exits beta and goes freemium for businesses anxious to opt in. In case you're in need of a refresher, the goal of Slack is to free the daily workflow from what Butterfield calls "email bankruptcy." With this software, internal messages are all in one spot with access to files stored elsewhere and items like bug trackers baked in. In addition to the free Lite tier, there are also Standard and Plus options with increased functionality for $8 and $15 for each user per month, respectively. A more robust and customizable Enterprise subscription will range from $49 on up to $99 a month, but it isn't set to arrive until 2015.

Let's go back to that no-cost option for a minute, shall we? Here, users get access to a searchable archive of 10,000 messages, 5GB of storage, five of those external integrations and native apps for iOS, Android and Mac. New features have already been teased for later this year, with items like email integration, guest accounts and detailed analytics mentioned for the paid tiers.