Slack used to just be known as the go-to messaging app for company team members to connect, have discussions in real-time, and share lots and lots of gifs. These days, it’s so much more than that.

The online platform offers users the opportunity to chat with people in the same industries around the world, all within Slack communities that offer virtual meeting places. Whether you’re a digital marketer or a startup founder, there’s a diverse range of online spaces to network, problem solve, and talk shop with like-minded professionals. Bonus points: if you can’t find a community that fits your needs, you can start your own.

What is a Slack Community?

Think of Slack communities like online clubs. The messaging software can be used as a digital gathering space where users virtually connect over shared interests. Within the communities are public Slack channels, which allow members to break off into smaller groups and chat about focused topics. There are many free Slack communities, along with paid membership tiers which offer add-ons like customized Slack feeds, video co-working options, and digital workshops.

We put together a comprehensive Slack communities list featuring a wide swath of industries, perks, and tailor-made offerings.

The Best Slack Communities To Join

Freelance Slack Communities

Freelanced
Members: N/A
Membership Cost: There are three tiers – free, premium monthly ($50.00), and premium yearly ($500)
Freelanced is a super useful resource for freelancers, featuring a wide range of industries, including animation, eCommerce, software development, and graphic design.

World of Writers
Members: 500+
Membership Cost: Free
Work in the writing industry? Head to World of Writers, which offers a job board and channels for bloggers, copywriters, novelists, and editors.

Nomads Talk
Members: 900+
Membership Cost: Free
This one is for freelancers on the go. Nomads Talk features job opportunities and location-specific channels to connect with fellow nomadic workers who live in the same area you do.

Remote Workers

RemotelyOne
Members: 800+
Membership Cost: Choose from three tiers – basic, plus, and gold
This Slack community offers a whole laundry list of perks for its members involved in remote work, including webinars, meet-and-greets, and a matching system for friendships, mentorships, and *even* dating. Working from home just got a whole lot more interesting.

Remote Work
Members: 1,100+
Membership Cost: Free
Connect with fellow remote workers in Slack channels dedicated to virtual watercooler chit chat and job opportunities.

WorkFrom
Members: 3,500+
Membership Cost: $9.99/month for a premium account
This bustling Slack community allows users to enjoy one-on-one virtual networking, job and talent matching, workshops, and video co-working.

Nomadlist
Members: 10,000+
Membership Cost: Basic membership is $1.49/month, Social membership is $29.99/month (includes access to the Slack community)
Remote workers with a taste for wanderlust can connect on Nomadlist to talk business, travel, and find like-minded traveling users nearby.

SEO

CRO Growth Hacks
Members: N/A
Membership Cost: Free
Looking for a community of fellow SEO and CRO specialists? Try CRO Growth Hacks, a digital space where members talk business growth and strategies from SEO to SEM.

Big SEO
Members: 2,500+
Membership Cost: Free
Members of Big SEO can find a diverse range of channels from tools and analytics to technical SEO and job opportunities.

Creative Tribes
Members: 1,250+
Membership Cost: $27 one-time sign-up fee
Creative Tribes encompasses 22+ channels, which include SEO strategy, remote workers, content marketing, and job postings. Once you’ve joined, you can also participate in AMA live chats with fellow members and experts in their fields.

Digital Marketers

OnlineGeniuses
Members: 25,000+
Membership Cost: Free
If you’re in the market for a bustling digital community, head to OnlineGeniuses where users can find job opportunities and channels dedicated to copywriting, analytics, affiliate marketing, influencer marketing and much, much more.

Marketers Chat
Members: 3,000+
Membership Cost: Free
Marketers Chat is a collective of professionals working across the marketing spectrum – from bloggers to business owners. Expect conversations on the latest industry news, a promotional channel, and best practice strategies for affiliate marketing.

Buffer
Members: 6,000+
Membership Cost: Only open to Buffer users
There are plenty of opportunities to connect with fellow marketers on Buffer, including monthly virtual Zoom hangouts, weekly discussions where members can ask each other industry-related questions, and a space to share goals.

E-commerce

Spree Commerce
Members: 4,400+
Membership Cost: Free
Spree Commerce is an open-source eCommerce platform for Rails 6.

Commerce.js
Members: 250+
Membership Cost: Free
This community is a full-stack eCommerce API, made for developers and designers.

Entrepreneurs

VC Club
Members: N/A
Membership Cost: Free
If you’re trying to figure out raising funds to support your business idea, VC Club is a good place to start. You’ll find VCs, advisors, and founders who are ready to chat about all things fundraising and market opportunities.

#TechMasters
Members: 3,600+
Membership Cost: Free
Tech entrepreneurs will find a ton of resources in #TechMasters, a community that offers conversations on startup ideas, assistance with coding problems, business strategy discussions, and programming chats.

#Launch
Members: 4,000+
Membership Cost: Free
Looking for a co-founder for your big idea? Need some tips/feedback? In the market for collaboration? Head to #Launch, where entrepreneurs, founders, and investors congregate to talk shop.

Designers

Designer Hangout
Members: 18,000+
Membership Cost: Free
Snag access for Designer Hangout’s job channel to find out about local networking events, chat with fellow designers, connect with a mentor, and enjoy Q&A sessions with experts in the field.

Midwest Design Chat
Members: 200+
Membership Cost: Free
If you live in the midwest and want to chat with designers in your region, head here. It’s a chance to share your latest projects, get feedback, and engage with fellow industry professionals.

iOS Developers
Members: 30,000+
Membership Cost: Free
Join this large, lively Slack community for iOS developers, where the mission is “being open, helping each other, and sharing knowledge.”

Startups

Startup Study Group
Members: 6,000+
Membership Cost: Free
Entrepreneurs gather to help one another build successful businesses. Their thesis statement: “entrepreneurs -> startups -> job creation -> wealth creation -> better world.”

AmateurPreneur
Members: 300+
Membership Cost: Free
Fresh on the entrepreneur scene? Sign onto AmateurPreneur and meet with other new business owners where you can brainstorm and offer feedback to one another.

Female Founders
Members: N/A
Membership Cost: Free
Female Founders is the first women-only community for female founders on Slack. Here, you’ll find a digital space to talk to women about their startups, discuss marketing strategies, social enterprise, and get feedback on pitches.

Product managers

Product School
Members: 50,000+
Membership Cost: Free
There are a whole lot of perks to joining Product School, including weekly AMAs with product managers, daily job openings, and location-specific channels to connect with product managers in your area.

Product Manager HQ
Members: 7,000+
Membership Cost: $25 community lifetime access
Product Manager HQ is packed with helpful offerings for its members from live AMAs to a diverse range of channels, including: #pmjobs, #pmresources, #newtopm, #design, and #uxresearch. There are also local meetups and a 140+ page guide for newbie product managers.

Women in Product
Members: 1,000+
Membership Cost: Free
Women in Product is a space for female product managers to connect, share industry advice, and support one another.

HR Professionals

PeoplePeople
Members: 800+
Membership Cost: Free
Recruiters and HR managers come together in PeoplePeople’s Slack community for scheduled AMAs, networking, and discussions about the industry at large.

#People
Members: 5,000+
Membership Cost: Free
Join fellow HR professionals for Q&As, AMAs, and feedback swapping. Some of the Slack channels include: #employee-experience, #problem-situations and #interviewing.

Recruiting Innovators
Members: 1,000+
Membership Cost: Free
HR professionals, recruiting leaders, and hiring leaders all come together in this community for collective brainstorms, gig opportunities, networking, and conversations on HR, technology, and sourcing.

Writers

Digital Journalists Rocks
Members: N/A
Membership Cost: Free
This community is designed for journalists to connect over the ever-changing landscape of digital storytelling, with channels that include #messenger, #snapchat, and #must-read.

Writer Hangout
Members: N/A
Membership Cost: Free
Need a second set of eyes for your essay, poem, feature story, or whatever editorial project you’re currently tackling? Head to the Writer Hangout where you can find feedback and engage in virtual watercooler discussion on all things writing.

News Nerdery
Members: 600+
Membership Cost: Free
Time to get real nerdy about numbers and stats. News Nerdery is open to members who focus on data, tech, and data journalism. This one has more than forty channels, including #chartbuilder, #analytics, and #jobs.

Finance/Fintech

#Investing
Members: N/A
Membership Cost: $9/month
There’s a diverse range of chats going on over at #Investing, from live stocks and dividend investing to options trading and forex trading. Also, expect guest chat AMAs with industry professionals.

Cryptominded
Members: 2,000+
Membership Cost: Free
Your go-to resource for all things cryptocurrency. Channels include security, trading, mining, personal finance, crowd sales, and job opportunities.

Developers

DevOps
Members: 17,400+
Membership Cost: Free
DevOps is all about sharing knowledge and asking questions. There’s a diverse range of channels from IP networking discussions to Linux, FreeBSD, and Mac OS X conversations. If you’re just looking for some virtual watercooler chitchat, there’s a space for that, along with a collection of job opportunities.

FEDs on Slack
Members: 7,100+
Membership Cost: Free
Conversations in this community vary from JavaScript, general front end development, css, angular, and JS. There’s also a channel where members can digitally gather for off-topic chatter.

Slash Rocket
Members: 3,00+
Membership Cost: Free
Developers from all backgrounds and skill levels are welcome at Slash Rocket, a friendly community for members to gather and talk development.

How to Find Other Niche Open Slack Communities

There are a ton of great resources to find top Slack communities that are the right fit for your needs.

Head to https://www.reddit.com/r/SlackHangouts/, where you can search through a backlog of posts about Slack communities or ask members for specific recommendations.
Search through Quora or Medium, which features a bunch of comprehensive industry-specific community lists and blog posts by community founders.
Standuply is another useful site, offering a guide to 2,000 Slack chat groups and communities, ranging from design to ecommerce.
Check out this Springworks article as well for 100+ communities to join.
If you want to learn more about an existing Slack community head to Slofile, a database which offers helpful description breakdowns on each group.
Ask around! Talk to your peers, put out a request on social media for recommendations, or take a look at what communities leaders in your industry are a part of.

How To Join Public Slack Communities

Once you’ve found the community you want to join, you’ll typically need to fill out some sort of form to be invited inside. You might be prompted to write a short bio about yourself, offer your social media handles, and discuss your experience in the particular industry the community is designed around.

After you’re accepted, there are a few best practices you’ll want to get the hang of.

First off, becoming a part of channels. That one is super simple – just look at the list of channels that appears on the left side of the screen, click on the one you’re interested in, and you’ll find a button that prompts you to join.
It’s helpful to download the Slack app to your phone, so you can get real-time updates when a team member adds to the conversation.
Don’t worry – you don’t have to get a notification every time someone types something. Head to your notification settings, where you can mute certain conversations or specify when you want to receive an alert (for instance: anytime someone mentions your username in a conversation).
If you find that your grid is getting way too jam-packed with direct messages and channels, put a star next to the ones that are most important to you, so you’ll be able to access them quickly.
If you want, you can exit channels altogether. To do that, go to channel preferences and hit “leave channel.”
Contact all members of Slack groups by typing the @ symbol before the name of the group.

Monitor Slack communities

Want to get alerts when certain keywords are mentioned? That’s super quick and easy:

Click your workspace name (located on the top left of the screen), locate preferences, locate notifications, locate keywords, and then type in the words you want instant notifications on.

Create Your Own Slack Community

If you’re having trouble finding a community tailored to your own needs, you might consider starting your own. There are so many advantages to founding and carving out your own space on Slack – from personal branding opportunities to networking with professionals in your industry. Being in charge of your community means you get to think outside of the box creatively, developing unique angles for your digital forum (do you want to host local meetups? Live Q&As? 1:1 mentorship programs?) It’s all on your terms. Also big bonus points: it’s totally free.

Once you’ve come up with an idea for your Slack community, head to slack.com where you’ll be prompted to enter your name, email address, and name of your community.

From there, you can organize the workspace, create custom channels, and integrate any helpful apps like Chatli, Outlook, etc. (full list of compatible programs here).

Market your community

Now, comes the marketing part. How exactly do you get the word out? First, you might consider promoting your community on any of your social media platforms. You can also reach out to industry leaders and send them a personalized invitation to the community, making note of what you’re hoping it’ll grow into. Reddit, Quora, and Medium are also great places to plug your new platform.

Set KPIs

After you start building a base of users, you’ll want to keep your eye on your community’s KPI (Key Performance Indicator). That’s just a fancy way of saying that you should monitor Slack communities for their engagement and performance – and there’s some handy analytics courtesy of Slack that can help you out with that.

Here are some quick and easy ways to measure your success:

How many messages are being sent, either privately or publicly?
How many people are actively online on a daily basis?
How many of those people are also posting on the channels?
How many new members are joining on a weekly basis? And how many of those are referrals from existing members?
How many files are being sent by members?

A large part of the success comes from you, the moderator. It’s helpful to create a code of conduct from the start, reminding users that harassment, unkindness, and continuous self-promotion won’t be tolerated. Aside from coming up with creative new ideas for the community, your job will be to monitor activity, make sure users are abiding by the rules, and maintaining a positive, safe environment for all users.

Written by Sara Altschule

Sara's mission is to create helpful resources and guides for Knoji. Her goal is to help consumers pick the best product or service that's right for them. Sara aims to uncover truths about industries and help guide readers to make the best purchasing decisions. She creates long-form how-to guides and research-heavy articles to help readers gain more knowledge and become masters of the products and services they use.