How to migrate your team off Slack in an afternoon

Switching team chat sounds scary — it’s where everyone lives all day. But a move is mostly logistics, and a small team can do it between lunch and end of day. Here’s the playbook.

1. Inventory what you actually use

List your activechannels — not the 40 dead ones, the 8 that see traffic. Note the handful of integrations you’d miss. Most teams need far less than they think.

2. Set up the new workspace

Create the workspace, recreate those active channels, and set who’s an admin. In Talkaroo this is a few minutes: make a workspace, add the channels, done.

3. Invite the team by email

Send invites and let people land in the default channels automatically. Pin a short “here’s how we’ll use this” message in #general so norms are set from message one.

4. Run both for a few days, then cut over

Keep the old tool read-only for a week so nothing is lost, but do all new conversation in the new one from day one — a hard cutover date beats a slow limbo. Export your old history for the archive.

5. Redirect the muscle memory

Rename the old workspace “⚠️ moved — see the new one,” update the bookmark, and install the new app on everyone’s phone. Within a week nobody remembers the switch.