An introduction to sharing channels and guest accounts
Learn a few ways to bring work with external partners into Slack, and how to choose between your options
3 min read
Should I create a guest account or use a channel?
Guests are great for when you’re working with someone who feels like a member of your organisation but needs limited access to Slack, such as contractors and interns.
Are available for paid workspaces. Guests can belong to a single channel or multiple channels, but need to be manually added by admins.
Can be invited to your workspace just like regular members via the invitations page.
Have icons next to their profile photos: a triangle for single-channel guests and a square for multi-channel guests.
Channels are a better fit when you’re working with an external organisation such as customers, vendors and partners. When working in a channel, multiple people from each company can easily be involved with the ability to add members as work scales.
Both teams have a common place to collaborate, loop in the right people on an as-needed basis and build a collective repository of knowledge that anyone on either team can add to and reference.
Both teams can send messages, share files and access the channel history.
Any member of the channel can also direct-message (DM) any other member in the channel, even if they’re from the other team.
More and more organisations are moving towards channels for the additional control and flexibility that they provide – especially when collaborating with two or more people at other companies.
Nice one!
