LaunchPass vs Slack Comparison 2026
Both cover community platforms. Here is what separates them on price, billing, what you can take with you, and coverage.
Charge for access to a Discord or Slack group
Channels for a community that outgrew a group chat
At a glance
- Slack starts cheaper, at $8.75.
- Both have a genuinely free tier.
Side by side
LaunchPass | Slack | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price (they differ) | From $29 | From $8.75 |
| Pricing model | Free plan, paid tiers | Free plan, paid tiers |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Billing | Monthly or annual | Monthly or annual |
| Free trial | 14 days | Not stated |
| API | Not stated | Yes |
| Data export | Not stated | Not stated |
| Their cut | 3.5% of what you earn | Not stated |
| Runs on | Not stated | Web, macOS, Windows, iOS, Android, Linux |
Shaded rows are where the two answers disagree and both listings have answered. A row where one side has not stated a fact is left plain, because silence is not a difference.
LaunchPass
Charge for access to a Discord or Slack group
LaunchPass puts a paywall in front of a chat community you already run, and hands out and removes the roles as people pay and lapse. It connects to Discord, Slack and Telegram, and the money arrives through your own Stripe account. It manages access rather than hosting anything, so the community stays where your members already are.
Our note
Sensible if your community is already somewhere and already wanted. Compare it against DoorFee if the community is on Discord, since DoorFee sells the membership as well as gating it, and against Circle or Skool if you were half thinking of moving anyway.
Only on this side
- Covers memberships & subscriptions
- Covers monetization & payments
- Works with Discord
Slack
Channels for a community that outgrew a group chat
Slack organises a community into channels, threads and searchable history, which is what a paid membership community usually needs once a Discord server stops being enough. The free plan keeps ninety days of messages and ten app connections, and that history limit is what pushes most groups onto a paid plan rather than any feature. Guests from outside the workspace can be given a single channel. Paying by seat means a large free community costs more here than on software priced per workspace.
Ratings are the average of reviews readers left. The facts are stated by each tool’s own listing and are not verified by CloutStack. How we make money.