# Slack shouldn't get to put an expiration date on your team's memory

> Slack Free hides older conversations and deletes old data. An independent Server starts with a different question: who decides what your community keeps?

Source: https://llll.gg/blog/slack-your-history

Your team made a decision six months ago. The discussion is there, somewhere in Slack. But if you're on the free plan, finding it isn't a search problem. It's a subscription problem.

[Slack says](https://slack.com/help/articles/115002422943-Usage-limits-for-free-workspaces) free workspaces can view and search the most recent 90 days of messages and files. Older items are hidden, and messages and files more than a year old are permanently deleted. Paid plans offer longer history and more retention options. That's a legitimate commercial choice for Slack. It's also a poor fit for a community trying to build a long memory on the free plan.

## Your history is not a premium feature

Chat history contains decisions, fixes, introductions, promises and the small bits of context nobody thought to put in a document. Losing it does not just remove old messages. It makes people repeat the same work and ask the same questions.

L4 takes another approach. It is open source, and the community runs its own Server on its Cloudflare account or its own machine. Accounts, conversations, files and settings belong to that Server. There is no L4 subscription tier that unlocks access to older messages in the software. The operator is responsible for the infrastructure, storage and backups, and those can cost money. Self-hosting is not magic free storage.

## An honest comparison

Slack is a mature product with a large ecosystem and polished enterprise features. L4 is younger and does not claim feature parity or a seamless Slack migration. If your organization depends on a specific Slack integration, compliance workflow or administrative control, test it before making a decision. We are still testing complete setup and restore journeys on each way to run a Server.

But the principle is clear: your community should choose its retention policy because it serves the community, not because of the plan it happens to be on. Run a Server, make backups and test that you can restore them. A workspace earns its place in your team when the conversation is still there after the billing page stops being interesting.

*Slack free plan limits checked October 29, 2026 ([Slack Help Center: Usage limits for free workspaces](https://slack.com/help/articles/115002422943-Usage-limits-for-free-workspaces)). Check its current terms before making a decision.*