Does Slack Work in China?

On Chinese networks

GreatFire Analyzer, which tests websites from mainland China, lists slack.com and app.slack.com as not blocked. Its latest tests of the two were in September and October 2026. GreatFire says blocking varies across Slack’s domain. It lists Slack’s status page as blocked and some other Slack addresses as intermittent.

Some travel and VPN sites say the opposite. Travel China Now said in June 2026 that Slack is blocked and that business travelers can’t reach their workspaces without a VPN. It also says Slack won’t connect reliably on Chinese networks. VPNBrains, which earns commissions on VPN sales, said in April 2026 that Slack is banned in China. Because the reports disagree, we list Slack as unreliable.

Workspaces shut down in 2026

In November 2025, Slack emailed admins of affected workspaces that it would not renew subscriptions in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. It cited Salesforce’s 2019 partnership that made Alibaba Cloud the exclusive provider of Salesforce CRM there. The copy posted on Hacker News offered to keep the workspace if the admin bought Slack through Alibaba Cloud, a Salesforce reseller. Otherwise, access would be suspended from February 1, 2026, and the data deleted within 90 days.

On April 1, 2026, Slack deactivated workspaces with billing addresses in mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau, Gizchina reported. Paid and free users lost access to their messages, files and channels.

unwire.hk, a Hong Kong tech site, reported a suspicion that Slack also acted on login IP addresses: a workspace could be deactivated if an admin or member had logged in from a Hong Kong or mainland China IP address. It said some overseas and Taiwan users who had logged in from mainland China, Hong Kong or Macau lost their workspaces too. We found no Slack statement on how it chose the workspaces.

In April 2026, WordPress.org said its own Slack workspace still welcomes users from China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.

Getting the app

Slack’s apps were removed from the Apple App Store, Microsoft Store and Snap Store in mainland China on March 28, 2024, according to Stanford University IT, passing on Slack’s announcement. If you already have the app, you can keep using it. On a computer, you can also use Slack in a web browser or download it from slack.com/download.

With a roaming eSIM or VPN

An eSIM that routes your data abroad carries it to a gateway outside mainland China before it reaches the internet. A VPN does the same on any connection, including hotel Wi-Fi. See eSIM or VPN for China and VPN for hotel Wi-Fi in China.

Travel China Now says Slack typically syncs normally on a roaming SIM or travel eSIM. It says a VPN restores Slack messaging well, but huddles and calls are often choppy through a VPN.

We couldn’t confirm whether Slack treats a login through a roaming eSIM or a VPN differently from one on a Chinese network.