No. You sign up with an email, pay with a credit card, and use it like any other chat app. The Internet Computer is the infrastructure — you'll never see ICP, cycles, or a canister ID unless you want to.

Slack charges $7–15/user/month because they pay for AWS, datacenters, ops teams, and shareholder profit. Nib runs on the Internet Computer — a serverless protocol where you pay only for the cycles your workspace actually burns. A small team's monthly bill is often under $5 total, not per user.

Nothing bad. Every workspace — Free or Unlimited — is its own canister you control. The Internet Computer is operated by hundreds of independent node providers, and you can export everything as JSON at any time. Your data survives even if we don't.

Yes. Download your Slack workspace export as .zip and upload it on the Import tab. Channels, messages, threads, reactions, attachments, and users are all preserved. Most migrations complete in under an hour.

Direct messages use vetKeys — the Internet Computer's identity-based encryption scheme. Messages are encrypted with the recipient's principal as the public key, and only the recipient's browser can decrypt. Not even a malicious admin or canister controller can read them.

Every workspace gets its own canister on the Internet Computer — think of it as a sovereign compute unit that holds your messages, channels, and members. Your Internet Identity principal is registered as a controller, so you can upgrade, export, or shut down the canister at any time without anyone's permission. This applies on both plans, Free and Unlimited.

Yes, huddles are built in on every tier. WebRTC peer-to-peer for low-latency audio/video, with signaling through your workspace canister.

Legal hold, retention policies, audit log, and data export are built into every workspace — Free or Unlimited. GDPR data-subject-access workflows work today. SOC 2 Type II is on our roadmap. For HIPAA, we can provide a BAA on request; email us.

Nib keeps the code up to date. Since every workspace is its own canister, the workspace admin decides when to take an update. When we publish a new version, your admin console shows an "Update available" banner with release notes and a one-click install. Security patches can auto-apply (opt-in, recommended). Feature updates always require the admin to click. Rollback is available for 7 days if anything breaks. If you're deploying it yourself, you pull the latest code from GitHub and run the upgrade on your own cadence.

Planned — the codebase is being prepared for an Apache 2.0 public release at launch. If you need source access sooner for due diligence, reach out.

Free: community forum. Unlimited: email support within two business days. Need something custom? Email us directly.