Customer support decision
Translate Channels
A competent developer can build and run a useful self-hosted Slack translation service for the given feature set within a week and reasonable monthly costs; nothing on the pages indicates an unreproducible moat.
Visit website↗Built by Justin Butlion, who ships 3 products in this index
$5/mo
$60/yr
Per seat. Read off the official pricing page.
$100one-off38 h to build
$30/mo6 h/mo upkeep
On cash alone, building overtakes the subscription at 8 seats.
No open-source build does this yet
Nothing published replaces this one, so a replacement starts from an empty file. Here is what it would have to cover.
What a replacement has to do
- Accept Slack events (messages) → detect language and translate via a translation API → post translated text into the Slack channel/message thread → store per-channel/per-workspace settings and authorized users → enforce subscription (per-active-user) billing
What it still won’t have
- App Store (Slack App Directory) listing polish and distribution
- Official support and SLA
- Polished UX and edge-case message handling (attachments, formatting)
- Operational monitoring and abuse protection (rate limits, spam)
What remains hard
- Product polish and ongoing maintenance
First-year cost
Keep paying
Paying is—cheaper in year one.
On cash alone, building overtakes the subscription at 8 seats.
Money you would actually spend
Time you would spend
—
What you would spend
What we assumed
The verdict above measures whether you could build it. This one is only about money.
Runnable build prompt
Build a Slack translation app using Node.js (TypeScript) and @slack/bolt, Postgres for settings, Stripe for per-user billing, and a translation provider (Google Cloud Translate or OpenAI). Core features in scope: OAuth Slack app install and per-user authorization, Slack Events handling for incoming messages, translation API integration with caching and rate-limiting, posting translated text inline or in-thread, channel/workspace settings UI (Slack app home + Block Kit), per-active-user subscription enforcement. Out of scope: building a public Slack App Directory listing, advanced analytics dashboard, or training custom translation models. Include robust error handling, retry/backoff, logging/monitoring, and automated tests (unit + basic integration).
How we checked
How the score was reached
- Build verdict base78
- 2 cited sources+1
- Price verified on pricing page+3
- 3/3 assessment runs agreed+4
- Evidence score86
The base comes from the verdict. Everything under it is a check that either happened or did not, and each one is a fact frozen in this record rather than a judgement made at render time - so the same evidence always produces the same number.
How scoring works →Cited sources · 2
Every page the run actually retrieved.
- official pricingTranslate Channels
- official docsTranslate Channels - Getting Started with Translate Channels
Integrity checks
What held up, and what did not.
