Mattermost is a team communication tool for Enterprise and Developers, offered as open source. Founded in United States in 2015. Popular alternatives include Rocket.Chat.
About Mattermost
Mattermost is an open-source collaboration platform for technical and mission-critical teams. It started as an internal chat tool at a game company and is now developed by Mattermost, Inc. in Palo Alto. Organizations deploy it on their own servers, in private clouds or in fully air-gapped networks, which is why defense agencies, governments, banks and critical infrastructure operators use it.
The core is Slack-style team messaging with channels, threads, direct messages, file sharing, search, and desktop and mobile apps. On top of that come Playbooks for repeatable processes such as incident response, and integrations with GitHub, GitLab, Jira, Jenkins and other DevOps tools through webhooks, slash commands and plugins. Free self-hosted editions cover core messaging, though since version 11 (October 2025) the Entry edition shows only the latest 10,000 messages and Team Edition is capped at 250 users; Professional adds SSO, advanced permissions and guest accounts for a per-user fee; Enterprise adds compliance exports, data retention policies, high availability and advanced security.
Mattermost fits organizations that cannot put their conversations in a vendor-hosted cloud, and DevOps teams that want chat tied to their tooling. The trade-off is user experience and ecosystem: the interface is behind Slack, there are far fewer third-party apps, and self-hosting needs operational effort. Slack and Microsoft Teams are easier if data residency is not a constraint; Rocket.Chat is another open-source option, and Element, built on Matrix, adds federation and end-to-end encryption.
Key features of Mattermost
- Self-hosted team chat
- Playbooks for incidents
- Boards
- DevOps integrations
- Compliance and security
- Air-gapped deployment
Pros and cons
Pros
- Full control and security
- Open source
- DevOps-focused
- Air-gap capable
Cons
- UX behind Slack
- Self-hosting effort
- Smaller app ecosystem
- Enterprise pricing
Mattermost pricing
Mattermost uses a open source model.
| Plan | Price | Includes |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | Self-hosted, community support |
| Professional | Custom | Annual seat licenses; SSO, access controls |
| Enterprise | Custom | Compliance, HA, 24x7 support |
| Enterprise Advanced | Custom | Air-gapped, Zero Trust, classified controls |
Source: mattermost.com · checked on Oct 20, 2026
How Mattermost compares in Team communication
- Rank by votes
- #1 / 25
- Starting price
- $0
- Free alternatives
- 5
0 votes from members
Category median is $10/mo
Free or open-source tools in Team communication
Mattermost ranks #1 of 25 team communication tools by community votes and is not directly comparable on price.
Common use cases
- 1Defense or government chat
- 2Incident response
- 3Regulated enterprise
- 4DevOps collaboration
Best for
Organizations needing self-hosted secure chat.
Not ideal for
Teams wanting Slack's ecosystem.
Integrations
- GitLab
- Jira
- GitHub
- Jenkins
- Zoom
- LDAP
- SAML
Our take
Mattermost is the secure, self-hosted Slack alternative.
FAQ
- What is Mattermost?
- Mattermost is a Team communication tool: Self-hosted secure collaboration.
- How much does Mattermost cost?
- Mattermost is Open source; there is no mandatory paid plan.
- What are the best alternatives to Mattermost?
- Community-listed alternatives to Mattermost include Rocket.Chat.
- What does Mattermost integrate with?
- Mattermost integrates with GitLab, Jira, GitHub, Jenkins, Zoom, LDAP and more.
- Which platforms does Mattermost support?
- Mattermost is available on web, macos, windows, linux, ios, android.
- Who is Mattermost for?
- Organizations needing self-hosted secure chat.
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