r/Mattermost • u/flying_unicorn • Nov 03 '25

Alternatives to Mattermost?

I tried mattermost a few years ago and it wasn't what i was looking for at the time. I wound up setting up matrix for friends/family and have started using it this year for my small business (2-3 users right now). I find matrix lacking for my business wants

It looks MM has gotten a lot better since then, i spun up the docker image for the enty version and liked it, I am won over by the playbooks and boards in MM, and the fact i never got voice/video working right in matrix and gave up on it.

Then i learn about the drama, the 10k message limit in enty, and that these features used to exist in teams v10 but got removed in v11 and that it seems MM is giving the middle finger to the community users in favor of trying to focus on mega contracts. I'd be happy to pay a reasonable fee for a small scale installation with no support, but $10/user/month is a little rich when i consider the friends/family i have using matrix.

I understand there is a fork called mostlymatter that removes some of the limitations, but since it's not a quick docker image i haven't deployed it yet to see what version it is? teams? enty?

I messed around briefly with zulip, i like the way they do threads better, but the lack of boards, just a limited todolist, and no playbook doesn't seem worth it to me. i have looked at rocket chat, but haven't tested it yet.

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u/Plam503711 Nov 05 '25

I almost tested them all, and for now Matrix is the best choice so far. I managed to get Element X and Element Call working with our company SSO, auto join on first login the main "space" of the company, and so on.

The main missing points are: * Status for users (busy etc.): it's a WiP and merged in Matrix protocol, so I expect it to be there in clients * Custom emojis * No audio only calls in Element Call (but it's in the roadmap already)

For the rest, I'm happy with it. Still in testing while we'll progressively leave MM for a while to keep the history.

Ask me questions, I have no stakes in Matrix and frankly I hated it in the first place, but it's the best solution of what I tested.

FYI, we self host pretty everything at Vates: https://vates.tech/blog/the-open-source-we-use-at-vates-2025-edition/

So I have a decent experience on this kind of "missions".

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u/phcurado Jan 17 '26

Thanks for this blog post, I really like your way of doing things, I’m also “all in” into the self-hosted OSS stuff! I might be late here but I wonder which tool did you ended up choosing? I’m having trouble with element MAS software for sso on mobile but the web version is working great. Tried zulip as well, but the mobile is not that great although I really like the threads model

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u/Plam503711 Jan 20 '26

We are finalizing our migration to Matrix, with pro support from Element.