These days, software as a service has become the go-to for businesses who want offerings that are scalable and easy to maintain. Not having to worry about hardware, maintenance, security, and other issues can free up resources that can be used elsewhere.
But cloud-based team chat solutions can also bring their own share of headaches, especially if your company deals with sensitive data. For example, do the cloud providers you use have the industry-standard protocols your business requires for security? And what kind of fallbacks do they have in place in the event of an outage? Will their service be available at all times?
These kinds of questions can lead to the inevitable question of whether or not your company should go with a self-hosted solution.
Self-hosted Software
Self-hosting has been around for a while, though it’s evolved in recent years. Essentially, the idea of self-hosting is to have the equivalent of a software service you’d typically use through a service provider, but instead of being hosted in the cloud, you maintain it on your own infrastructure.
If you already have the infrastructure to support it, this kind of solution can save your company in terms of cost. But more importantly, it allows your business to manage the entire platform from end to end, meaning data privacy and security is solely in your company’s hands.
With that said, we’re going to be taking a look at some self-host Slack alternatives in this article. Your first question may be why your company would need a self-hosted alternative to Slack. Well, in addition to the data and security concerns, one thing to consider is that Slack has become increasingly expensive for teams to use, large and small. As a result of this and the increasingly affordable hardware, there’ve been a good number of self-hosted alternatives that have popped up. Certain companies, like law firms, also need to host their communications on-premise, so self-hosted chat platforms are the only option.
Mattermost
Mattermost is an open-source solution that offers a plethora of features to organizations of all sizes. Users are able to obtain the enterprise edition of the self-hosted software and install it on their own cloud hardware or their own infrastructure. This application was built using React and Golang, and when configured and installed, it is a stand-alone Linux binary that runs off of a MySQL or PostgreSQL server.
This is a great solution for developer-focused organizations as there are a lot of features that those types of businesses would find useful. In addition to the usual communication platform, there are code-snippet features with syntax highlighting of over 50 languages. Mattermost runs on Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, and Android.
Benefits
- Mattermost comes with extremely detailed documentation for setup, installation, and configuration of the application.
- During migration, you can import data from Slack.
- If you cancel your subscription, you still own all of your data.
- It supports translations in 16 languages.
- Mattermost can be automatically configured and deployed on most cloud hosting platforms, such as Amazon Web Services, Azure, and Google Cloud.
- You can develop and deploy custom applications using their API and drivers.
- It provides all new users with documentation on how to use Mattermost, as well as provide integration instructions for over 700 applications.
Rocket.Chat
Rocket.Chat is considered to be one of the best Slack alternatives out there. While Rocket.Chat does have a cloud option, the software is available as an open-source self-hosted solution that you can install on your own services and manage centrally.
Rocket.Chat is developed on the Meteor framework using JavaScript, so if your company is development based, it can be an extensible solution for your communication needs.
Benefits
- The open-source version is completely free to use.
- It’s completely open-source, so you have full access to the source code.
- You can establish and develop your company’s requirements and integrate them into your own code.
- It provides powerful and extensive REST and LiveChat APIs.
- It utilizes AI-powered machine learning to translate messages in real-time.
- It allows for countless modifications, with the ability to choose your own integrations, plugins, and themes.
- There are flawless data importers to help in migrating from other communication platforms.
Zulip
Zulip is yet another open-source solution that has all the features you’d expect from a fully-fledged communication platform. It supports LDAP integration and authentication, desktop notifications, third-party integration, and much more. It was originally a startup and developed as proprietary software but was later acquired by Dropbox and made open source.
Benefits
- There are clients for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS.
- The source code is readily available on GitHub.
- It has support for single sign-on authentication using Google, Active Directory, or GitHub.
Troop Messenger
Troop Messenger is another self-hosted messaging system that’s engineered to be a robust solution for team communication. With this solution, you’ll have full control over all your communication and data, and this solution offers a seamless, private, and fully secure communication system that can run on your own infrastructure.
Troop Messenger was designed for organizations of all sizes, whether large or small. For a self-hosted solution, it offers a plethora of features, including instant messaging, audio clip messaging, audio calls, video calls, screen sharing, and more. There are desktop clients for Windows and Linux, and there’s also a web-based client for other platforms. For mobile, there are clients available on Android and iOS.
Benefits
- It has an excellent interface and offers a great user experience.
- For the features provided, the pricing is quite fair.
- It’s multi-platform, with clients for desktop operating systems, web, and mobile.
- This solution can be customized for government, defense, and non-profit organizations for high-level communication security.
- There’s an amazing collaboration feature called The Orange Member, which allows you to interact with clients and vendors in a productive way.
Let’s Chat
Let’s Chat is an open-source solution that’s designed for smaller teams. It’s developed using Node.js and MongoDB and offers features such as LDAP and Kerberos authentication, XMPP chats, and more. It’s a free application for hosting on your own infrastructure, and it’s relatively easy to deploy.
Benefits
- It supports password-protected chat rooms.
- It supports desktop notifications, mentions, file uploading, and image embedding.
- It operates under the MIT license.
- It’s API is REST-compatible for interfacing with other applications.
Element
Element (formerly Riot.im) is another great Slack alternative that’s built on the Matrix React SDK. It’s an open-source solution that offers chatting capabilities ranging from casual conversations all the way up to enterprise team collaboration. This free self-hosted solution is available for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS.
Benefits
- You have full control of the data on your servers.
- It has support for over 24 languages.
- It provides fully secured end-to-end encryption.
- It can be used as a bridge for other applications, such as Slack, IRC, Gitter, and so on.
- The voice and video conferencing work flawlessly.
- The interface for searching archives works very well.
Matrix
Matrix is a protocol designed for decentralized, real-time communication. It’s been out of beta since June of 2019, and it’s developed by the Matrix.org Foundation. The whole goal of this protocol is to allow users to communicate across platforms and services providers seamlessly. It’s designed to bridge the gap in communication between services such as Slack, Discord, IRC, Gitter, and so forth.
Benefits
- Using the APIs and SDKs, you can easily create direct chats, chat rooms, and chatbots.
- It utilizes Olm and Megolm for cryptography, providing the best end-to-end encryption available.
- You’re able to reach over nine million users on Matrix’s ecosystem.
- It provides VoIP and video calling using Matrix signaling.
- Features include message formatting, message history, read receipts, file transfers, and much more.
Conclusion
Data is the single most important thing for any organization. And when you’re talking about the data that moves through your communication channels, securing this data becomes critical. For those with the infrastructure and knowledge, self-hosting your communications platform can be an extremely viable alternative to subscribing to one. Not only will it save your company money, but it will provide your organization with a fine level of control over your security and information that you wouldn’t otherwise have.
You can also check out Slack alternatives that are not self-hosted.
Related: Team Communication Software and Internal Communications Software