Mattermost vs Microsoft Teams

What Mattermost is built to do

Self-hosted

Runs on your own servers or private cloud, with message data never leaving them.

Open source

The server is open source, so a deployment cannot be withdrawn by a vendor.

Compliance export

Legal hold, audit logging and export formats built for regulated environments.

Familiar interface

Channels, threads and integrations close enough to Slack to keep training short.

What Microsoft Teams is built to do

Collaborative Editing

Edit an Excel sheet with your team simultaneously during a live meeting.

Live Events

Broadcast major company-wide meetings with Q&A and moderation support.

Together Mode

Use AI to place all meeting participants in a shared virtual classroom or room.

Phone System

Replace traditional office phones with a digital, cloud-based PBX system.

Choose Mattermost if

• Teams that must self-host: Professional is self-hosted and supports a maximum of 250 users
• Organisations needing scale — Enterprise scales to 50,000 concurrent users, Enterprise Advanced to 200,000
• Regulated environments that need compliance export and eDiscovery, available from Enterprise

Skip Mattermost if

• You need a published price — no per-user figure is listed; every tier requires contacting sales
• You are above 250 users but only budgeted for Professional; that tier is capped there
• You need SSO/SAML or guest accounts on the free edition — both start at Professional

Choose Microsoft Teams if

• Small businesses that only need meetings: Microsoft Teams Essentials is $4.00 per user/month paid yearly, with chat, calls, video, file sharing and 10 GB of cloud storage per user
• Companies that want Teams plus business email and Office on the web — Microsoft 365 Business Basic at $7.00 per user/month paid yearly, with 1 TB of storage per user
• Teams that need the desktop Office apps and Copilot: Business Standard with Copilot at $23.50 per user/month paid yearly

Skip Microsoft Teams if

• You have more than 300 employees — every business plan caps identity and access management at 300 users, so you are pushed to the enterprise SKUs
• You want month-to-month billing: all of these are annual subscriptions that auto-renew, with the monthly figure shown only for comparison
• You need desktop Word, Excel and PowerPoint on a budget — Business Basic is web and mobile only, and Teams Essentials has no Office apps at all

Mattermost: pros & cons

• Fully self-hostable, including in air-gapped environments
• Familiar channel-based interface
• Open source core
• Ecosystem of integrations is smaller than Slack's
• You carry the upgrade and backup burden
• Mobile apps lag behind commercial rivals

Microsoft Teams: pros & cons

• Office 365 Integration: Edit files collaboratively within the app in real-time.
• Enterprise Security: A world leader in data protection and administrative controls.
• Large Meeting Capacity: Host massive live events and webinars for thousands of attendees.
• Included with Office: Available for free with most business Microsoft 365 licenses.
• Performance Issues: The app can feel heavy and sometimes sluggish on older hardware.
• Complex UI: Navigating the channel structure can be confusing for non-technical users.
• Guest Access: Adding external users outside the organization can sometimes be difficult.