Mattermost: Open source platform for secure collaboration
Mattermost is a self-hosted development and messaging tool. An open source platform for secure collaboration across the entire software development lifecycle.
Why self-host Mattermost
Running Mattermost yourself means you control the data, the uptime policy, and the upgrade schedule. That is a different relationship with software than subscribing to a hosted service.
What it does
Mattermost falls into the Development, Messaging category of self-hosted software. It is designed to be deployed on your own infrastructure, whether that is a home server, a VPS, or a local machine running Docker.
Community traction
The project has 29k stars on GitHub, which is a reasonable proxy for how widely it is used. Active repositories tend to ship bug fixes faster and have better documentation than projects that stall after the initial release.
Deployment
Docker is the most common deployment path. If you are already running containers at home, adding Mattermost to a compose file is a low-friction way to try it.
Alternatives
If Mattermost does not fit your needs, common alternatives include Firebase. The self-hosted versions of these tools often differ in resource requirements and feature focus, so it is worth testing the one that matches your workload.
Maturity
The current release is 9.10.1. The project has moved past early development and tends to ship stable, documented releases.
License
It is licensed under MIT, making it freely available for personal and commercial use.
Links
Whether you are just starting with self-hosting or adding to an existing setup, Mattermost is a reasonable pick in the development and messaging space.