# Mattermost 40 Hacker News commenters recommended Mattermost and 91 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 10 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 2 years (5 owners). **Verdict:** Self-hostable Slack alternative that people find stable and easy to roll out. Critics say the free edition has added limits and the license is unclear. ## Why people recommend it - Close to Slack in feel (4 comments): "Mattermost isn't actually all that bad and its mental model is pretty close to Slack" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49939838)) "Mattermost is a decent slack clone that can be self hosted." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49944532)) "It’s effectively a slack cove and works pretty great." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47650092)) - Easy to roll out self-hosted (3 comments): "Mattermost, Rocketchat and others have first class packaging for quick and easy roll out." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47281192)) "One service easily hosted with Docker. One app, and easy invites." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46944937)) "first class packaging for quick and easy roll out" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47282693)) - Integrates with bots and webhooks (3 comments): "Slack competitors like Teams, Zulip, and Mattermost all offer easy ability to integrate with anything that can make a web request." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46675562)) "I set up mine for family but it's ended up mostly being used by my bots for reporting things to various channels via webhooks." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47652638)) "That's also more flexible (can send commands back to the bot, etc.)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46503396)) - Stable, mature and works well (4 comments): "it's been stable and performant so I can't really complain" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48834371)) "quite mature and used at scale by some orgs around me" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48180984)) "Mattermost is quite good these days" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47281499)) ## What people warn about - Free edition gets feature limits (6 comments): "Gating reasonable OAuth support behind the paid version is crippleware" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46068575)) "They’ve been slowly introducing limits to the Team Edition and screwing with the licensing in obtuse ways to drive revenue" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46393564)) "the practice of crippling your opensource offering by removing features or adding limits is evil and shameful" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46386274)) - Unclear or dual license (4 comments): "This really seems like a dual license situation where they are saying" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46862501)) "to advertise a tool as open source license but then violate the open source licensing method both in spirit and the letter of the law" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46861796)) "deliberately keeping the license vague and confusing to scare users into paying for a commercial edition" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46862013)) - Message history limits or deletion (2 comments): "there was an uproar a couple of months ago about them just switching up message history and deleting conversations" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47021768)) "until they handicapped the most recent version by limiting the number of messages on the self hosted version" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47282925)) - Mobile app and polish lacking (2 comments): "The quality of Mattermost and Zulip was NOT exactly as polished as Slack." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49939676)) "I quite liked Mattermost except for the mobile app being trash." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46868413)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Slack](https://hackerapproved.com/p/slack.md): 248 recommend - [Microsoft Teams](https://hackerapproved.com/p/microsoft-teams.md): 228 recommend - [Zulip](https://hackerapproved.com/p/zulip.md): 143 recommend - [Chatto](https://hackerapproved.com/p/chatto.md): 55 recommend - [Fluxer](https://hackerapproved.com/p/fluxer.md): 22 recommend ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Mattermost", https://hackerapproved.com/p/mattermost/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).