Element
Depends
Confidence: Medium
Buy if you are a government, regulated org, or team needing self-hosted E2EE and data sovereignty.
Comparison
Element vs Mattermost.com
Element and Mattermost.com both land on Depends.
Mattermost.com
Depends
Confidence: Medium
Buy if you're a regulated, defense, or government team that must self-host chat and has ops staff to run it.
| Compare | Element | Mattermost.com |
|---|---|---|
| Verdict | Depends | Depends |
| Best for | Governments and public sector | Defense and government contractors |
| Who it's not for | Small teams wanting a simple Slack replacement | Small teams that just want a group chat |
| Privacy | No known public vulnerabilities found in the sources reviewed.¹ | Active security program with bug bounty and routine scans, but several recent CVEs are disclosed, including an auth bypass. |
| Support quality | No support evidence in sources | No support quality evidence found |
| Public sentiment | Reviews call Element genuinely appealing for security, while coverage stresses users need education to use it well.² | Engineers praise the self-hosted threading model while users report slow mobile apps, message-history paywalls, and shrinking free features.14 |
| Biggest gotcha | Pricing is not published; expect a sales conversation for hosted plans10 | Entry edition locks message history after 10,000 messages . older messages sit behind paid plans. |
Pick Element when
- Governments and public sector
- Sovereignty-focused, self-hosting orgs
- Security-conscious distributed teams
- Cross-organisation federated messaging
When Element is not a fit
- Small teams wanting a simple Slack replacement
- Buyers with no admin or dev resources
- Anyone needing zero-setup, consumer-simple messaging
- Teams needing published per-seat pricing upfront
Pick Mattermost.com when
- Defense and government contractors
- Regulated industries needing self-hosting
- DevOps and engineering teams
- Air-gapped or sovereign deployments
When Mattermost.com is not a fit
- Small teams that just want a group chat
- Companies with no sysadmin or DevOps staff
- Anyone expecting a durable free tier
- Mobile-first teams
Sources
official
- Element secure messenger review - TechRadartechradar.comreview
news
- Element Reviews & Ratings 2026 - TrustRadiustrustradius.comreview
- Element Software Reviews, Demo & Pricing - SoftwareAdvicesoftwareadvice.comreview
- Element bags $25.4M - SiliconCanalssiliconcanals.comnews
- Messaging app used by governments raises £22m - BusinessCloudbusinesscloud.co.uknews
- The Forrester Wave: Secure Communications, Q3 2022try.element.ionews
- British Geriatrics Society case studydrupology.co.ukofficial
- element . pricing, use cases & alternatives - CostPerSeatcostperseat.comreview
- Mattermost Pricingmattermost.comofficial
- Mattermost on GitHub (open source)github.comofficial
- Mattermost Security Updatesmattermost.comofficial
- Mattermost reviews on G2g2.comreview
- Mattermost on Trustpilottrustpilot.comreview
- Mattermost on Google Playplay.google.comreview