Conduit vs Mattermost
| Tagline | Blazing fast Matrix homeserver written in Rust for small communities | Open-source, self-hostable Slack alternative for secure team messaging and collaboration |
| Category | Team Chat & Collaboration | Team Chat & Collaboration |
| Replaces | Slack, Discord, Microsoft Teams | Slack, Microsoft Teams, Discord |
| GitHub stars | 3.2k | 38k |
| Language | Rust | Go |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Self-host difficulty | 2/5 Easy | 3/5 Moderate |
| Deploy options | Docker Manual | One-Click Docker Docker Compose Kubernetes Manual |
| Managed hosting | ||
| Last updated | 1 month ago | 5 days ago |
| View repo | View repo |
Where each falls short
The honest trade-offs — what you give up with each, versus the proprietary tools they replace.
Conduit
- Does not yet support all Matrix room versions or advanced federation features
- No built-in web client; needs Element or another client
- Bridges to other networks (Slack, Discord) require separate bridge services
Mattermost
- Many advanced features (LDAP/AD, SAML/SSO, compliance exports, high availability) are gated behind paid Enterprise tiers
- Search and message UX feel less polished than Slack
- Voice/video calling is more limited than Teams' full meetings stack
- Smaller third-party app/integration marketplace than Slack
Bottom line
Choose Conduit if you want the lower-effort setup; choose Mattermost for the larger community and ecosystem. Mattermost has seen more recent development. Open each guide below for deploy steps and the full feature gap.
Mattermost
Open-source, self-hostable Slack alternative for secure team messaging and collaboration