Mattermost vs Stalwart XMPP
| Tagline | Open-source, self-hostable Slack alternative for secure team messaging and collaboration | Modern all-in-one XMPP server with web admin panel written in Rust |
| Category | Team Chat & Collaboration | Team Chat & Collaboration |
| Replaces | Slack, Microsoft Teams, Discord | Slack, Microsoft Teams |
| GitHub stars | 38k | 800 |
| Language | Go | Rust |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Self-host difficulty | 3/5 Moderate | 2/5 Easy |
| Deploy options | One-Click Docker Docker Compose Kubernetes Manual | Docker Manual |
| Managed hosting | ||
| Last updated | 5 days ago | 1 month 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.
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
Stalwart XMPP
- Younger project with a smaller community and less battle-tested than Prosody or Ejabberd
- No native web chat client included; users need a third-party XMPP app
- Clustering and high-availability support is still maturing
Bottom line
Choose Stalwart XMPP 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