Mattermost vs Weechat
| Tagline | Open-source, self-hostable Slack alternative for secure team messaging and collaboration | Fast, extensible terminal IRC and chat client with a rich plugin ecosystem |
| Category | Team Chat & Collaboration | Team Chat & Collaboration |
| Replaces | Slack, Microsoft Teams | Slack, Discord |
| GitHub stars | 38k | 3.3k |
| Language | Go | C |
| License | MIT | GPL-3.0 |
| Self-host difficulty | 3/5 Moderate | 4/5 Involved |
| Deploy options | One-Click Docker Docker Compose Kubernetes Manual | Manual |
| Managed hosting | ||
| Last updated | today | yesterday |
| 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
Weechat
- Terminal-only; no native graphical UI, making onboarding difficult for non-technical users.
- Third-party plugins are required for any non-IRC protocol, and plugin quality and maintenance vary.
- No file sharing, image preview, video calls, or rich message formatting out of the box.
- Configuration is fully text-based with a steep learning curve for advanced setups.
Bottom line
Choose Mattermost 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
Weechat
Fast, extensible terminal IRC and chat client with a rich plugin ecosystem