Item: Mattermost
Rating: 9
Author: María Lucía Santagata

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Mattermost is used by the entire company. We used to use Slack before, but it had some limitations that, when the company started to grow, became important. We use Mattermost as a tool for communicating with other areas or within teams. It also provides us some fun, as we use it for non-work-related conversations, planning after-office meetings and sharing national news.

Pros and Cons

It's open-source! So our devs could adequate the tool to our necessities.
It works particularly well in every navigator.
It also works well in mobile phones, even when you choose not to install the mobile app (this is a BIG plus).

Notifications sometimes get lost if you have a lot of channels active.
It has a limitation of quantity of private channels that could be improved.
The interface is not very stylish.

Return on Investment

Communication became faster and better.
On the negative side, people who tend to get distracted got more distracted.
As it's open-source, it has a good impact on the investment side.

Usability

It's an extremely easy to use software, and I would recommend it to every company that is growing. I think they could improve their notification system, as it gets a little spammy sometimes and important notifications get lost. Also needs to improve the number of private chats that you are allowed to create.

Support Rating

Well, every time I need support, it was given by the technicians of the company where I work because they made the custom modifications for using Mattermost here. I never had a problem that requires external help, so my rating is based on the help I needed in these 3 years of use.

Alternatives Considered

Slack

Slack got very expensive and limited for the use we expected and also for the economic resources of the company. Mattermost allows custom modifications, and its interface is very similar to Slack, so we didn't need much time to adapt to it. We've been using Mattermost for 3 years now and don't think we would return to Slack.

Other Software Used

Google Hangouts, Everhour, Skype for Business (formerly Lync)

Likelihood to Recommend

When a company starts to grow, Mattermost is extremely suitable, as the teams start to lose face-to-face communication. It's also very appropriate in young environments, where written (chat!) communication tends to be the one of preference, over phone calls. Mattermost allows the employees to communicate fast and also to share nonwork-related topics, which is a nice way to welcome new employees. The problem associated with that last point is that sometimes people get distracted from work while chatting offtopic.

Communicate faster and better with your employees!

Overall Satisfaction with Mattermost