Item: Mattermost
Rating: 9
Author: Abhigyan Tiwari

Ease of Integration

It's 8 that is because it is already developer-friendly to integrate any kind of tools like GitLab/ Jenkins, etc. rest there are a few steps we need to follow for the integration process, this could be drastically improved to make the process of integrating tools literally fast. However, I respect whatever the community is offering in the free version.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Initially, our staff was using commercial products specifically for chats and collaboration, but they were paid basically. We were charged per user. However, I found out Mattermost. They give self-hosted solutions (Mattermost open source), and it has features that could be purchased based on different requirements. Most of our needs are satisfied with the open-source version.

The main purpose of using it was security concerns. We wanted our data to be only to us, on-premises. So this satisfied the use case to have Mattermost self-hosted on our corporate rack. To date, we have been using it among our staff without any trouble. Mattermost has good options to backup data (store) on cloud platforms too. Also, our use cases consist of DevOps components integration which are satisfied (notifications) from our Jenkins Infrastructure. It has good simplicity of use, so I'll recommend it over other self-hosted chat solutions to anybody.

Pros and Cons

Simplicity of use
Integrations
Data storage connections for backup purpose or storing media
Really good administration of users and sake of control
DevOps friendly across IT team

Some of the features in paid plans could be free, however, they have much offered in free plan (self-hosted)
The Desktop App we use on windows has some bugs, like when Mattermost is down and comes back up, the app needs restart

Return on Investment

The platform is adaptive to storage data center outages in case our cloud storage provider goes away, Mattermost still works with our local database. However, files couldn't be shared. We can switch storage to local temporarily; that's a benefit. Later it all syncs up to main storage.
When our team switched to Mattermost from paid solutions, we had much savings and access to unlimited past messages and storage quota (we use our cloud storage provider)
We have better visibility of our tools and other products running adjacent to Mattermost due to integration capability. We use it for notifications/ updates sent from other products.

Open Source Platform

The biggest advantage we had rolling out Mattermost in our on-premise corporate rack was having it in our own control. We manage the data, texts, files, etc. We control and administer the users across organisation using the platform (system console) by Mattermost. Also, we have flexibility to change data center providers to store our data. Members from our team definitely would love to help Mattermost by providing them with feedback and bug reports to support their development in the future.

Alternatives Considered

Slack, Discord and Skype

First of all, we don't lose messages; we can see or search messages from any point in the past. Second, it offers to manage the whole product ourselves from hosting to serving users of our organisation. We feel that we have full control over data, managing users, administration, etc.

Key Insights

Do you think Mattermost delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Mattermost's feature set?

Yes

Did Mattermost live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Mattermost go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Mattermost again?

Yes

Other Software Used

GitLab, Jenkins, JFrog Artifactory

Likelihood to Recommend

I'll recommend going for Mattermost if your use case is DevOps, integrations, internal organisation chat solution. Mattermost has the option to backup data also in cloud platforms. There is huge simplicity of use for teams. Our organisation uses it seamlessly without any hassle. For having remote teams, we can even host their product ourselves over any cloud platform for high availability. Also, we can do purchase upgrades there as per needs.

Users and Roles

15 - HR Teams, Engineers, Managers, and Executives are involved in using Mattermost platform for collaboration across our organisation.

Our Organisation has most of Collaboration Needs Satisfied using Mattermost - Team Chat, DevOps Integrations, Document Sharing

Overall Satisfaction with Mattermost