How MikroChat compares

Typical cost

MikroChat is free and open source under the MIT license. No per-seat pricing, no feature gates, no enterprise upsell. You pay for the server you run it on, and that's it.

Slack is free for small teams with limited history, but most teams end up on Pro ($8.75/user/month) or Business+ ($17.50/user/month) for full history and compliance features. A 20-person team on Pro pays over $2,000/year.

Microsoft Teams comes bundled with Microsoft 365 ($6–12.50/user/month). If you're already paying for Office, it's included. If you're not, it's another subscription.

Mattermost and Rocket.Chat offer free self-hosted Community Editions, but advanced features (SSO, compliance, guest accounts) are behind paid plans. Self-hosting still means infrastructure costs.

Element/Matrix is free to self-host, but running a Synapse homeserver requires meaningful infrastructure and maintenance.

Privacy and data sovereignty

With MikroChat, your messages never leave your server. There are no analytics, no telemetry, no phone-home behavior. All stored data can be encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM.

Slack stores your messages on Salesforce-owned infrastructure. Your data is subject to US law and Slack's data retention policies. Encryption at rest requires Enterprise Grid.

Microsoft Teams stores data in Microsoft's cloud. While they offer data residency options, you're still trusting Microsoft with your communications.

Mattermost, Rocket.Chat, and Element all offer full sovereignty when self-hosted, similar to MikroChat. The difference is in operational complexity. MikroChat has no external dependencies—no PostgreSQL, no MongoDB, no message queues. That means a smaller attack surface and less to secure.

Setup and complexity

MikroChat installs with git clone and npm install. No database to configure, no reverse proxy required for development. Frontend and backend come in one package.

Slack and Teams win on setup—sign up and you're chatting. But you're also locked into their ecosystem, their pricing changes, and their outages.

Mattermost requires PostgreSQL and typically runs behind nginx. Setup is well-documented but involves multiple services. Upgrades require database migrations.

Rocket.Chat needs MongoDB, which brings its own operational overhead. Docker deployment helps, but you're still managing a database.

Element/Matrix is the most complex self-hosted option. Running a Synapse homeserver means PostgreSQL, significant RAM usage, and federation configuration. Many teams find it challenging to operate.

Feature scope

MikroChat does messaging: channels, threads, direct messages, emoji reactions, and webhooks. That's it. No video calls, no app marketplace, no file storage service, no built-in bots framework.

If you need video conferencing, thousands of integrations, or enterprise compliance dashboards, MikroChat is not the right tool. Slack and Teams are full communication platforms with massive ecosystems.

But here's the thing: many teams don't use most of those features. If your team mostly sends text messages and shares the occasional image, you don't need a platform that tries to do everything. MikroChat is for teams who want less software, not more.

What MikroChat does, it does well: encrypted storage, flexible authentication (magic links, passwords, OAuth 2.0), real-time updates via SSE, dark mode, and PWA support for installing it as a native-feeling app.

Authentication flexibility

MikroChat stands out with four built-in authentication modes: dev mode, magic links, passwords, and OAuth 2.0. Most alternatives offer only one or two methods in their free tier.

Slack and Teams handle auth through their cloud services. SSO/SAML is an enterprise feature.

Mattermost supports LDAP, SAML, and OAuth, but SAML and advanced SSO require the Enterprise plan.

MikroChat includes OAuth 2.0 with built-in presets for Google, Microsoft, GitHub, and GitLab, plus support for custom providers like Keycloak and Authentik. All authentication modes are available for free, with no enterprise paywall.

Migration

MikroChat doesn't have a built-in import tool for migrating messages from other platforms. It's a fresh start. For many teams, this is actually fine—old chat history rarely matters as much as you think.

Moving away from MikroChat is straightforward since it's open source and your data stays on your server in a simple embedded database. No proprietary format lock-in.

Moving away from Slack is harder. Years of messages, files, app configurations, and workflows create deep lock-in. Exports are available but incomplete.

Mattermost and Rocket.Chat offer import/export tools and are relatively open. Element/Matrix benefits from the federated Matrix protocol, making it the most portable option.