mattermost

[dviramontes]

explore https://mattermost.com/ for codefordenver and potentially codeforamerica

[dviramontes]

cc @msiadak

[msiadak]

Here's a quick information dump:

Overview

My Take

An open source Slack alternative that can be easily self-hosted (production deployments can be built and run with docker-compose). Also offers a paid SaaS option: https://mattermost.com/
Offers many community-contributed integrations with other platforms and what appears to be a well-written API to write custom integrations.

From the docs

Mattermost provides high trust collaboration and messaging solutions through an open source, community-powered approach. Enjoy all the productivity benefits of workplace messaging across web, mobile and PC, with unlimited archiving, search and integrations within IT-controlled private environments in public clouds, including AWS and Azure, as well as on-premise in private clouds and virtual or physical servers.

Docs

https://docs.mattermost.com/

Deployment

There is a "preview version" that runs all of the supporting infrastructure in a single Docker container as well as a production Docker deployment that uses docker-compose to coordinate several containers (app, web, and db).

• Preview Deployment with Docker
• Production Deployment with Docker Compose

License Levels

Mattermost offers a Team Edition for free and two paid Enterprise licensing levels. Here is a link to the feature comparison: https://about.mattermost.com/features/

[msiadak]

With regards to moving forward with Mattermost, here are the tradeoffs that we'll need to weigh:

1. Cost -- What is the cost of hosting Mattermost on a service like Heroku or Now? Can we get away with a free-tier deployment and still support our users?

2. Administration -- Who will administer our self-hosted Mattermost instance? This includes monitoring for stability, applying upgrades, managing integrations, etc.

3. Features -- Can Mattermost fully replace the functionality that we're currently getting with e.g. Flowdock? Where does it fall short and where does it offer additional functionality? Can we integrate well with our other tools?