Mattermost is the open-source collaboration platform built specifically for technical and operations teams that need security and control. Founded in 2015 by Ian Tien and Corey Hulen, it started as an open-source Slack alternative and evolved into a broader platform for developer collaboration, incident response, and DevOps workflows.
The origin story is straightforward — Tien’s previous company used a SaaS messaging tool that went down during a critical period, and the experience convinced him that mission-critical communication shouldn’t depend on a third-party cloud. Mattermost was built so organizations could own their messaging infrastructure.
The platform’s core audience is engineering and DevOps teams. Integration with development tools is deep — Jira, GitLab, GitHub, Jenkins, PagerDuty, and dozens more plug in natively. Playbooks provide structured workflows for incident response, release management, and other repeatable processes. Boards offer Kanban-style project management.
Mattermost has secured significant enterprise and government contracts. The US Department of Defense, various intelligence agencies, and large financial institutions use Mattermost for its security posture and self-hosting capability. The platform supports deployment in air-gapped and classified environments.
The company has raised over $160 million in venture funding, including a $135 million Series D in 2022. Revenue comes from per-seat subscriptions for the Professional and Enterprise editions, which add compliance, SSO, advanced permissions, and premium support on top of the free Team edition.
Mattermost’s approach to AI has been thoughtful — the company introduced AI Copilot features that can be connected to self-hosted LLMs, so organizations can use AI assistance without sending sensitive data to external services. This fits their core value proposition of data sovereignty. With Slack’s move toward tighter Salesforce integration and changes in pricing, Mattermost continues to attract teams looking for an independent, secure alternative.
