Mattermost was born from a founder’s frustrating experience with losing control over critical messaging data after a platform acquisition. Ian Tien, co-founder and CEO, initially ran a video game business that relied heavily on an in-game messaging app. When the app’s acquisition led to frequent crashes, data loss, and eventually being locked out of their own data, Tien and his team realized they needed a reliable, self-hosted solution they could fully control. Drawing on over 10 million hours of messaging usage in their games, they built Mattermost as an open-source, self-hosted messaging platform, launching the project around 2015–2016 with a vision to empower teams with real-time communication free from vendor lock-in.

Technically, Mattermost stands out as a highly flexible and secure alternative to proprietary collaboration tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams. Its open-source core allows organizations to host their own messaging infrastructure, ensuring data privacy, security, and compliance—critical for sectors like government and enterprise. The platform supports rich integrations, archiving, search, and customization, making it particularly attractive for DevOps and software engineering teams who require robust, real-time collaboration tightly integrated into their workflows.

Since its inception, Mattermost has grown from a modest project into a widely adopted platform trusted by industry leaders such as Uber, Airbus, and the U.S. Department of Defense. The community-driven model has encouraged contributions and extensions, fueling continuous innovation and reliability improvements. The company has also embraced a remote-first culture from day one, with a globally distributed team across 20 countries, exemplifying modern collaborative work practices that resonate with its user base.

For businesses, Mattermost offers compelling advantages: full control over messaging data, enhanced security, customizable workflows, and the flexibility to extend the platform via open APIs. Unlike SaaS-only competitors, it eliminates concerns about vendor outages or data ownership. This makes it especially valuable for organizations with strict compliance or operational needs, such as regulated industries and large enterprises seeking to avoid vendor lock-in while maintaining seamless communication.

Looking ahead, Mattermost continues to evolve with a focus on expanding enterprise-grade features, deepening integrations, and enhancing usability to support hybrid and remote workforces. The company’s commitment to open source ensures that innovation remains community-driven, while ongoing investments in security and compliance position Mattermost as a future-proof collaboration platform for organizations prioritizing trust and control in their communications.