Mattermost vs Riot/Matrix: Which Office Messaging Platform will Make our Collaboration Game Stronger

Uber, Samsung, United States Armed Forces, TADHack, W3F, and UpCloud

World’s leading companies are using Mattermost, Riot, or Matrix to give their teams the ‘best-ever’ virtual workplace experience.

While these companies are on three different messaging platforms, with different requirements, they have one thing in common - they all understand the importance of having a virtual workplace where all employees and stakeholders can communicate and collaborate, irrespective of the differences in time zone and location.

Along with these renowned names, 97% of businessmen and executives believe that the lack of communication within a team negatively influences the outcome of a project.

75% of the businessmen rate team collaboration and communication as the ‘most critical aspects,’ and 86% of the entrepreneurs cite a lack of communication and ineffective collaboration for workplace failure.

These statistics are a testimony to the fact that getting communication right can easily be a make-or-break factor for businesses, especially for virtual teams that rely on an in-depth communication style.

In a virtual business, relationships can be strained where communication happens primarily over electronic devices and the internet. The better you communicate, the better and more cohesive will be the end-projects.

Conventional forms of e-communication like email or Whatsapp fail to cut it as people are spread out further afield. And that’s where we realize the immediate need for messaging platforms like Riot-Matrix and Mattermost - office chat applications specifically designed to meet the collaboration needs of teams working remotely.

A bit about Matrix

Three keywords define Matrix: Interoperable systems, Real-time Communication, and Decentralised collaboration. As an open standard team chat application, the matrix is known for robust specifications that have the potential of evolving the concept of modern communication.

• Interoperable: Matrix, being Open Standard, is specifically designed to integrate and interoperate with multiple communication systems.

• Decentralized: As a decentralized tool, with no central point, the matrix can be hosted on different servers. The team leaders can business owners can have complete control over their data, which gives zero opportunity for the third party to peek-a-boo!

• Real-Time: Matrix is designed to function in real-time, which makes it an ideal tool for systems and workplaces that need an immediate exchange of data and media. And hence, it makes for an apt Instant Messaging tool as well.
  
  

A bit about Riot

Riot is a Matrix client that was built with an emphasis on usability and performance. Built on top of Matrix-react-SDK, this open-source tool allows teams to bridge beyond their borders. 

Uber, Samsung, United States Armed Forces, TADHack, W3F, and UpCloud, with Riot, you don’t have to juggle between different applications for communicating with different vendors, teams, suppliers, and networks. It bridges various services like IRC and Slack, and thus people using different tools can chat with you, while you use integrations and bots from the open-source Matrix ecosystem.

Here also, you are in complete control of shared messages, documents, files, and sensitive data, and private conservations are end-to-end encrypted so that you never have to compromise your team's business's privacy.

A bit about Mattermost

As a self-hosted Slack Alternative, Mattermost is a flexible messaging platform that enables highly secure team communication and collaboration. With Mattermost you can deploy faster by connecting files, people, and systems with workflow. The centralized DevOps communication platform can be used for secure integration with popular DevOps tools like bots, Git, CI, and CD. 

Many global companies like Uber are working better with Mattermost by connective tools, people, and automation across millions of users. This exclusive team chat app is employed for enterprise-grade security, scalability, and availability - all of which help team members and employees to work seamlessly with complaint systems and mobile security.

Why are we comparing Matrix/Riot and Mattermost?

If you’ve read the Troop Messenger blog before, you know how we’ve always been curious about our rivals. Exploring rival apps and similar team collaboration software helps us analyze office collaboration needs from a customer’s perspective. An unbiased analysis of our competitors leads us towards designing a better tool for our end-users - Troop Messenger- a better, cleaner, and more user-friendly chat alternative. Recently, we did an in-depth analysis of Rocket Chat and Zulip. This time we would like to focus on the well-known Mattermost, Riot, and Matrix.

Comparing the emerging leaders of office communication

Let’s dig deeper into comparing these office communication platforms and review what’s the big deal about them. To help you with the decision to choose between Matrix/Riot and Mattermost, you should know the key differences in using this new infrastructure:

1. Messaging Functionality

 Matrix

 With Matrix, you can create an open collaboration platform that is vibrant, independent, and continuously evolving. It maintains a complete conversation history and features end-to-end encryption of chats that are synchronized across all devices.

• Simple HTTP APIs for creating a chat room
• SDKs (iOS, Android, Web) for creating a chat room
• Direct chats and chatbots
• Conversations replicated over all participating servers
• Reach other users in the Global Matrix Ecosystem
• Complete with end-to-end encryption
• Synchronized conversation history
• Formatted messages
• Read receipts 

Rating: 4/5   

   Riot

 Riot is more than a simple chat platform and makes for a perfect team chat app whether you’re a team, a community, or a family. Whether you want to stay visible for attracting more members or stay flexible enough to gather users across different apps and entities, Riot is a good choice. Here, you can create private communities for grouping your rooms and filtering them. 

• One-to-one chats
• Big public chats
• Small private conversations
• Create chat rooms per topic, group, event
• Decide the level of access control
• Decide the visibility of history
• Create your own private communities

Rating: 3.5/5 

 Mattermost

 Mattermost is unarguably one of the fastest-growing messaging platforms designed for DevOps. Uber and the US army use Mattermost for handling over 70,000 simultaneous users who send hundreds of messages every second. With a highly available setup, you can avoid outages and track your system health with various performance monitoring tools.

• Organized conversations in channels
• Scalable messaging
• Fully searchable message history
• 1-on-1 and group messaging
• Multi-language support
• Private/encrypted direct messages
• Emoji and rich Markdown formatting

Rating: 4.5/5 

Verdict: 

Mattermost’s Messaging Functionality > Riot-Matrix’s Messaging Functionality

• When it comes to messaging functionality, Mattermost winds over Riot-Matrix. Whether it be scalable messaging or organized conversation, Mattermost leads
• Riot-Matrix, which are inter dependable on each other, support big public chats, but they lack features like multi-language support and Markdown formatting.

2. Voice and Video Conferencing

 Matrix

With the advent of WebRTC, Matrix developers acquired the ability to create a robust platform for exchanging high-quality video and voice calling. If you want to build VoIP into your application or wish to expose your current VoIP application to a wide audience, then building on SDK Matrix and bridges should be a brainer.

Matriz is a decentralized conversation store instead of a messaging protocol. Hence, once you send a Matrix message, it is replicated over all servers and sent among servers participating in a given conversation.

• Internet of Things communication
• VoIP/WebRTC signaling (voice and video)
• Integration with Jitsi for multi-party video chats
• 3D Video Calling
• Group conversations
• Read receipts
• Typing notifications
• Presence

 Rating: 4/5

  Riot

With Riot, you can make one-touch video calls, and voice calls, and send audio notes on all platforms. The audio quality is decent enough for workplace communication.

• Respond to calls natively (as you respond to phone calls)
• Share links with users during conference calls
• External users can join video conferences via links and their browsers

Rating: 3.5/5 

 Mattermost

Mattermost supports different third-party videos, screenshots, and audio via plugins is planned. There are also plugins like Cisco WebEx Meetings supported on a self-hosted on-premise solution.

• Video call with screen sharing
• Audio call with screen sharing
• Invite team members to a Zoom call
• One-on-one calls based on the WebRTC protocol
• Third-party plugins like Zoom, Skype, BigBlueButton
• Integration with Jitsi, Kopano, SIP PBX, and appear.in

Rating: 4/5

Verdict:

Riot-Matrix’s Voice & Video Conferencing > Mattermost’s Voice & Video Conferencing

• Matrix, as a decentralized conversation store, leads in this context, all thanks to VoIP/WebRTC signaling for voice and video.

• Mattermost doesn’t support options to respond to voice & video calls natively (as you respond to phone calls).

3. Integration 

 Matrix

 Matrix is definitely the boss when it comes to integration. With bridges, bots, and Widgets, there’s a lot that can be done. Where Bridges link discussions across various networks, Widgets embed third-party tools in the chatbox, and Bots interact with third-party apps directly from the chat.

• Read and Write to Channels outside Matrix (Slack, Gitter, and IRC)
• Bots to sit in channels and listen & respond to commands (GitHub, Guggy, Giphy, and RSS Bot, Travis CI).
• Widgets for a full-blown interactive matrix room (Jitsi, Etherpad, and Grafana)

Rating: 5/5 

        Riot

 Same as Matrix, Riot also allows interaction with other applications and services directly from your rooms. Since Riot is built on Matrix, anyone can easily and effortlessly develop their own integrations as well.

• Bots like Giphy and Google Images to help with tasks like searching
• Embed widgets within the chat rooms for collaboration on documents
• Stickers addition from ever-growing sticker packs
• In a Riot chat room, add a bridge to transparently talk with external app users like Slack (without even leaving Riot).

Rating: 4.5/5 

Mattermost

When it comes to integration, Mattermost definitely rules. The powerful integration features can facilitate the teams to work faster and do more within a single platform.

• DevOps integration set
• Custom slash commands
• Incoming and outgoing webhooks
• Plugins and extensions
• Robust API library
• Bots and developer toolkit
• OAuth 2.0 applications

Rating: 4/5

Verdict:

Riot-Matrix Integration > Mattermost Integration

• When it comes to integration, Matrix-Riot is definitely the boss. Matrix-Riot bots interact with third-party apps directly from the chat. In both these tools, you can add the bridge to transparently talk with external app users like Slack.
• Mattermost allows DevOps Integration, plugins, and extensions, but doesn’t support bridging features like Matrix-Riot.

4. File Sharing

 Matrix

• Cloud file sharing and Synchronous Editing
• Share, view, and receive files
• Encrypted file sharing

Rating: 4/5

 
   Riot 

• Share, view, and receive files in any conversation
• Search for files in the file panel.
• Drag and drop the option for quick file sharing

Rating: 4/5

 
Mattermost

• File, image, and link sharing
• Build powerful workflows
• Share system feeds in channels

Rating: 4/5

Verdict:

Riot-Matrix File Sharing = Mattermost File Sharing

• It’s a tie. Both Riot-Matrix & Mattermost support easy and user-friendly file sharing across devices.

5. Security

Matrix

Matrix’s security is strengthened with the Double Ratchet Algorithm that’s made effective by Signal and extended to support the encryption to matrix rooms that contain hundreds of devices.

• End-to-End data encryption via Meglom and Olm cryptographic ratchets
• The only recipient can access or decrypt a message
• Warnings for logins from unexpected devices

Rating: 3.5/5

   Riot

If you are using Riot for team communication, be sure that no one else can peek into or eavesdrop on your conversations. Even the server admins cannot access chat since it uses the best end-to-end encryption available.

• End-to-End data encryption
• No access to the third party for shared data, not even server admins
• Secure key backup for recovering the encrypted data
• Double-factor authentication
• Highlights when the account is compromised

Rating: 3.5/5

 
Mattermost

Mattermost clients have the freedom to keep complete control over their data. From e-compliance reporting to enforcing multi-factor authentication, Mattermost guarantees security in the best manner possible:

• eDiscovery and compliance reporting
• Custom terms of service
• Data retention policies
• AD/LDAP authentication
• AD/LDAP Group sync
• SAML 2.0 single sign-on
• Database management tools
• Multi-factor authentication
• Performance monitoring

Rating: 4.5/5 

Verdict:

Mattermost Security > Riot-Matrix Security

• Mattermost is an undisputed winner since it guarantees security through features like AD/LDAP authentication & SAML 2.0 single sign-on.
• Riot-Matrix provides End-to-End data encryption via cryptographic ratchets but fails to compete with Matermost’s Multi-factor authentication.

6. Supporting devices

  Matrix

The best way to use Matrix features is by using the Riot Web client within the browser. The Riot Web client is then configured by default in order to connect it with the home server of matrix.org.

 
Rating: 3/5

    Riot

• Browser: Launch Riot right in your browser; Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome 
• Desktop: Download the application on your personal computer
• App Store: Supported on iOS 11+ v1.25.1, 10.12+ v4.3.
• Play Store: Supported on Android 7.0+ v1.25.1
• F-droid: Version 0.9.9 (40090900)

Rating: 4.5/5 

 Mattermost

• Mac: Supported on 10.12+ v4.3.2
• iOS: Supported on iOS 11+ v1.25.1
• Android: Supported on Android 7.0+ v1.25.1
• Windows: Supported on Windows 7+ v4.3.2
• Linux: Supported on Ubuntu 16.04+ v4.3.2

Rating: 4.5/5 

Verdict:

Mattermost Supporting Devices > Riot-Matrix Supporting Devices

• In the context of Supporting Devices, Mattermost has an upper hand over Riot-Matrix. It’s available across multiple platforms.
• Matrix is chiefly available as Riot’s web client, meanwhile, Riot can be accessed through Browser, App Store, and Play Store.

7. Pricing

Matrix 

By registering an account on matrix.org, you can use Matrix for free, which is maintained by a non-profit Matrix.org Foundation.

Rating: 4/5

 
  Riot

• Riot is open-source and it’s also free, for everyone, and forever. You can use Riot free of cost, without even having to compromise your data and privacy.
• Premium service is available from Modular.im, with plans starting from $1.50 per active user per month to

Rating: 4.5/5

Mattermost

• Enterprise E10: $3.25 per user per month, suitable for small-scale companies.
• Enterprise E20: $8.50 per user per month, suitable for high-trust enterprises and organizations

Rating: 3.5/5

Verdict:

Riot-Matrix Pricing> Mattermost Pricing

• When it comes to pricing, Riot-Matrix is the cheapest office collaboration tool. Riot/Matrix is free, and you can also upgrade to premium plans.
• Mattermost sure offers value for money. It’s a great tool for large enterprises. But if you have a limited budget, Riot/Matrix is undoubtedly the cheapest solution.

Key Takeaways

If you want to be in more control of your company’s security, my advice would be to go with Riot or Matrix.

Matrix and Riot are the perfect choices if your employees need to communicate with vendors or stakeholders using chat apps other than Matrix (Slack, Trello, etc.) They can literally communicate with them without being forced to install the same application.

If you want to be in more control of your company’s data, my advice would be to stick to Mattermost.

Mattermost’s self-hosted platform offers unmatched control over data, legal compliance, and privacy. If data control is your team’s priority, Mattermost must be the solution, for it provides full access to source codes, libraries, and server APIs, without any monitoring by a third-party tool.

If your team’s virtual workplace priority is an intuitive user interface with an advanced feature stack, you can try Troop Messenger. 

While Riot, Matrix, and Mattermost offer efficiency and agility through modern communication, Troop Messenger can provide additional internal security with features like ‘Finger Print Access’ and ‘Passcode Security Pin.’

Troop Messenger can be a good pick if you prefer an easy-to-understand messaging platform with simple navigation.

Conclusion

When intellectual minds, with brilliant ambitions, work towards a common goal, great things are bound to happen. But, no great thing is achieved without a team effort, and for an effective team effort, office collaboration tools are an indispensable component.

With the right tools, employees and team members are able to complement each other’s weaknesses, and strengths, and ultimately become unstoppable! Not only are these tools designed to reduce the need for extraneous meetings but also for providing faster access to media, files, and documents to make communication efficient.

If you too have given thought about adopting a team communication platform, I’m sure you’ve already considered collaboration giants like Slack, HipChat, and Skype. All three of these platforms have been the biggest players in the office collaboration field, and with great reasons - similar functions with quirky differences.

We’ve all been loyalists to Slack, and to some extent, Skype as well, but this winter Let’s try Riot, Matrix, and Mattermost and see what might be different. It’s always great to change things once in a while!