Rocket.Chat

Rocket.Chat is an open-source communications platform for team chat and customer messaging. Organisations can self-host it to run secure internal collaboration - channels, direct messages, threads, file sharing, audio and video calls - and to handle customer conversations from multiple channels in one place. Its focus is control over data. Government agencies, defence organisations, healthcare providers, banks and companies in regulated industries often need communications to stay on infrastructure they own. Rocket.Chat can be deployed on-premises, in a private cloud or in air-gapped environments, and supports end-to-end encryption, granular permissions, compliance features and data retention controls. That makes it a common choice where cloud messaging services are not permitted. Two use cases are combined in one product. For internal collaboration it works as a self-hosted alternative to Slack or Microsoft Teams. For external communication, its omnichannel capabilities bring in conversations from website live chat, email, WhatsApp, SMS and social messaging so support teams can respond from the same platform. Rocket.Chat has also embraced federation through the Matrix protocol, allowing secure communication between separate organisations' servers, which is valuable for inter-agency and cross-company collaboration. The open-source edition is free to self-host, with paid editions adding enterprise features, scalability and support. An apps marketplace and APIs allow integrations and custom extensions, and the platform can be white-labelled and embedded in other products. The trade-offs mirror those of all self-hosted collaboration tools: deployment and maintenance require IT resources, and the user experience and integration ecosystem are less extensive than leading commercial cloud products, which can affect adoption among employees used to them. Alternatives include Mattermost, a close open-source competitor focused on mission-critical operations; Element and other Matrix-based clients for federated encrypted messaging; Zulip for topic-threaded open-source chat; Slack and Microsoft Teams for cloud collaboration; and Chatwoot for open-source customer support. Choose Rocket.Chat when you need self-hosted chat that can cover internal teams and customer conversations with full data control.