Mattermost Cloud Alternative self-hosted Mattermost on MassiveGRID PaaS
Mattermost sells its Professional and Enterprise tiers as prepaid annual seat licences and offers a single-tenant cloud only for Enterprise; self-hosting is its default model. The free edition on MassiveGRID PaaS installs in one click with its database and file storage, in your region, billed for the server rather than per seat.
Mattermost on MassiveGRID PaaS installs in one click in New York, London, Frankfurt or Singapore, costs about $59.04 a month for the Starter configuration, a Mattermost server (2 GiB) and a Database (1 GiB), and starts with a 14-day free trial. See the sizing table.
The install button opens the MassiveGRID PaaS dashboard with Mattermost pre-selected. Sign up without a card, name the environment, pick a region, and the package installs in a few minutes.
Why teams leave Mattermost Cloud and seat licences
Mattermost's pricing page, checked on 1 November 2026, publishes no per-seat price: Professional, Enterprise and Enterprise Advanced are prepaid annual seat licences quoted by sales, with mid-term growth bought as quarterly true-forward seats, and the only cloud offering is Mattermost Cloud Enterprise, a single-tenant service for the Enterprise tier. Teams that want hosted Mattermost at a smaller scale, or a price that does not grow with headcount, do not find it there.
The second reason is that self-hosting is Mattermost's own default: the page describes each server as needing its own licence and a high-availability setup as one server. For a team that was going to self-host anyway, the question is only where, and the answer that bills by the server rather than by the seat is the one that scales with hiring.
What the paid tiers add is real: compliance exports, vendor-certified high availability, SSO integrations and a support contract. Teams that need them should buy a licence, and can still run it on the environment described here.
What you get on MassiveGRID PaaS instead
The Mattermost package on MassiveGRID PaaS, built on Virtuozzo Application Platform (formerly Jelastic), installs the free edition with its database and file storage and a certificate, in New York, London, Frankfurt or Singapore. No seat count: the server is billed for the cloudlets it uses, files for the gigabytes they occupy. Group calls run on the server up to about 50 concurrent participants per Mattermost's own figure.
The Mattermost hosting page describes the package; the Slack replacement post prices a 200-person team, and the requirements guide covers licensing and sizing.
| Mattermost Cloud or seat licence | Self-hosted free edition here |
|---|---|
| Annual seat licence, price on request | One server billed by the cloudlet-hour; users unlimited |
| Cloud only for Enterprise, single-tenant | Any team size, your own environment |
| Mattermost's hosting (Cloud Enterprise) | New York, London, Frankfurt or Singapore |
| Vendor-run backups (Cloud) | Database Backup/Restore add-on, files on persistent storage, environment clones |
| Compliance exports, certified HA (paid tiers) | Not in the free edition; a Mattermost licence adds them to the same server |
| Vendor support contract | Platform support for the infrastructure; Mattermost community for the application |
What the two routes cost side by side
Mattermost publishes no seat price, so the comparison is between an annual licence quoted for your headcount and a server: about $59.04 a month for the Starter configuration (a few dozen users), $118.08 for Standard (a few hundred) and $226.32 for Production with two server nodes behind a load balancer, with no user component. The sizing table below has the three configurations and the pricing calculator prices others; figures are ceilings before volume discounts and exclude the operations a vendor-hosted service absorbs.
How to move from Mattermost Cloud or another Mattermost
Export from the old server. Mattermost's bulk export produces the teams, channels, users and posts; attachments come with it. From Slack, the Slack export is imported the same way.
Install the package on the trial, import the export, attach a domain with the Let's Encrypt add-on so the mobile apps and push notifications work, and set SMTP for notifications.
Run both for a week, point SSO and integrations (GitLab, deploy hooks, alerts) at the new server, then retire the old one.
Set file retention and the backup schedule before the history grows; files are the cost that increases, and a retention policy is set in the system console.
What Mattermost costs to run here
Three starting configurations, sized in cloudlets (1 cloudlet = 128 MiB RAM + 400 MHz CPU) and priced at the published rate of $0.003372 per cloudlet-hour, or $2.46 per cloudlet-month.
| Configuration | Topology | Cloudlets | Est. per month |
|---|---|---|---|
| StarterUp to a few dozen users | Mattermost server (16 cloudlets, 2 GiB), Database (8 cloudlets, 1 GiB) | 24 | $59.04 |
| StandardA few hundred users | Mattermost server (32 cloudlets, 4 GiB), Database (16 cloudlets, 2 GiB) | 48 | $118.08 |
| ProductionLarge teams with heavy file sharing | NGINX load balancer (4 cloudlets, 512 MiB), 2 × Mattermost server (32 cloudlets, 4 GiB each), Database (24 cloudlets, 3 GiB) | 92 | $226.32 |
Estimates assume the environment averages the listed cloudlets around the clock; billing is hourly, vertical auto-scaling lowers the figure when the application is idle, and volume discounts apply as usage grows. Disk and external traffic are billed per gigabyte on top. No licence fee applies to the package. Price a different topology or a working-hours schedule in the PaaS pricing calculator.
Mattermost Cloud Enterprise and seat licences vs self-hosted Mattermost on MassiveGRID PaaS vs a VPS
Mattermost Cloud Enterprise and seat licences figures were read from the vendor's page on 1 November 2026; re-check them before relying on them.
| Aspect | Mattermost on MassiveGRID PaaS | Mattermost Cloud Enterprise and seat licences | A plain VPS |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly cost | About $59.04 (Starter) to $226.32 (Production), before discounts; the free edition has no seat fee | Not published; quoted by sales. Professional and Enterprise are prepaid annual seat licences; Cloud Enterprise is a single-tenant hosted option for the Enterprise tier | A 2 to 4 GB server's monthly price; plus your time |
| What you manage | The application inside the containers (updates, configuration); the platform runs the infrastructure, scaling and the 100% uptime SLA | Cloud Enterprise: Mattermost runs it; seat licences: you run the server | Everything: OS, runtime, database, TLS, backups, upgrades |
| Limits and metering | Unlimited users on the free edition; group calls about 50 concurrent users per server per Mattermost | Seats licensed annually, grown by quarterly true-forward purchases | No metering; limited by the server's size |
| Scaling | Vertical by the cloudlet, automatic and without restart; horizontal on a trigger behind the platform's load balancer | Cloud Enterprise: Mattermost's; self-hosted licence: your server | Resize the server, usually with a reboot; no horizontal scaling without your own load balancer |
| Data location | New York, London, Frankfurt or Singapore, chosen at install; data stays there | Cloud Enterprise: Mattermost's hosting; otherwise your server | Wherever the VPS is; one server, one location |
| Backups | Database Backup/Restore and Backup Storage add-ons on a schedule, environment clone for rehearsals | Cloud Enterprise: Mattermost's; otherwise yours | Your own cron jobs and off-server copies |
| Availability | 100% uptime SLA, nodes on separate hosts, failed containers restarted or migrated | Per contract | Single server; the provider's hardware SLA only |
| Lock-in | Standard JPS manifest and root access; export the manifest or move the containers at any time | Bulk export tooling exists; compliance exports on paid tiers | None; you own the server |
Where Mattermost Cloud Enterprise and seat licences is the better choice: Mattermost's paid tiers are the right answer when the team needs compliance exports, high availability certified by the vendor, or support with a contract behind it; the server can still be the package here, since self-hosted is Mattermost's default model.
How to deploy Mattermost here
Three steps and a few minutes of waiting. No servers to provision, no configuration files to edit.
Open the installer
Click Install with free trial. The MassiveGRID PaaS dashboard opens with the Mattermost package pre-selected.
Sign up or sign in
The free 14-day trial needs no credit card. Existing customers sign in with their dashboard credentials.
Choose region and deploy
Name the environment, pick New York, London, Frankfurt or Singapore, and confirm. The platform builds every node and hands you the live URL and credentials.
Mattermost guides from the MassiveGRID blog
Leaving Mattermost Cloud or seat licences: questions
Team chat priced by the server
Install the free edition of Mattermost on MassiveGRID PaaS in one click, import from Slack or another Mattermost, and run it with no seat licence, with a 14-day free trial and no credit card.
Install Mattermost with free trial