Mattermost Entry: Free Tier Setup and Limits Guide

Mattermost Entry is a free tier designed for small teams evaluating Mattermost before committing to paid plans. It includes the full feature set of Mattermost's IME (Integrated Mobile Experience) but enforces hard usage caps on messages, boards, playbooks, calls, and AI features to keep costs down.

If you're running a team of 25-50 people and need a self-hosted chat platform with the full Mattermost feature set--but want to avoid licensing costs during evaluation--Entry is worth understanding. This guide walks you through what Entry is, how to deploy it, and when you've outgrown it.

What is Mattermost Entry?

Mattermost Entry is the free offering in Mattermost's licensing model. Unlike Mattermost Team Edition (which stopped receiving updates), Entry ships with every advanced feature from the IME product line but caps your usage to keep the tier free and sustainable.

Entry targets teams evaluating Mattermost before purchasing Professional or Enterprise. It runs on your own infrastructure, gives you full control over data location and retention, and includes community support only (no SLA). On GitHub, Mattermost has 39.1K stars, 9.0K forks, and 23,316 commits, reflecting active development across the entire product.

The philosophy behind Entry: give small teams and evaluators access to modern Mattermost without asking them to pay upfront, but prevent free usage from scaling infinitely. The limits are generous enough for pilot deployments but tight enough to encourage upgrade when you grow past 25-50 people.

Entry vs Team Edition: Key Differences

Mattermost Team Edition was the legacy free tier, but it's no longer maintained. Entry is the spiritual successor, with critical differences.

Team Edition is frozen at Mattermost v5.x and receives no updates, security patches, or new features. If you're still running Team Edition, you're on an unsupported version. Entry, by contrast, tracks current Mattermost releases and gets all security updates and feature improvements included in the IME product line.

Feature-wise, Entry includes everything Team Edition had plus IME additions: advanced user management, SAML/OAuth integration, compliance and audit logging, playbooks, and boards. The tradeoff is the hard limits. Entry caps you at 10,000 total messages, 1,000 board cards, 5 playbook runs per month, 40 minutes of calls per month, and 250 AI queries per month. Team Edition had no hard limits--but you get no updates, either.

For support, Entry relies on community forums and Mattermost's GitHub issues. You do not get commercial support. Professional and paid tiers unlock email support and SLAs.

Migrating from Team Edition to Entry is straightforward: upgrade in place to Mattermost v11+ and apply the Entry license key. No data is lost. Rollback is possible if needed by reverting your license.

Infrastructure Prerequisites and Sizing

Entry runs anywhere Mattermost runs, but small teams have minimal requirements. You need:

• A Linux server or container orchestrator (Docker, Kubernetes, bare metal)
• 2 CPU cores minimum (4 cores recommended for 25-50 users)
• 2 GB RAM minimum (4 GB recommended)
• PostgreSQL 12+ database (MySQL 5.7+ is supported but PostgreSQL is standard)
• 10 GB storage minimum (more if you allow file uploads; adjust for your retention policy)
• A valid domain name with HTTPS support (required for secure messaging)
• Outbound HTTPS for integrations, webhooks, and calls features (if used)

For a 25-50 person team on Entry, a single $20/month VPS with 2 cores, 4 GB RAM, and 50 GB SSD is sufficient. If you use Opsily's managed Mattermost hosting instead, infrastructure sizing is handled for you, and you get automatic backups, failover, and scaling without ops overhead.

Database sizing is the main variable. Entry's 10K message cap translates to roughly 50-100 MB of data (depending on attachment size), so a small PostgreSQL instance works fine. If you store file attachments, budget 100 GB to be safe.

Network-wise, ensure your Mattermost server has stable outbound access to the internet if you plan to use Mattermost's call features (powered by Jitsi or an external provider), or any third-party integrations. For air-gapped deployments, disable these features.

Step-by-Step: Deploying Mattermost Entry

Deployment depends on your infrastructure. Here's the standard path for self-hosted Entry:

1. Pre-Deployment Planning: Decide on your infrastructure (single server, container cluster, or managed hosting). Choose your database: PostgreSQL is recommended. Create a dedicated Linux user for Mattermost (mattermost:mattermost). Plan your domain URL and TLS certificate (use Let's Encrypt for free).

2. Set Up PostgreSQL: Create a database and user for Mattermost. Example:

CREATE DATABASE mattermost;
CREATE USER mmuser WITH PASSWORD 'securepassword';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON mattermost TO mmuser;

Note the connection string: postgres://mmuser:securepassword@localhost:5432/mattermost

3. Install Mattermost: Download the latest Mattermost v11+ binary from mattermost.com/install or use the Docker image. For Docker:

docker run -d --name mattermost \
  -e DB_CONNECTION_STRING="postgres://mmuser:securepassword@postgres:5432/mattermost" \
  -e MM_SERVICESETTINGS_SITEURL="https://your-domain.com" \
  -p 8065:8065 \
  mattermost/mattermost-team-edition:latest

For bare-metal, extract the binary, set file permissions, and use systemd or supervisor to manage the process.

4. Configure the Server: Access the Mattermost web interface via your domain on port 8065. Create the admin account during initial setup. In System Console > Advanced > License, upload or apply your Entry license key (free from Mattermost's website after registration).

5. Enable TLS: Configure your reverse proxy (nginx, Apache, or Caddy) to handle HTTPS and forward traffic to Mattermost. Redirect all HTTP to HTTPS. Install a TLS certificate using Let's Encrypt and certbot.

6. Verify Deployment: Log in as admin. Create a test team and channel. Invite users and send test messages. Check that the Entry license is recognized in System Console > About. Confirm database connection by checking System Console > Database.

7. Backup Strategy: Configure automated PostgreSQL backups. Export your Mattermost configuration. Store backups outside the server (S3, NAS, etc.).

For step-by-step guidance on self-hosted setup including cost analysis, see Opsily's self-hosted deployment guide, which covers infrastructure choices in detail.

Configuring Entry: Understanding Hard Limits

Entry's hard limits are the biggest operational constraint you'll face. Here's what each limit means:

10,000 Messages Total: Across all channels and direct messages, Entry allows exactly 10,000 messages. Once you hit this cap, users can still view existing messages but cannot post new ones. The counter resets monthly or when you upgrade to a paid tier. For a 25-person team, this averages 400 messages per person per month--or 13 per day--which is tight for active teams. If your team averages 50+ messages per day across all channels, you will exhaust this within weeks.

1,000 Board Cards: Mattermost Boards is a Trello-like feature. Entry allows 1,000 cards total. For small pilot projects, this is adequate. For ongoing project management, it may become insufficient if you run multiple concurrent boards.

5 Playbook Runs Per Month: Playbooks are Mattermost's incident response and workflow automation feature. 5 runs per month is extremely restrictive (less than 2 per week). If you use playbooks for incident response, you will quickly hit this limit in any production setting.

40 Minutes of Calls Per Month: Mattermost's built-in video/audio calling is capped at 40 minutes monthly. That is less than 10 minutes per week for a team. Any team that relies on in-Mattermost calls will exhaust this immediately. Most teams use Zoom, Google Meet, or another external calling platform instead.

250 AI Queries Per Month: If you enable Mattermost's AI assistant (for summarization, code analysis, etc.), you get 250 queries. For a 25-person team, that's 10 queries per person per month--useless for regular AI feature adoption.

Managing Limits Operationally: Mattermost displays usage counters in System Console > Usage. Set up a monthly review cadence to check progress against caps. When you approach limits, notify your team to reduce unnecessary messages, archive inactive channels, or delete completed boards. Plan your upgrade timing: if you know you will need paid features after a 3-month pilot, start the transition process before usage limits bite.

Migrating from Team Edition to Entry

If you are currently running Team Edition (Mattermost v5.x or older), upgrading to Entry is straightforward and requires no data loss.

1. Pre-Upgrade Backup: Back up your PostgreSQL database and export your Mattermost configuration directory.

2. Upgrade Mattermost: Stop the Team Edition server. Download Mattermost v11+ (the latest stable release). Extract it to a new directory or update in place. Restart the Mattermost service.

3. Apply Entry License: Register for a free Mattermost Entry license at mattermost.com. Go to System Console > Advanced > License and upload the Entry license key. Restart the server once more to apply the license.

4. Verify: Log in and confirm the Entry license is active in System Console > About. All your data from Team Edition persists--channels, users, messages, and files.

5. Rollback Plan: If issues arise, stop Mattermost, restore your v5.x binary and database backup, and restart. Rollback is safe and reversible.

Version compatibility: Entry supports upgrading from Mattermost v5.x and later. Very old versions (v3-v4) may require a staged upgrade (v4 -> v8 -> v11). Consult Mattermost's upgrade guide for your specific version.

Best Practices and Scaling with Entry

Running Entry at scale (toward the 50-user limit) requires discipline to avoid hitting usage caps.

Message Hygiene: Create focused channels by topic, not by person. Set channel descriptions and purposes so users post in the right place, reducing cross-channel duplication. Archive inactive channels monthly to keep the channel list clean. Use threads for long conversations (each threaded reply counts as a message, so threads use your quota faster than separate channels).

User Provisioning: Use SAML or OAuth (supported in Entry) to sync users from your identity provider (Okta, Azure AD, Google Workspace). Deactivate unused accounts to keep your user count accurate. Assign permissions by team/channel, not individual.

Monitoring Usage: Create a dashboard or weekly report showing message count progress, board card usage, and playbook runs. Share this with your team so everyone understands the constraints. When usage approaches limits, escalate a discussion about upgrading.

Backup and Disaster Recovery: Automate PostgreSQL backups (nightly is standard). Test restores monthly to confirm backups work. Store backups off-server (cloud storage, NAS). Document your runbook for server recovery.

Scaling Beyond Entry: As your team grows or pilot features gain traction, Entry will become the constraint, not infrastructure. When that happens, moving to a paid tier (Professional or Enterprise) is the solution, not adding more servers. Evaluate Opsily's managed hosting to remove the operational burden of scaling self-hosted Mattermost.

When to Upgrade Beyond Entry

Entry is a pilot tier. Your job is to know when to graduate.

Upgrade triggers: If you consistently exceed 400 messages per person per month, you have outgrown Entry's message cap. If you enable playbooks for incident response and need more than 5 runs per month (almost certain for on-call teams), upgrade. If you need mobile apps with push notifications, consider upgrading--Entry supports mobile but does not include premium push features. If you need compliance certifications (HIPAA, SOC 2, etc.) for customer data, Entry does not provide audit reports; paid tiers do. If you require HA failover or automated scaling, paid tiers include those; Entry is single-node.

Choosing Your Upgrade Path: Mattermost has three paid tiers above Entry: Professional ($300/month), Enterprise ($900/month), and Enterprise Advanced ($2000+/month). Professional adds things like authentication plugins, unlimited messages, and email support. Enterprise adds HA failover, advanced compliance, and datadog integration. Enterprise Advanced targets highly regulated industries and large deployments.

For most teams outgrowing Entry, Professional is the right fit. It removes all usage caps and adds team support. For comparison with Slack and other messaging platforms, check Mattermost's comparison page.

Alternatively, evaluate Opsily's managed Mattermost hosting. It eliminates the infrastructure and upgrade planning entirely--you focus on configuration, we handle deployment, backups, security patches, and scaling. This is especially valuable if Entry worked as a pilot but your team lacks ops bandwidth to run self-hosted Mattermost long-term.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between Mattermost Entry and Mattermost Team Edition?

Team Edition is legacy and no longer maintained. Entry is the modern free tier, receiving all security updates and new IME features, but with hard usage caps. Team Edition has no cap but zero updates and no future support.

Can I run Mattermost Entry in production?

Yes, you can run Entry in production for small teams (25-50 users) during evaluation. For long-term production use at scale, upgrade to a paid tier. Entry's usage caps and community-only support make it unsuitable for mission-critical workloads.

What happens when I hit the 10,000 message limit?

Users cannot post new messages once the limit is reached. Existing messages remain visible. The counter resets when you upgrade to a paid tier or on a monthly cycle (if configured). Notify your team when approaching the limit so they can plan for an upgrade.

Can I host Mattermost Entry on Kubernetes?

Yes. Use the official Mattermost Helm chart or community charts. Entry licenses work identically on Kubernetes as on single servers. Ensure your PostgreSQL database is highly available and externally managed (not inside the cluster) for safety.

How do I back up Mattermost Entry data?

Back up your PostgreSQL database using pg_dump or automated snapshots. Also export the Mattermost configuration directory (/mattermost/config by default). Store backups off-server. For managed backups and failover, use a hosted solution like Opsily.

Is Mattermost Entry compliant with GDPR, HIPAA, or other regulations?

Mattermost Entry supports GDPR (data residency and retention policies). It does not include audit logs or compliance reporting needed for HIPAA or SOC 2. For regulated workloads, upgrade to Professional or Enterprise, which include audit trails and compliance features.

How long should I run Entry as a pilot?

3-6 months is typical. Use that time to validate adoption, identify integrations you need, and plan your upgrade path. Document usage patterns so you can size the paid tier correctly.

The Bottom Line

Mattermost Entry is a solid free tier for evaluating self-hosted team chat before committing to licensing. It ships with full IME features but enforces usage caps to keep the tier free--a fair tradeoff for pilot teams. The hard limits on messages, playbooks, and calls are real constraints that you will notice by month two or three if your team is active.

Deploy Entry in a few hours using Docker or a Linux binary. Monitor your usage monthly and plan your upgrade 1-2 months before hitting caps. If self-hosted infrastructure feels like operational overhead, move to Opsily's managed hosting instead--same software, no ops burden.

Start with the Opsily Mattermost hosting hub to explore your options.