Question 1

What is Enclessa?

Accepted Answer

Enclessa is a hosted collaboration platform for organisations, combining team messaging with channels and threads, end-to-end encrypted direct messages, video calls with screen sharing, and optional modules for task boards, GitHub sync, time tracking and personnel records. It is hosted in the European Union and licensed as open source under AGPL-3.0.

Question 2

Do I need to install or host anything to use Enclessa?

Accepted Answer

No. Enclessa is a hosted service: you create a workspace, it is reachable at your-team.enclessa.app, and we run the infrastructure. Self-hosting remains available on the Enterprise plan for organisations with air-gap or data-residency requirements.

Question 3

Where is Enclessa hosted and who is the seller?

Accepted Answer

Enclessa is hosted in a single European Union region and sold by a company established in Germany, so EU VAT applies and is shown separately on every invoice.

Question 4

Is Enclessa open source?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Enclessa is licensed under AGPL-3.0, which means the source can be reviewed, and an organisation that needs to run it itself is licensed to do so.

Question 5

Which parts of Enclessa are end-to-end encrypted?

Accepted Answer

Direct messages and group direct messages are always end-to-end encrypted using MLS per RFC 9420. Channels are managed, meaning the server can read them, which is what makes full-text search, retention policies and compliance export possible.

Question 6

Can several organisations share one account?

Accepted Answer

Yes. One account can hold a membership in several organisations and switch between them from the sidebar without signing in again, seeing in each exactly what that membership allows and nothing of the others.

Question 7

Which clients does Enclessa have?

Accepted Answer

The web application is available today and a macOS desktop application is in development. Mobile applications for iOS and Android are planned and not yet available.

Question 8

How much does Enclessa cost?

Accepted Answer

Enclessa is priced per active member per month, on four plans that differ by which modules are included. Bots, guests and deactivated accounts are not counted as seats. See the pricing page for the current tiers.

Question 9

Are Enclessa direct messages end-to-end encrypted?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Direct messages and group direct messages are always end-to-end encrypted using MLS as specified in RFC 9420. There is no administrator override and no server-side copy of the plaintext.

Question 10

Can administrators read channel messages in Enclessa?

Accepted Answer

In managed channels the server can read messages, which is what makes full-text search, retention policies and compliance export possible. Whether an administrator may read them is a permission the organisation grants or withholds, and every access is written to the audit log. Direct messages are encrypted and cannot be read by anyone outside the conversation.

Question 11

Does Enclessa support threads and Markdown?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Replies collapse into threads with a dedicated thread inbox, and messages support full Markdown including tables, syntax-highlighted code blocks and LaTeX.

Question 12

Can I search messages in Enclessa?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Managed channels are indexed on the server with PostgreSQL full-text search, covering message text and text extracted from uploaded files, with modifiers such as in:, from:, before: and after:. Encrypted rooms are searched on your own device against a local encrypted index.

Question 13

What encryption does Enclessa use?

Accepted Answer

Enclessa uses MLS, the Messaging Layer Security protocol standardised by the IETF as RFC 9420, implemented with the OpenMLS library. Each device holds its own key and the server holds none.

Question 14

Can Enclessa or its hosting provider read my encrypted messages?

Accepted Answer

No. In end-to-end encrypted conversations the server stores only ciphertext, the group identifier, the epoch, the sending device and a timestamp. It has no key that can decrypt the content, so neither Enclessa nor a hosting provider nor anyone served with a request for the server can produce the plaintext.

Question 15

What is forward secrecy and does Enclessa have it?

Accepted Answer

Forward secrecy means that compromising a key today does not expose messages sent before it. Enclessa has it, and also post-compromise security, which means the conversation becomes secure again once a compromised device is removed and the group re-keys. Both properties come from MLS.

Question 16

What happens if I lose a device?

Accepted Answer

You remove it from your device list, which removes its leaf from every MLS group you are in and triggers a re-key, so the lost device can no longer decrypt anything sent afterwards. An encrypted key backup restores your history to a new device.

Question 17

Does Enclessa have video calls and screen sharing?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Enclessa includes one-to-one and group audio and video calls with screen sharing, in-call chat, reactions, raise hand, a lobby and host controls, built on LiveKit and started directly from a channel or conversation.

Question 18

Are Enclessa video calls encrypted?

Accepted Answer

All calls are encrypted in transit. In end-to-end encrypted rooms the media is additionally encrypted end to end, so the media server forwards streams it cannot decode.

Question 19

How many people can join a Enclessa call?

Accepted Answer

The system is designed and instrumented for fifty participants per media node, with scale-out beyond that as an operational step. That is a design target rather than a measured result.

Question 20

Can I record a Enclessa meeting?

Accepted Answer

Recording applies to managed rooms only and is not offered in end-to-end encrypted rooms, because recording would require decrypting the media outside the room. The recording pipeline accepts jobs today; delivery of finished recording files is still being completed.

Question 21

Does Enclessa include a kanban board?

Accepted Answer

Yes, as an optional module. Enclessa task boards are kanban boards owned by a team, using that team’s roles, with cards that link back to the conversation the work came from. An operator switches the module on per organisation.

Question 22

Do Enclessa boards need separate permissions?

Accepted Answer

No. A board inherits the roles of the team that owns it, so the people who can see the team’s channels are the people who can see its board, subject to the same permission bits.

Question 23

Can Enclessa boards replace Jira?

Accepted Answer

No, and they are not meant to. Enclessa boards deliberately have no dependencies, automation rules, cross-board views or reporting charts. They are for teams that want the work next to the conversation, not for portfolio management.

Question 24

Does Enclessa include time tracking?

Accepted Answer

Yes, as an optional module. Enclessa Time records attendance with breaks, project time against customers and projects, timesheets that are submitted and approved, absence against an entitlement ledger and an overtime balance.

Question 25

Can employees edit their own recorded time?

Accepted Answer

They can file a correction, which supersedes the original entry rather than replacing it, so both the original and the change remain visible. Once a period is approved and locked it stops moving until it is explicitly reopened.

Question 26

Does Enclessa Time store sickness reasons?

Accepted Answer

No. Sickness is recorded as an absence with no diagnosis field. A collaboration platform has no business holding medical detail, so there is nowhere to put it.

Question 27

Does Enclessa do shift planning?

Accepted Answer

No. The absence planner shows who is away and when; it does not schedule shifts or rotas, and that is a deliberate scope decision rather than a gap waiting to be filled.

Question 28

Does Enclessa include HR software?

Accepted Answer

Yes, as an optional module called People. It holds employee records, an organisational structure of units and positions, effective-dated employment history, governed documents with acknowledgements, self-service change requests, and onboarding and offboarding workflows.

Question 29

Does Enclessa do payroll?

Accepted Answer

No. Enclessa People holds the master data and the time records that payroll depends on, and exports them, but it does not calculate wages or make payments.

Question 30

Can a manager see their team members’ salaries in Enclessa?

Accepted Answer

Not unless the organisation grants that specific field. Permissions in Enclessa People resolve per field across seven roles, so a manager can be given their people’s records without their compensation.

Question 31

Can Enclessa People store records for people who do not use the platform?

Accepted Answer

Yes. An employee record exists independently of a login, so contractors, field staff and anyone else who never signs in still has a personnel file and an entry on the org chart.

Question 32

Does Enclessa integrate with GitHub?

Accepted Answer

Yes. The GitHub module syncs issues into Enclessa board cards, attaches pull requests to the card they close, and surfaces check results. Writing changes back to GitHub is a setting each organisation enables deliberately.

Question 33

Does Enclessa have an API?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Every capability is available over a documented OpenAPI surface, with bot accounts and personal access tokens scoped to specific operations, plus incoming webhooks and custom slash commands for lighter integrations.

Question 34

Can I install third-party apps in Enclessa?

Accepted Answer

Not today. The marketplace carries first-party modules — Boards, GitHub, Time and People — and nothing loads third-party code at runtime. A partner catalogue is planned but does not exist.

Question 35

Does Enclessa support single sign-on?

Accepted Answer

Not yet. Single sign-on through an external identity provider and SCIM user provisioning are planned enterprise work. Today accounts sign in with email and password, with multi-factor authentication for platform operators.

Question 36

Is Enclessa GDPR compliant?

Accepted Answer

Enclessa is built for GDPR: it is hosted in the European Union, sold by a German company, offers a data processing agreement, supports data-subject export, and provides retention rules and legal holds. Compliance is a property of how your organisation processes data rather than of a product, so Enclessa provides the controls and the processing agreement, and the lawful basis remains yours.

Question 37

Does Enclessa have ISO 27001 or SOC 2 certification?

Accepted Answer

No. Enclessa holds no compliance certifications today. The software is open source under AGPL-3.0, so the architecture can be reviewed directly, but that is not a substitute for a certification if your procurement requires one.

Question 38

Can Enclessa employees read my messages?

Accepted Answer

Not in encrypted conversations — the server holds no key for them. For managed channels, the platform control plane our operators use cannot read content at all: it is a separate identity restricted to metadata, and a continuous-integration check forbids it from importing any code that could read content. There is no impersonation feature.

Question 39

How does Enclessa keep one customer’s data away from another’s?

Accepted Answer

The organisation is asserted at a single choke point rather than at each call site, and a request for another organisation’s object returns not-found. A probe suite generated from the API document drives every operation across the boundary — 203 operations, all refused — and it runs in continuous integration so a regression fails the build.

Question 40

Can I get my data out of Enclessa?

Accepted Answer

Yes. An organisation can export everything the platform holds for it, the data model is documented, and the whole API is described by an OpenAPI document. The software is AGPL-3.0, so a self-hosted continuation is available on Enterprise.

Question 41

How do I report a security vulnerability in Enclessa?

Accepted Answer

Report it privately to the security contact rather than in a public issue, and you will get an acknowledgement and a timeline. Enterprise customers receive security advisories ahead of public disclosure.

Question 42

How does Enclessa count seats?

Accepted Answer

A seat is a person who is an active member of your organisation. Bot accounts, deactivated accounts and guests are not counted, so an integration or a departed colleague does not appear on the invoice.

Question 43

Is there a free trial of Enclessa?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Every plan starts with a 14-day trial of the full plan, and creating a workspace does not require a payment card.

Question 44

What happens when a trial ends without a subscription?

Accepted Answer

The organisation stops accepting new writes and becomes readable rather than being deleted, so nothing is lost while a purchase decision is being made. Your data is exportable throughout.

Question 45

Can I change plan or cancel later?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Plans change at any time, with the seat count reconciled on the next invoice, and a cancellation leaves you an export of everything the organisation holds.

Question 46

Which payment methods and currencies does Enclessa take?

Accepted Answer

Card, SEPA Direct Debit and iDEAL, billed in euro. The seller is established in Germany, so EU VAT applies and is shown separately on every invoice.

Question 47

Can I still self-host Enclessa?

Accepted Answer

Yes, on the Enterprise plan, and it is the right answer when data has to stay in a particular place or an installation has to run air-gapped. Enclessa is AGPL-3.0, so the source is available either way; what Enterprise adds is a licence to run it with support behind it.

Question 48

Is Enclessa hosted in the European Union?

Accepted Answer

Yes. The hosted service runs in a single European Union region, and the seller is established in Germany. There is no regional data residency choice within the hosted service; where a specific location is mandated, Enclessa is licensed for self-hosting on the Enterprise plan.

Question 49

Can a public body self-host Enclessa?

Accepted Answer

Yes, on the Enterprise plan. The software is AGPL-3.0 and the self-hosted release is the same release the hosted service runs, which is the right answer for air-gapped networks and strict residency mandates.

Question 50

Does Enclessa keep an audit log?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Administrative action is written to an audit log scoped to the organisation, and in the People module every document download is recorded with who took it and when.

Question 51

Can healthcare teams discuss patients in Enclessa?

Accepted Answer

Direct messages and group direct messages in Enclessa are end-to-end encrypted, so their content is not readable by the server or by us. Whether a particular use is permitted is a decision for your data protection officer, and it depends on your own processing agreement and risk assessment, not on a claim made on this page.

Question 52

Is Enclessa HIPAA or ISO 27001 certified?

Accepted Answer

No. Enclessa holds no compliance certifications today, and the security page says so plainly. What it offers instead is an architecture that can be inspected, because the software is open source under AGPL-3.0.

Question 53

Does Enclessa store why somebody is off sick?

Accepted Answer

No. Sickness is recorded in the Time module as an absence with no diagnosis field, so there is nowhere for a medical reason to be entered.

Question 54

What could Enclessa hand over if it were served with a legal request?

Accepted Answer

For end-to-end encrypted conversations: the ciphertext, the group identifier, the epoch number, the sending device and a timestamp. Enclessa holds no key that decrypts the content, so the plaintext cannot be produced. For managed channels the server can read the content, which is precisely why a firm puts client conversation in encrypted rooms.

Question 55

Can Enclessa track billable hours?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in the Time module. Hours are recorded against a customer, project and activity with billable rates, submitted for approval and then locked so an approved period stops changing.

Question 56

Does Enclessa support legal hold?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in the People module, where a hold blocks an erasure and states the reason it is blocking it. Retention rules are configured per organisation.

Question 57

How does Enclessa integrate with GitHub?

Accepted Answer

The GitHub module syncs issues into Enclessa board cards, attaches pull requests to the card they close, and surfaces check results on the card. Pushing changes back to GitHub is a setting each organisation enables deliberately. It requires the boards module.

Question 58

Can I build automation on top of Enclessa?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Enclessa exposes a documented OpenAPI surface, with bot accounts and personal access tokens scoped to specific operations, plus incoming webhooks and custom slash commands that call your own endpoint.

Question 59

Does Enclessa support GitLab or Jira?

Accepted Answer

Not today. GitHub is the only source-forge connector that exists. Anything else is reachable through incoming webhooks, custom slash commands or the API.

Question 60

Is Enclessa a Microsoft Teams alternative?

Accepted Answer

Yes, for messaging, video calls and the work around them. Enclessa does not replace the Office document suite or Teams telephony, so it is a Teams alternative for organisations whose priority is confidentiality, European hosting and an inspectable architecture rather than Office integration.

Question 61

Does Microsoft Teams have end-to-end encryption?

Accepted Answer

Microsoft documents end-to-end encryption for one-to-one Teams calls as a feature an administrator enables; channel and chat messages are documented as encrypted in transit and at rest rather than end to end. In Enclessa, direct and group direct messages are end-to-end encrypted with MLS by default and cannot be switched off.

Question 62

Can Enclessa replace Teams for a public authority?

Accepted Answer

For collaboration, often yes — that is the case the public sector page is written for. It cannot replace the Office document suite or a Teams-based phone system, so a migration usually keeps those and moves the conversation.

Question 63

Is there an open source alternative to Slack?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Enclessa is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and offers channels, threads, direct messages, video calls and search as a hosted service in the European Union, with end-to-end encrypted direct messages. Mattermost is another open-source option, oriented towards self-hosting.

Question 64

Does Slack have end-to-end encryption?

Accepted Answer

Slack does not offer end-to-end encryption of messages. Its Enterprise Key Management feature lets a customer control the encryption keys, but the service still processes message content. Enclessa encrypts direct and group direct messages end to end with MLS, so the server holds no key that opens them.

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