Migration · Mattermost
Migrating from Mattermost to Enclessa is structurally the easiest of these moves — teams, channels and roles line up almost directly — and the substantive decision is not about data but about who runs the software. Enclessa is a hosted service operated by us in the European Union, and it is never distributed to a customer, so leaving Mattermost means giving up an installation you control in exchange for not having to operate, patch or scale one.
Open betaThe platform is being built in the open, so parts of it are not there yet, behaviour changes between releases, and no availability figure is committed while it is in beta. What is still being built.
Enclessa has no automated importer. No tool moves messages, files, members or permissions out of another product and into Enclessa, and none is promised. Migration is a manual exercise: you rebuild the structure, run both systems side by side for a fortnight, and cut over on a date everybody knows. Every guide here is written for that reality rather than around it.
This is the audit item that decides the rest. If the reason is the operational burden, the migration is straightforward. If it is a specific feature, check it exists here first — Enclessa is a smaller product in several dimensions, deliberately.
Enclessa is not distributed to anybody. Enterprise buys a dedicated deployment of the hosted service in a region you name, operated and updated by us — which is not self-hosting and not air-gapped. If you need to run the binary yourself, this is the wrong product and it is better to know now.
Mattermost has a plugin architecture. Enclessa does not, and nothing loads third-party code at runtime. Every plugin is rebuilt as a webhook, a slash command or an API integration, or dropped.
Mattermost’s incoming webhooks follow the same shape Enclessa accepts, so the tooling posting into your channels is usually the easiest part of the whole migration — often a URL change and a header.
If you run Mattermost’s compliance exports into a supervision system, note that Enclessa has a full organisation data export but no supervision-format export. That gap needs an answer before the cutover.
| Mattermost | Enclessa | What changes |
|---|---|---|
| Server or workspace | Organisation | One organisation at your own subdomain, operated by us rather than by you. |
| Team | Team | Direct. An Enclessa team holds its own categories, channels and roles. |
| Channel category | Category | Enclessa categories are structural rather than per person, and carry ordering and permissions of their own. |
| Public and private channel | Managed channels, public or private to the team | Server-readable, so search, retention, export, webhooks and bots work. |
| Direct and group messages | Direct and group direct messages | Always end-to-end encrypted here. This is the significant upgrade in the move, and it costs server-side search in those rooms. |
| System, team and channel roles with custom schemes | Organisation, team and channel roles over a permission bitmask | Named roles with a bitmask, plus allow and deny overwrites on a category or a channel. Most Mattermost schemes translate closely. |
| Incoming webhooks and slash commands | Incoming webhooks and slash commands | The same shapes. This is usually a URL change rather than a rewrite. |
| Boards and Playbooks | Task boards, and nothing | Boards map onto Enclessa boards, which are a module. There is no playbook or checklist automation equivalent. |
| Plugins | Nothing | There is no plugin architecture and nothing loads third-party code at runtime. |
Enclessa is a hosted service and is never distributed. Enterprise buys a dedicated deployment in a region you name, still operated by us. If running it yourself is a requirement, the rest of this guide does not apply, and that is a fair answer.
This part is close to mechanical. Create the teams, then the categories, then the channels that are actually in use. The vocabulary is nearly the same, which makes it tempting to rebuild everything — rebuild only what is alive.
Enclessa resolves permissions from roles at organisation, team and channel level over a bitmask, with allow and deny overwrites on a category or a channel. Most Mattermost schemes translate to something slightly simpler; write the translation down before you apply it.
Enclessa accepts the same Slack-shaped webhook payload Mattermost does, and custom slash commands work the same way — your endpoint gets a request and answers within three seconds, publicly or privately. Most integrations need a new URL and a header.
Direct messages and group direct messages are end-to-end encrypted here, with no administrator override and no server-side search. That is a stronger confidentiality position than you had and a real change in what compliance tooling can see — make sure whoever owns that policy has agreed to it.
Take the export you need for retention out of Mattermost while it is still running, run both for a fortnight, then make the old install read-only on an announced date and decommission it on your own schedule.
Mattermost is the friendliest of these five to leave, because you are usually running it yourself. It provides bulk export tooling and a command-line client, and a self-managed installation additionally gives you direct access to the database and the file store. Which of these your version supports is worth checking against your own release notes rather than against a general claim, since the tooling has changed across major versions.
The zero-risk way to test this migration is the Free plan: up to ten people, permanently, with no payment card and nothing to cancel. Run one team on it for a fortnight before you commit anybody else.
See the Free planCreate a workspace in a couple of minutes. It is yours at your-team.enclessa.app, hosted in the European Union, with encrypted direct messages from the first one you send.
Open beta. Free plan, no payment card to start.