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What is Mattermost?

The open-source Slack alternative for teams that refuse to share their secrets.

Mattermost is the gold standard for secure, self-hosted team collaboration. It looks like Slack, feels like Slack, and works like Slack—but your data lives on your server, not on Salesforce's cloud.

For engineering teams, government agencies, and privacy-conscious startups, Mattermost is non-negotiable. It allows for complete data sovereignty, meaning you can discuss trade secrets, code, and sensitive IP without fear of AI scraping or data leaks.

⚠️ The "Connecting..." Spinner

Mattermost is a "Real-Time" application. It relies heavily on WebSockets to push messages instantly to your screen. If you install it on a standard VPS without advanced network knowledge, you will hit the WebSocket Wall.

Why DIY Mattermost Breaks

The network issues that make self-hosting frustrating:

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Nginx WebSocket Failures: Nginx must be manually configured to "Upgrade" HTTP connections to WebSockets. If you miss one header line, users see a "Connecting..." bar forever, and messages don't arrive until they refresh.
✖
Search Latency: As your team generates 100,000+ messages, searching for "Project X" becomes painfully slow on standard SSDs because PostgreSQL has to scan the entire table.
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Notification Delivery: Getting email notifications to work reliably without ending up in Spam requires setting up complex SMTP relays and DKIM records.
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Upgrade Anxiety: Mattermost updates are frequent. Manually upgrading the server often breaks the PostgreSQL schema, forcing you to roll back from backups (if you have them).

The Nginx Configuration Headache

To get real-time messaging working, you have to edit your proxy configuration and hope you don't break the SSL handshake:

# 1. Editing Nginx for WebSockets
root@vps:~/mattermost# nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/mattermost
location /api/v4/websocket {
  proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
  proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
  client_max_body_size 50M;
  proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
  proxy_read_timeout 600s;
}

# 2. Testing config...
root@vps:~/mattermost# nginx -t
nginx: [emerg] unknown directive "proxy_set_header" in /etc/nginx/nginx.conf:84
# 3. User Report
"Hey admin, I'm not getting messages on my phone unless I close and reopen the app. Can you fix?"

Debugging WebSocket timeouts is not how you want to spend your Friday afternoon.

The Leapjuice Way

We provide a fully orchestrated Mattermost environment. We handle the networking plumbing so your team just sees "Online."

✔
Instant WebSockets: Our Nginx and Load Balancers are pre-configured for high-availability WebSocket connections. Messages are delivered instantly.
✔
Hyperdisk Search: With our 500MB/s storage throughput, searching through years of chat history is nearly instantaneous.
✔
Reliable Alerts: We integrate SendGrid/Mailgun relays automatically. When someone is @mentioned, they will get the email notification.
✔
Google Cloud Security: Your chat logs are stored on encrypted disks within Google's secure data centers, protected by enterprise-grade firewalls.
Deploy Secure Chat

Starts at $29/mo. Your Data. Your Rules.

Who is this for?

Dev Ops Teams: Integrate your CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, GitLab) directly into channels using incoming webhooks that actually work.

Legal & Finance: Keep your internal communications off of public clouds. Comply with strict data retention policies by owning the database.

Remote Companies: Replace the $8/user/month Slack fee with a flat monthly fee, no matter how much your team grows.