Teamwork Stack

Slack, Teams, and Zoom work well. They also record everything, store it on US servers, use your conversations to train AI, and charge per seat for the privilege. There is a better model.

→ Your team communicates on Slack, Teams, or similar — and the monthly bill is growing faster than your headcount → You want persistent team communication that stays within your infrastructure, not on Slack's servers → You've had client conversations on Teams or Zoom and wondered who else can see them → Your team is distributed and needs reliable async communication without a SaaS dependency

Team Chat

Mattermost or Matrix/Element — persistent channels, direct messages, threads, file sharing, and integrations. Mattermost for teams wanting the closest Slack equivalent. Matrix for teams wanting stronger encryption and federation capability.

Video & Audio Calls

Jitsi Meet on private infrastructure. Start a call from a link, no app download required. Screen sharing, breakout rooms, recording to your own storage. No Zoom account, no Teams meeting link going to Microsoft.

Shared Workspaces

Nextcloud as the file and collaboration backbone — shared drives, document collaboration, project folders, and client spaces. Every team member has access to what they need, nothing more.

Project & Task Management

Managed project management on your infrastructure — Plane or similar open-source tools for issue tracking, sprints, and task management without sending your roadmap to Atlassian or Monday.com.

Async Communication

Not everything needs a meeting. Wiki, shared notes, and document collaboration let distributed teams stay aligned without scheduling calls across time zones.

→ Distributed teams that live in chat and need reliable infrastructure they control

→ Agencies and consultancies where client conversations happen in chat — and those conversations should stay private

→ Teams leaving Microsoft replacing Teams and SharePoint with sovereign alternatives

→ Any team that has wondered what Slack actually does with their conversation data

• Chat — Mattermost or Matrix/Element
• Video — Jitsi Meet
• Files — Nextcloud
• Projects — Plane or similar
• Identity — Authentik/Keycloak SSO across all tools
• Monitoring — TOWER tracks uptime and service health

Not your thing? Skip to Related missions.

• Mattermost vs Matrix — Mattermost is a closer Slack replacement (UX, integrations, bots). Matrix/Element has stronger encryption guarantees (E2EE by default) and federation. Both are self-hostable with full message persistence.
• Jitsi — WebRTC-based, no proprietary client. coturn for STUN/TURN. Prosody as XMPP server. Works in-browser, no download. Recording requires additional Jibri setup.
• Mattermost resource requirements — ~1GB RAM for up to 1000 users. Postgres backend. S3-compatible storage for file attachments.
• Matrix resource requirements — Synapse (Python) is heavier, ~2GB RAM baseline. Dendrite (Go) is lighter but less feature-complete. Federation can be disabled for isolated deployment.
• Integrations — Mattermost and Matrix both support webhooks, slash commands, and bot APIs. Connects to Gitea, Nextcloud, Jira-compatible tools, and custom services.

Read the Pilot Book: Teamwork Stack — self-hosting Mattermost, Jitsi, and Nextcloud with SSO.

• Business Stack — the full business infrastructure layer including mail and identity
• Developer Stack — add Git and CI/CD for technical teams
• Creative Agency Stack — if your team works with large media files

• Private Cloud — file storage and collaboration details
• Managed Identity — SSO across your tools
• TOWER Monitoring — service health and uptime

Your team's conversations are yours. Keep them that way.