Rocket.Chat

What is Rocket.Chat?

Rocket.Chat is a secure communications platform for team messaging, voice, video and file sharing that organizations can host themselves. The vendor markets it to government, defense, critical infrastructure and enterprises that need control over where their data lives.

Key features of Rocket.Chat

• Messaging and collaboration: team chat, voice, video, and screen and file sharing.
• Federation: native Matrix and XMPP federation for interoperability.
• Rocket.Chat AI: summarization, translation, search and approved agents, with support for bring-your-own models.
• Flexible deployment: on-premises, EU-hosted sovereign cloud or air-gapped installs.
• Access control: RBAC and ABAC, retention policies and audit logs.
• Apps and APIs: custom apps, workflows, REST APIs and SDKs.
• Security posture: Zero Trust design and encryption, with support up to IL6 claimed by the vendor.

How Rocket.Chat works

Organizations deploy Rocket.Chat on their own servers or choose a hosted option, connect identity and policy controls, then roll out chat, voice and video to users. Federation lets them exchange messages with Matrix and XMPP networks, and bridges connect to systems such as Microsoft Teams.

Who uses Rocket.Chat?

The vendor lists customers and partners across defense and government, including BAE Systems, the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Army and General Dynamics Mission Systems, along with the Swedish Electrical Safety Board and eu-LISA. It is also pitched to small businesses and non-profits through a free tier.

Rocket.Chat pricing

Rocket.Chat has three pricing paths: Commercial, Government and Defense. The vendor does not publish prices; Commercial is priced on request, Government uses custom quotes and Defense is by contact. A free self-managed workspace is available, and Starter is positioned for technical evaluation, small businesses and non-profits. Voice calls, native video meetings, Sovereign AI and mission critical support are add-ons.

Rocket.Chat integrations

The vendor names Microsoft Teams through a low-side bridge, TAK and ATAK for command and control, Matrix and XMPP federation, and partnerships with Pexip and AWS.

Rocket.Chat alternatives

Mattermost is another self-hostable team chat platform, also popular with security-conscious and DevOps teams, so the two are the closest comparison. Slack is a hosted-only messaging product with a large app ecosystem and no self-hosted option. Microsoft Teams bundles chat, meetings and files in Microsoft 365 and suits organizations already on Microsoft, but offers less control over hosting.