After some time has passed, we are now pleased to finally be able to provide clarity on how to deal with Mattermost in the future. Negotiations with Mattermost Inc. were not successful. We are therefore announcing that the Mattermost Helmholtz Cloud service will be discontinued in mid-July 2026.
As a replacement, we will offer a chat service based on Matrix from late March onwards. Work on this is already well advanced, thanks to extensive preparatory work in the community that we can build upon. We are delighted to become part of this ecosystem and look forward to contributing our own ideas in the future.
We therefore see the switch to the Matrix ecosystem as a great opportunity. Extensive evaluation of other tools showed that Matrix comes closest to meeting our requirements. Thanks for your great feedback by the way! We see the possibility to federate with other Matrix instances as a very important feature. Especially in academia Matrix is already widespread: our colleagues from GWDG are offering one, as well as several Helmholtz Centers and universities. This federation concept is at the heart of HIFIS after all.
In addition Matrix provides a whole lot of other beneficial characteristics:
- It’s an open standard and communication protocol allowing for world-wide connectivity and preventing vendor lock-in.
- End-to-end encryption available, enabled by default but configurable per channel, allowing for the discussion of sensitive topics, e.g. for our colleagues dealing with security issues.
- Active community and further development.
- A multitude of clients for web, desktop and mobile.
Unfortunately, this decision also means the discontinuation of Boards support. We understand that a lot of work went into implementing Boards. With GitLab, Nextcloud, and the future OpenProject service, there are several alternatives available. We are happy to assist you with the transition.
We are currently actively planning the transition to the new platform. We will publish details shortly in early March.
The timeline:
- By late March 2026: Matrix available as a new Helmholtz Cloud service.
- April 2026: Team creation in Mattermost will be disabled, new teams will be redirected to Matrix.
- Mid-July 2026: Mattermost will be discontinued and no longer be available in the Helmholtz Cloud.
Join our public team in HIFIS Community if you would like to be kept updated and discuss specific doubts or suggestions. Or contact us at support@hifis.net.
