Migrating from Microsoft Teams to Mattermost is a strategic shift for organizations seeking greater data sovereignty, heightened security, and escape from the recurring costs of the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. While Teams is deeply integrated with Office 365, it operates as a proprietary, cloud-locked platform where your organization rents its communication infrastructure. Mattermost offers a robust, open-source alternative that can be self-hosted on your own infrastructure, giving you absolute control over sensitive corporate data and compliance postures.
Organizations typically trigger this migration when facing strict regulatory compliance requirements that mandate on-premises or private-cloud data residency, or when enterprise subscription costs for Teams and Microsoft 365 become unsustainable. Mattermost provides a similar high-productivity workspace tailored for technical and operations teams, complete with robust Markdown support, extensive API integrations, and developer-friendly workflows. Moving away from Teams means transitioning away from Azure-dependent messaging silos into an open architecture where your IT team dictates the update cycles, data retention policies, and security configurations without third-party interference.
For a 50-person team that's a significant annual saving.
🗺️ Migration Steps
Begin by cataloging your active Microsoft Teams channels, private chats, and document repositories to determine what actually needs to be preserved. Microsoft offers limited native export tools, primarily through the Microsoft Graph API, so you will need to script exports for message histories, user profiles, and file attachments.
Deploy your Mattermost server either on-premises or within your preferred private cloud infrastructure like AWS or GCP. Configure your database, set up TLS certificates, and integrate your existing identity provider such as Okta, Azure AD, or Keycloak via SAML or OIDC for seamless user authentication.
Export your user directory from Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure AD) and import the user mappings into Mattermost. Ensure that user handles, email addresses, and team roles align correctly to prevent identity fragmentation during the cutover phase.
Utilize open-source migration scripts or community-built tools to ingest your exported Microsoft Teams message histories, channels, and user attachments into Mattermost. Because Teams and Mattermost have different underlying database schemas, you will need to carefully format JSON payloads to maintain thread hierarchies and timestamps.
Replicate your vital automation workflows by transitioning Microsoft Teams connectors and Power Automate webhooks to Mattermost incoming and outgoing webhooks. Mattermost natively supports Slack-compatible incoming webhooks, making it straightforward to reconnect CI/CD pipelines, GitHub alerts, and monitoring tools.
Announce a scheduled maintenance window to freeze activity in Microsoft Teams and run a final delta sync of recent messages. Direct your users to log into the new Mattermost desktop or mobile client, decommission your Teams licenses, and officially launch your new sovereign communication hub.
⚠️ Common Challenges & How to Avoid Them
Leverage the Microsoft Graph API with pagination handling and rate-limit retry logic, or use specialized third-party migration utilities designed to extract Teams data cleanly.
Configure Mattermost plugins for alternative document collaboration tools like Nextcloud or Google Workspace, and provide targeted training on Mattermost's Markdown-centric interface.
Archive legacy Teams meeting recordings to an internal storage bucket and establish new video conferencing workflows in Mattermost using plugins for Zoom, Jitsi, or BigBlueButton.
🔗 Get Started
❓ Frequently Asked Questions
Yes, but it requires custom scripting or third-party tools because Microsoft does not provide a native one-click export for direct message and channel histories. You will need to extract the data via the Microsoft Graph API and format it to match Mattermost import requirements.
Self-hosting Mattermost gives your organization total ownership of your database, message history, and file storage, shielding you from third-party data mining and unexpected SaaS price hikes. Unlike Teams, which forces you onto Microsoft's cloud infrastructure, Mattermost operates wherever you deploy it.
Existing links to SharePoint and OneDrive files will still resolve if your Microsoft 365 tenant remains active, but users will no longer experience inline co-authoring within the chat interface. You can replace these workflows by integrating Mattermost with open-source document editors or cloud storage solutions.
Want a full feature and pricing comparison before you switch?
Read the Full Microsoft Teams vs Mattermost Comparison →