# Chanty — Business Instant Messaging

Chanty by Chanty holds a panel rating of 1/5 from 6 AI judges (category median 2/5), as of 2026-10-15. Provenance: provenance unknown; sovereignty: not determined.

- Vendor: Chanty (https://chanty.com)
- Category: [Business Instant Messaging](https://whats-best.ai/software/instant-messaging.md)
- Provenance (editorial classification): provenance unknown
- Canonical page: https://whats-best.ai/software/instant-messaging/chanty
- Alternatives: https://whats-best.ai/software/instant-messaging/chanty/alternatives ([markdown](https://whats-best.ai/software/instant-messaging/chanty/alternatives.md))
- Data as of: 2026-10-21 · evaluated 2026-10-15 · oldest source captured 2026-10-13

**AI-generated.** Every score, rationale and verdict here is written by a panel of AI judges from public evidence — an analysis, not a hands-on test. Every fact quotes the vendor page it was read from. No score can be bought. How scores are made: https://whats-best.ai/methodology

## At a glance

- Vendor: Chanty
- Headquarters: Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 13 Oct 2026
- Data hosting: Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 13 Oct 2026
- Free plan: Yes, per the vendor’s own page [S1]

## The panel's verdict

Chanty is a cloud workspace for business chat where people and AI agents work side by side, and the bench's scoring divides between its access layer and its foundations. The strongest criterion is encryption and access, scored 4 with no variation: the pages document TLS 1.2 and above with forward secrecy and AES-128-GCM, storage encryption, invite-only team spaces, one-time-code login and 120+ permission settings, with no public information on end-to-end encryption or key handling. The weakest are sovereignty, scored 1 likewise — AWS hosting in SAS 70 audited data centers with no region stated, and contracting entity, residency and subprocessors unknown — and deployment control at 1 to 2, with no self-hosting or documented export format. Integrations splits the judges, 2 to 4: the compliance counsel credits the native-integration, HRIS-sync and agent-permission claims; the lower marks cite no documented API, webhooks or rate limits. Messaging core and governance and discovery land at 2 to 3 — retention is a single privacy-policy sentence, and the logged audit trail covers AI-agent actions, not administrative ones. Public pricing: a free plan and a demo.

**Speaks for it:**
- Transport and storage security documented in detail — TLS 1.2 and above with forward secrecy and AES-128-GCM, plus file system and storage encryption
- Invite-only team spaces governed by 120+ permission settings covering who can create chats, invite guests, export history or add an AI agent
- External guests such as vendors, contractors and suppliers can be brought in without access to everything
- Any message can be turned into a task in one click
- Any AI model or agent can be plugged in, with per-role interaction levels, human approval before execution and one-click revocation

**Held against it:**
- Sovereignty scored 1: AWS hosting in SAS 70 audited data centers with no region stated, and contracting entity, ownership, residency and subprocessors unknown on the captured pages
- Deployment control scored 1 to 2: no public information on self-hosting, a dedicated instance, open source or federation, and history export appears only as a permission with no documented format
- Retention is a single privacy-policy sentence — stored until no longer necessary or the account is deleted — with no per-channel policy, legal hold or eDiscovery export in evidence
- No public information on a documented API, webhooks, bot accounts, single sign-on or rate limits behind the integrations claims
- No per-user price published: a free plan, "No enterprise price tag" and a demo are the only public pricing signals

**Best for:**
- You need an invite-only chat workspace with documented transport and storage encryption and fine-grained permissions over members and external guests
- You want AI agents inside chat under control — per-role interaction levels, human approval before execution, one-click revoke, and a real-time log of every agent action
- Your team lives on quick task creation from messages and guest collaboration, and vendor-held encryption keys are acceptable

**Avoid if:**
- You must place the archive and its metadata in a named region or know your subprocessors — ask the vendor: the public pages we read do not show it
- You need custody on your own infrastructure or a documented exit export — ask the vendor: the public pages we read do not show it
- You need scheduled retention, legal hold or regulator-readable export — published retention keeps data until no longer necessary or account deletion, with deletion requests allowed up to 30 business days
- You plan to build your own tooling — the documented surface is native integrations, HRIS sync and bring-your-own agents, with no public information on an API, webhooks or SCIM provisioning

## Scores by judge and criterion

Scores out of 5, each judge scoring independently against the published rubric (v1). "n/r" = not rated: the vendor publishes no price.

| Criterion | The Team Lead | The Security Officer | The Works Council Advocate | The Compliance Counsel | The Platform Engineer | The Skeptic |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Channels, threads & search | 1.5/5 | 1.5/5 | 1.5/5 | 1.5/5 | 1/5 | 1/5 |
| Encryption & access control | 2/5 | 2/5 | 2/5 | 2/5 | 2/5 | 2/5 |
| Retention, discovery & co-determination | 1/5 | 1/5 | 1.5/5 | 1.5/5 | 1.5/5 | 1.5/5 |
| Deployment & data custody | 0.5/5 | 0.5/5 | 0.5/5 | 0.5/5 | 0.5/5 | 1/5 |
| Integrations & extensibility | 1.5/5 | 1/5 | 1/5 | 2/5 | 1/5 | 1/5 |
| European sovereignty | 0.5/5 | 0.5/5 | 0.5/5 | 0.5/5 | 0.5/5 | 0.5/5 |
| Pricing transparency | n/r | n/r | n/r | n/r | n/r | n/r |
| **Weighted verdict** | **1.5/5** | **1/5** | **1/5** | **1/5** | **1/5** | **1/5** |

### The judges

- **The Team Lead** (v1.0): Runs a distributed team and needs the tool people actually open. Wants threads that stay readable, search that finds last spring's decision, and channels that can be tidied without losing history. Unmoved by feature lists that do not survive a busy Tuesday.
- **The Security Officer** (v1.0): Assumes the archive will one day be read by someone it was not meant for. Wants end-to-end encryption that ordinary users survive, device verification, sessions an admin can revoke, and a plain statement of what the vendor cannot decrypt.
- **The Works Council Advocate** (v1.0): Knows that a chat log is a record of who spoke to whom at what hour. Wants presence a person controls, no individual activity scoring anywhere, retention that deletes rather than hides, and analytics that can be switched off across the organisation.
- **The Compliance Counsel** (v1.0): Will one day have to produce this archive, edits and deletions included, to a regulator or a court. Wants legal hold, an export a lawyer can work from, retention per channel, and an audit trail that survives the admin who made the change.
- **The Platform Engineer** (v1.0): Would rather run it than rent it, and wants to know whether that is a supported deployment or a hobby build. Cares about open protocols, federation, a plugin system with real permissions, and an upgrade path that does not orphan the customisations.
- **The Skeptic** (v1.0): Reads for the message-history cap, the tier where SSO appears, and what "unlimited" excludes. Has seen "end-to-end encrypted" mean direct messages only, on request, with search disabled — and wants that sentence found rather than assumed.

## European sovereignty — proven facts

Built only from facts on the vendor's own pages; a dimension we could not prove is left open, never scored as zero. Headline: not determined.

| Dimension | Finding | Points | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Legal entity | Not determined | — | — |
| Ownership | Not determined | — | — |
| Data residency | Not determined | — | — |
| Subprocessors | Not determined | — | — |

## Key facts

Each fact is the vendor's own statement, cited to the source page it was read from ([S*n*] → Sources).

**Compliance**
- Aws certifications: SSAE 16 [S3]
- Certifications list: HIPAA · ISO 27001 · ISO 9001 · SOC 2 · GDPR · DPF · FINRA · C5 [S1]
- Dlp: DLP, retention policies, governance controls [S1]
- Encryption:  [S2]
- Finra: yes [S1]
- GDPR: yes [S1]
- GDPR: yes [S3]
- GDPR rights: yes · access · rectify · export · erase · restrict · object [S2]
- HIPAA: yes [S1]
- SOC 2 type ii: yes [S1]
- Tls: 1.2 [S1]

**Data**
- Children under 16: no [S2]
- Deleted URL reuse: no [S2]
- Deletion timeline: 30 [S2]
- No device storage: No data stored on employee's device [S1]
- Ownership: Customer owns their data [S1]
- Retention: store until no longer necessary or account deleted [S2]
- Zero moderation: Zero moderation, no direct access to files or messages [S1]

**Hosting**
- Data centers: yes [S3]
- Provider: AWS · EC2 · S3 · Amazon Elasticsearch Service [S3]

**Integrations**
- Page: Integrations with third-party software, dedicated integrations page [S1]

**Legal**
- Entity: Chanty, Inc. [S2]

**Pricing**
- Cancel anytime: yes [S1]
- Free migration: yes · yes · yes [S1]

**Product**
- Any model: Bring any AI model or agent, including custom-built [S1]
- Audit trail: Real-time audit trail of every agent action [S1]
- Authentication: one-time codes · salted encryption [S3]
- Conversation visibility: yes [S3]
- Data ownership: Customers own their data; messages safely transferred and stored [S3]
- Database replication: yes · yes [S3]
- Demo: yes · yes [S1]
- Encryption tls: AES-128-GCM · yes · 1.2 [S3]
- External guests: External guests (vendors, contractors, clients) supported [S1]
- Free plan: Free plan available [S1]
- Granular permissions: 120 [S1]
- HR broadcasts: HRIS sync, org chart mirroring, broadcasts to all phones [S1]
- Human in the loop: Human approval of agent actions before execution [S1]
- Instant revoke: One-click instant agent revoke [S1]
- Interaction levels: Per-role interaction levels controlling who agents take orders from [S1]
- Multiplayer AI: Multiplayer AI work chat where people and agents work side by side [S1]
- No training outside models: Conversations never used to train outside models [S1]
- Permission examples: Permissions control chat creation, guest invites, history export, file sharing, adding AI agents [S1]
- Push notification privacy: yes [S3]
- Ratings: 4.9 · 4.7 · 4.7 · 4.4 · 4.5 · 4.7 [S1]
- Security features: data transfer security protocols · data loss prevention · invite-only team space · file system and storage encryption · penetration tests · isolated team storages · internal policies · compliance audit policies · data retention regulation [S3]
- Task from message: Create task from any message in one click [S1]
- Unlimited agents: Add as many agents as needed across chats [S1]
- Uptime SLA: 99.9 [S3]
- User management: yes [S3]
- Zero moderation: No direct access to database for message moderation [S3]

**Support**
- Availability: 24/7 [S3]
- Channels: Customer support offered [S1]

## Questions

### Is Chanty European?

Not determined: the vendor’s pages as captured do not say where Chanty is based.

### Where does Chanty store data?

Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 13 Oct 2026.

### Does Chanty have a free plan?

Yes. Chanty has a free plan, per [the vendor’s page captured 13 Oct 2026](https://whats-best.ai/evidence/1794).

### What are the best alternatives to Chanty?

As of 21 Oct 2026, the panel rates [Element (3.5/5)](https://whats-best.ai/software/instant-messaging/element), [Mattermost (3.5/5)](https://whats-best.ai/software/instant-messaging/mattermost) and [Stackfield (3/5)](https://whats-best.ai/software/instant-messaging/stackfield) highest among the other 19 Business Instant Messaging products evaluated. Ratings that look equal are rounded to half stars; the order uses the unrounded rating, then the name. The highest-rated European alternative is [Element](https://whats-best.ai/software/instant-messaging/element) (UK / wider Europe). Ratings are the AI panel’s opinion, formed from public evidence: [how scores are made](https://whats-best.ai/methodology#ordering). The full list, with European products first: [Chanty alternatives](https://whats-best.ai/software/instant-messaging/chanty/alternatives).

## What this page leaves out

- 4 product facts could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and were left out of this page and of the panel’s material.
- 1 data fact could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and was left out of this page and of the panel’s material.
- 2 sovereignty dimensions could not be confirmed on the vendor’s own pages and are shown as unknown.
- 6 of the readings below were written against an earlier fact sheet — a fact has been corrected, added or pulled since. Until the panel next runs on this product you are reading the older judgement.

## Sources

- [S1] Vendor page: https://chanty.com (checked 2026-10-13)
- [S2] Privacy policy — found from the homepage: https://www.chanty.com/privacy-policy/ (checked 2026-10-13)
- [S3] Encryption & access control — found from sitemap: https://www.chanty.com/security/ (checked 2026-10-13)

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Cite as: whats-best.ai, "Chanty — Business Instant Messaging", AI panel analysis, as of 2026-10-21. https://whats-best.ai/software/instant-messaging/chanty

Corrections: https://whats-best.ai/correct/434?target=page