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Panel rating · 6 judges · How to read the stars

Category median

Sovereignty: not determined

0–5 in half steps. 5 means the rubric's top anchor is met on the evidence.

by CAKE.com · pumble.com

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Read this page as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.

The Compliance Counsel

Weighted verdict

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.

Same scores as the panel view — this lens weights them the way this judge cares.

Scored by The Compliance Counsel

Channels, threads & search

How this is scored

The daily surface: channel model, threading, mentions, files, and whether search can find a decision made eighteen months ago.

0 — Flat group chats with no threads; search covers recent messages only, and history is capped.

3 — Channels and direct messages with basic search, but threading is awkward or absent and file handling is a plain attachment list.

5 — Public and private channels, real threads, mentions and reactions, file sharing with previews, and full-text search across the whole history.

8 — Cross-organisation or guest channels with clear boundaries, message editing history, pinned and saved items, search with filters by channel, person and date, and a documented history limit or none at all.

10 — The archive is a working knowledge base: search that ranks well across years, threads that stay readable, channel lifecycle management (archive, rename, merge) without losing history, and export of a conversation in a form a human can read.

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The Compliance Counsel

Channels, real threads, file sharing, and unlimited search across unlimited message history are stated plainly, which covers the working archive I need day to day. I found no public information on message edit history, pinned items, search filters by channel or date, channel lifecycle, or export of a conversation in human-readable form, so this stays mid-grade. 1

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Encryption & access control

How this is scored

What is encrypted and against whom, plus who can reach which room. Judged on documented mechanism, since "encrypted" in this category usually means the vendor holds the keys.

0 — Transport encryption only, undocumented; no role model beyond admin, guests indistinguishable from members.

3 — TLS and encryption at rest with vendor-held keys, basic roles, and guest access that mostly works.

5 — The above plus configurable roles per channel, SSO, guest accounts with scoped visibility, and a clear statement of what the vendor can read.

8 — Optional end-to-end encryption for direct messages or private rooms with the trade-offs named, device verification, session management an admin can revoke, and documented key handling.

10 — End-to-end encryption as a first-class mode — documented or open cryptography, cross-device key management that ordinary users survive, identity verification, and the vendor stating plainly what it cannot decrypt.

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The Compliance Counsel

The only access fact on the page is guest access described as limited access to external people; I found no public information on encryption at rest, transport encryption, per-channel roles, SSO, guest scoping within channels, or a statement of what the vendor can read. Judged on documented mechanism, an undocumented access and encryption model starts near the floor. 1

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Retention, discovery & co-determination

How this is scored

The archive as a legal object: retention policies, export for discovery, audit, and the monitoring features a works council will ask to have switched off.

0 — No retention policy, no export beyond a manual copy, no audit log, and presence or activity analytics that cannot be disabled.

3 — Manual export of some data and a global history limit, but no per-channel retention, no audit log and no admin control over analytics.

5 — Configurable retention per channel or workspace, admin export in a documented format, an audit log of administrative actions, and status or presence that a user can control.

8 — Legal-hold and eDiscovery export including edits and deletions, retention executed per policy and evidenced, full admin audit trail, and activity analytics switchable off organisation-wide.

10 — Built to pass a works agreement and a subpoena on the same day: granular retention with documented deletion, discovery export a lawyer can use, complete audit, and no individual-level productivity scoring anywhere in the product.

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The Compliance Counsel

This is the criterion I litigate, and I found no public information on retention policies, admin export formats, audit logging, legal hold, or any control over presence and activity analytics. Unlimited message history is retention by never deleting, not a policy I can hand to a regulator or a works council. 1

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Deployment & data custody

How this is scored

Whether the customer can hold their own archive: self-hosting, private cloud, open source, federation, and what an exit actually looks like.

0 — Cloud-only, proprietary, with export limited to a partial archive.

3 — Cloud-only, but with a documented full export in an open-ish format.

5 — A private-cloud or dedicated-instance option, or a self-hosted edition that lags the cloud significantly; full export documented.

8 — A genuine self-hosted edition close to feature parity, or open-source core with a documented upgrade path, plus complete export including files and metadata.

10 — Custody is the customer's: open-source or source-available server, self-hosting supported as a first-class deployment, open protocol or federation, and a migration path in and out that the vendor documents rather than resists.

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The Compliance Counsel

I found no public information on self-hosting, a private-cloud or dedicated-instance option, open source, federation, or a documented export including files and metadata. With none of that evidenced, custody of the archive rests entirely with the vendor and an exit path is unevidenced. 1

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Integrations & extensibility

How this is scored

Bots, webhooks, app framework, identity — whether the chat becomes the place work is noticed, and whether that is buildable without a partner agreement.

0 — No API, no webhooks, no bots.

3 — Incoming webhooks and a handful of native integrations; no bot framework, no documented limits.

5 — Documented REST API, incoming and outgoing webhooks, slash commands, a bot account model, and SSO.

8 — A proper app framework with interactive components, event subscriptions with retries, SCIM provisioning, documented rate limits and a sandbox.

10 — A platform: versioned API with a deprecation policy, an app directory or plugin system with permissions a customer can audit, and integrations the vendor maintains rather than lists.

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The Compliance Counsel

An API and MCP are stated as available, with named integrations for Clockify, Plaky and Google Drive. I found no public information on webhooks, slash commands, a bot account model, SCIM provisioning, SSO, or documented rate limits, which keeps this just above the basic tier. 1

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European sovereignty

How this is scored

Where the archive and its metadata live, who the contracting entity is, which subprocessors touch it. Independently sourced by the sovereignty pipeline; scored here as this buyer weighs it.

0 — Non-EU vendor and contracting entity, hosting unstated or non-EU, subprocessors unnamed.

3 — EU data residency offered for message content while metadata, search indexes or support tooling remain non-EU, or the contracting entity sits outside the EU.

5 — EU hosting as standard and an EU contracting entity, but parts of the chain — notifications, AI features, analytics — are non-EU without an explained safeguard.

8 — EU hosting on named infrastructure, EU contracting entity, full subprocessor list published, any non-EU processing named with its legal basis.

10 — Sovereign end to end and evidenced: vendor, entity, hosting and every subprocessor European, certification published, and a self-hosted option that removes the question.

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The Compliance Counsel

The only fact on record is the contracting entity, CAKE.com Inc.; I found no public information on hosting location, subprocessors, EU data residency, certification, or any non-EU processing and its legal basis. For this buyer, an archive whose entire custody chain is unevidenced scores at the floor. 1

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Pricing transparency not rated — the vendor publishes no price

How this is scored

Whether a buyer can compute the annual invoice for their headcount — including the retention, compliance and guest features they actually need — from public pages alone.

0 — No public prices at all; every tier is a sales conversation.

3 — A per-user headline exists, but the tier where retention control, SSO or compliance export begins is unstated.

5 — Per-user prices public with billing period stated, but at least one commonly needed capability (unlimited history, SSO, eDiscovery) sits in an unpriced enterprise tier.

8 — Every tier priced publicly with per-user maths, history and storage limits, feature boundaries, minimum term and VAT treatment stated; self-hosted licensing priced too where offered.

10 — Complete price computability: annual invoice derivable for a given headcount and deployment choice, including guest users, storage and any per-instance licence.

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The Compliance Counsel

The Free plan is fully specified — unlimited users, unlimited channels, unlimited message history at no cost — which lets a buyer compute a zero invoice for that deployment choice. I found no public information on prices for the Pro, Business and Enterprise tiers, on billing periods, or on where compliance and retention capabilities begin, so no paying headcount can be costed from public pages. 1

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Where this could be wrong

What we left out

A claim that does not survive our checks costs us the claim, not the page. This is what was taken off this one.

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Sources (8)

The pages every claim on this page was read from — each one checked, dated, and kept verifiable.

  1. 1 Vendor page pumble.com Checked 22 Sep 2026 Details →
  2. 2 Channels, threads & search — found from sitemap pumble.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  3. 3 Channels, threads & search — found from sitemap pumble.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  4. 4 Encryption & access control — found from sitemap pumble.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  5. 5 Retention, discovery & co-determination — found from sitemap pumble.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  6. 6 Retention, discovery & co-determination — found from sitemap pumble.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  7. 7 Integrations & extensibility — found from sitemap pumble.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  8. 8 Integrations & extensibility — found from sitemap pumble.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →