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Rocket.Chat

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Panel rating · 6 judges · How to read the stars

Category median

Sovereignty: 2 of 4 dimensions proven

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

by Rocket.Chat Technologies Corp. · www.rocket.chat

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

The Works Council Advocate

Weighted verdict

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.

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

Scored by The Works Council Advocate

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 Works Council Advocate

Messaging, voice, video and screen sharing with desktop and mobile apps are evidenced, but the evidence says nothing about channels, threads, mentions, file handling or search. For a works council the archive only counts if an eighteen-month-old decision can be found again, and on search the vendor is entirely silent — silence is the finding here. 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 Works Council Advocate

"Fully encrypted conversations" and "advanced access and identity controls" are homepage bullets with no mechanism behind them: no key-holder statement, no roles, no SSO, no guest model. The one genuine mitigation is that self-hosted and air-gapped deployment means we, not the vendor, can hold the keys — but the vendor never documents key handling, device verification or session revocation. 1 2

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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 Works Council Advocate

"Granular data retention policies" and "comprehensive audit logs" are claimed verbatim, which is half of what this criterion needs; the rest — documented export format, legal hold, eDiscovery, user-controlled presence — is absent. And critically, there is not one word about activity analytics or whether anything can be switched off organisation-wide: retention that deletes must be proven, and monitoring must be negotiable away. 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 Works Council Advocate

Open-source code on GitHub plus self-hosting sold as the primary path — on-prem, private cloud, isolated VPC/VPN, fully air-gapped, with 40+ classified programs cited — puts custody genuinely in the customer's hands. What keeps it from the top anchor is exit: no export or migration path in or out is evidenced anywhere in the evidence. 1 2

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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 Works Council Advocate

A marketplace of pre-built and custom apps plus developer guides is more than a handful of native integrations, but the evidence never documents a REST API, webhooks, slash commands, a bot account model or SSO. I score what is on the page, and the page stops at "no friction, no vendor lock-in" — a slogan, not a surface. 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 Works Council Advocate

The contracting entity is Rocket.Chat Technologies Corp. of Wilmington, Delaware, no sovereignty attributes are on record, and the sole EU-hosting evidence is one customer's testimonial about running it on AWS themselves. That this lands above the bottom is architecture, not commitment: on-premises and air-gapped deployment lets us hold the entire archive inside our own jurisdiction, but "free from foreign jurisdiction" is a marketing line with no published subprocessor list or certification behind it. 1 2

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Pricing transparency

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 Works Council Advocate

Three snapshots of the pricing page yield plan names (Starter, Commercial, Defense, Government) and FAQs about pilots, professional services and special rates — and not a single figure, per-user rate or billing term. The annual invoice is a sales conversation, which for us means the works agreement cannot be costed in advance. 2 2 2

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European sovereignty — proven facts

2 of 4 dimensions proven

Built only from facts shown on the vendor's own pages. A dimension we could not prove is left open, not scored as zero.

Ownership Not determined — uncited Report an error
Data residency EU optional ⚠ unverified 1/3 pts 1 Report an error
Subprocessors US CLOUD Act reach ⚠ unverified 0/2 pts 1 Report an error

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 (13)

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

  1. 1 Vendor homepage www.rocket.chat Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →
  2. 2 Pricing www.rocket.chat Checked 5 Oct 2026 +2 earlier captures: 11 Sep 2026, 31 Aug 2026 Details →
  3. 3 Terms of service docs.rocket.chat Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →
  4. 4 Channels, threads & search — found from sitemap docs.rocket.chat Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →
  5. 5 Channels, threads & search — found from sitemap docs.rocket.chat Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →
  6. 6 Encryption & access control — found from sitemap docs.rocket.chat Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →
  7. 7 Encryption & access control — found from sitemap docs.rocket.chat Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →
  8. 8 Retention, discovery & co-determination — found from sitemap docs.rocket.chat Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →
  9. 9 Retention, discovery & co-determination — found from sitemap docs.rocket.chat Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →
  10. 10 Deployment & data custody — found from sitemap docs.rocket.chat Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →
  11. 11 Deployment & data custody — found from sitemap docs.rocket.chat Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →
  12. 12 Integrations & extensibility — found from sitemap docs.rocket.chat Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →
  13. 13 Integrations & extensibility — found from sitemap docs.rocket.chat Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →