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Business Instant Messaging

Stackfield

EU-Made Report an error

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 Stackfield GmbH · www.stackfield.com

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Stackfield: AI-assisted analysis on whats-best.ai Stackfield: AI-assisted analysis on whats-best.ai (dark)

Add ?theme=dark to the image address for dark backgrounds. The badge shows the category and the month of the latest evaluation, and EU-Made where that is the product’s provenance. It never shows a score.

Stackfield at a glance

Vendor
Stackfield GmbH
Headquarters
Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 19 Oct 2026
Data hosting
Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 19 Oct 2026
Free plan
Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 19 Oct 2026
Starting price
“STARTER € 9 per User and Month (when paid yearly)” (vendor’s words) source, captured 21 Sep 2026
Panel verdict
The AI panel rates Stackfield 3/5, the mean of 6 judges. Stackfield is a business instant messaging product strongest where it advertises: encryption and access scored 8 to 9, on client-side AES and RSA encryption, per-room passwords, admin-enforceable policy, a whitepaper, and statements that neither the vendor nor its subcontractors can read enabled rooms. how scores are made
As of
Vendor pages captured 21 Sep 2026 to 19 Oct 2026; evaluated by the panel 20 Oct 2026. all sources

Stackfield alternatives, European ones first →

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

The Platform Engineer

Weighted verdict

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.

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

Scored by The Platform Engineer

Panel median The Platform Engineer This judge’s scores over the panel median. Each label opens its reasoning below.
Scores per criterion, in stars out of 5
Criterion Panel median The Platform Engineer
Channels, threads & search 2.5 of 5 3 of 5
Encryption & access control 4 of 5 4 of 5
Retention, discovery & co-determination 2 of 5 2 of 5
Deployment & data custody 3.5 of 5 3 of 5
Integrations & extensibility 3 of 5 3 of 5
European sovereignty 4 of 5 3.5 of 5
Pricing transparency 3.5 of 5 3.5 of 5

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 Platform Engineer

Rooms and group chats with mentions and an @all, favorites, mute and reminders, files that version and can be commented individually, and an archive where rooms and entries survive and can be restored without losing history. I found no public information on thread semantics, message edit history, pinning, or search filters by channel, person and date — search shows up only as a global search reaching archived rooms, and room export lands as PDF. 6 7 10 11

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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 Platform Engineer

End-to-end encryption with client-held AES and RSA keys, auto-generated per-room passwords distinct from the login password, admin-level encryption policy per room type, and the operator stating plainly that neither a court nor Stackfield nor its subcontractors can read enabled rooms. Roles run from Admin to External with fine-grained rights at global and room level, SSO, centrally enforced two-factor, IP whitelisting and a per-account access log; I found no public information on device-to-device identity verification or sessions an admin can revoke, which is what holds this below the top band. 9 10 5 7 8

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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 Platform Engineer

Automated deletion rules are announced for the third quarter of 2026 from the Premium package, so retention is a roadmap item rather than a shipped capability; admin export is documented but room export saves as PDF, and the global export sits in the enterprise tier. There is a settings-change report, documented archiving actions with who and when, and per-account access logs, but also login reporting on when employees were last active, and I found no public information on legal hold, per-room retention today, or switching activity monitoring off organisation-wide. 5 8 10 11

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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 Platform Engineer

A genuine on-premise edition that runs without internet access, a private-cloud variant on the customer's own servers with Active Directory connection and white labelling, and a vendor-run migration project from cloud to on-premise that carries the data along. The on-premise line ships as a single range of functions with a minimum order of 100 licences, and I found no public information on source availability, federation, an open protocol, or the on-premise upgrade and release path; export completeness beyond PDF room exports is not spelled out either. 12 13 2 10

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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 Platform Engineer

A documented API with error codes, incoming webhooks with optional JWT and seventeen webhook content types from chat message to room archiving, plus a Microsoft Teams integration whose access rights stay synchronized from the Stackfield organization and which admins can disable. I found no public information on documented rate limits, a sandbox, SCIM, or a bot and app framework with permissions a customer can audit, and API-based provisioning is an enterprise-tier feature. 14 15 8 2

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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 Platform Engineer

A Munich-registered company with commercial register entry, LEI and VAT identification published, German data centres with processing exclusively on EU servers including telemetry, subcontractors described as EU-based with no control exercisable from outside the EU, ISO 27001, 27017 and 27018 plus BSI C5 certificates available for download, and an on-premise option that takes the question off the table. The captured pages give no named subprocessor identities or named infrastructure providers, so the chain is asserted rather than itemised, which is what keeps this from the top. 3 5 8 12 13

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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 Platform Engineer

All four tiers carry public per-user prices with the billing period stated, VAT treatment is explicit as net and exclusive of VAT, add-ons such as AI, Office, professional secrecy and public sector are priced from stated tiers, and the feature boundaries from Starter to Enterprise are visible, including where single sign-on and global export begin. The captures show only the yearly figures despite a monthly toggle, and I found no public information on storage or history limits, minimum term, or the per-licence price of the on-premise version beyond the 100-licence minimum. 2 2 5 12 2

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European sovereignty — proven facts

0 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 Not determined ⚠ unverified — uncited Report an error
Subprocessors Not determined ⚠ unverified — uncited Report an error

Questions about Stackfield

Is Stackfield European?

Yes. whats-best.ai classifies Stackfield as EU-Made.

Where does Stackfield store data?

Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 19 Oct 2026.

Does Stackfield have a free plan?

Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 19 Oct 2026.

What are the best alternatives to Stackfield?

As of 21 Oct 2026, the panel rates Element (3.5/5), Mattermost (3.5/5) and Wire (Messaging) (3/5) 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 (UK / wider Europe). Ratings are the AI panel’s opinion, formed from public evidence: how scores are made. The full list, with European products first: Stackfield alternatives.

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.

Do you know more about Stackfield? Tell us Report an error on this page

Sources (15)

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

  1. 1 Vendor homepage www.stackfield.com Checked 19 Oct 2026 Details →
  2. 2 Pricing www.stackfield.com Checked 19 Oct 2026 +3 earlier captures: 13 Oct 2026, 30 Sep 2026, 21 Sep 2026 Details →
  3. 3 Imprint www.stackfield.com Checked 19 Oct 2026 Details →
  4. 4 Privacy policy www.stackfield.com Checked 19 Oct 2026 Details →
  5. 5 Security / trust page www.stackfield.com Checked 19 Oct 2026 Details →
  6. 6 Channels, threads & search — found from sitemap www.stackfield.com Checked 19 Oct 2026 Details →
  7. 7 Channels, threads & search — found from sitemap www.stackfield.com Checked 19 Oct 2026 Details →
  8. 8 Encryption & access control — found from sitemap www.stackfield.com Checked 19 Oct 2026 Details →
  9. 9 Encryption & access control — found from sitemap www.stackfield.com Checked 19 Oct 2026 Details →
  10. 10 Retention, discovery & co-determination — found from sitemap www.stackfield.com Checked 19 Oct 2026 Details →
  11. 11 Retention, discovery & co-determination — found from sitemap www.stackfield.com Checked 19 Oct 2026 Details →
  12. 12 Deployment & data custody — found from sitemap www.stackfield.com Checked 19 Oct 2026 Details →
  13. 13 Deployment & data custody — found from sitemap www.stackfield.com Checked 19 Oct 2026 Details →
  14. 14 Integrations & extensibility — found from sitemap www.stackfield.com Checked 19 Oct 2026 Details →
  15. 15 Integrations & extensibility — found from sitemap www.stackfield.com Checked 19 Oct 2026 Details →