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Threema Work

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 Threema GmbH · threema.ch

Compare with Wire (Messaging) → Report an error on this page Is this your product? →

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

The Security Officer

Weighted verdict

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.

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

Scored by The Security Officer

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 Security Officer

Group chats, polls, reactions, file sharing and edit/delete are evidenced, but the evidence says nothing about threads, channels, search, or exporting a conversation in human-readable form. For a product whose whole pitch is that the server cannot read anything, that silence matters: I have no evidence a decision made eighteen months ago can be found or extracted by the organisation that made it. 1 2

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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 Security Officer

This is the product's spine: end-to-end encryption as the default mode with a zero-knowledge statement in plain words — "not even Threema has access" — plus perfect forward secrecy, open source and independent audits, which is exactly the vendor-cannot-decrypt statement I demand. It stays below the top because the evidence evidences no device or key verification, no admin-revocable sessions, and no documented key handling; MDM and central management are named but never as 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 Security Officer

Every retention statement in the evidence concerns Threema's own website forms and logs; for the customer's message archive there is no retention policy, no export format, no audit log and no legal hold anywhere. The off-hours policy is the single control a works council would recognise, and it does not make an archive governable. 1 3

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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 Security Officer

A genuine self-hosted OnPrem edition with air-gapped operation and white-labelling of all apps is evidenced, which puts real custody within the customer's reach. But no export or migration path in or out is documented anywhere in the evidence, and "Open Source" is unscoped — client apps or server, it does not say. 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 Security Officer

An integration API, an admin API for automated administration, a broadcast API with bots, and gateway credits are evidenced, plus AAD sync at an unstated additional charge. No webhooks, slash commands, SSO, documented rate limits or sandbox appear anywhere, so this is a thin but real API surface rather than a framework. 1 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 Security Officer

Hosting is named and certified — Threema's own servers in two ISO 27001 colocation data centers in Zurich — but the contracting entity is Swiss, not EU, and the pipeline found no published subprocessor list beyond Livestorm for webinar registration. The OnPrem option would remove the question entirely, but on the cloud product this is a third-country arrangement dressed with an Art. 27 GDPR representative in Bonn. 1 3

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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 Security Officer

Core at EUR 3/user/month with annual payment stated and Professional at EUR 5 are public. But the OnPrem tier — the one carrying the sovereignty and air-gap — is priced only as "CUSTOM", AAD sync is an unpriced "additional charge", and VAT treatment is nowhere stated, so the invoice for the deployment a security buyer actually wants is not computable from public pages. 1 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

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 (16)

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

  1. 1 Product page threema.ch Checked 15 Sep 2026 +1 earlier capture: 11 Sep 2026 Details →
  2. 2 Pricing threema.ch Checked 15 Sep 2026 Details →
  3. 3 Privacy policy threema.ch Checked 15 Sep 2026 Details →
  4. 4 Security / trust page threema.com Checked 30 Sep 2026 Details →
  5. 5 Imprint threema.com Checked 30 Sep 2026 Details →
  6. 6 Data processing agreement (dpa) threema.com Checked 30 Sep 2026 Details →
  7. 7 Channels, threads & search — found from sitemap threema.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  8. 8 Channels, threads & search — found from sitemap threema.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  9. 9 Encryption & access control — found from sitemap threema.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  10. 10 Encryption & access control — found from sitemap threema.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  11. 11 Retention, discovery & co-determination — found from sitemap threema.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  12. 12 Retention, discovery & co-determination — found from sitemap threema.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  13. 13 Deployment & data custody — found from sitemap threema.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  14. 14 Deployment & data custody — found from sitemap threema.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  15. 15 Integrations & extensibility — found from sitemap threema.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  16. 16 Integrations & extensibility — found from sitemap threema.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →