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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 Team Lead

Weighted verdict

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.

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

Scored by The Team Lead

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 Team Lead

What's evidenced is flat group chats with reactions, polls, calls and edit/delete — no channels, no threads, no mentions, and no search documented anywhere, so I can't confirm my team could find last spring's decision at all. No export of a conversation into a human-readable form is evidenced either; this is a consumer messenger pattern, not a workspace, which is why it sits near the bottom rather than mid-scale. 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 Team Lead

E2EE is the default, the code is open source with regular independent audits and perfect forward secrecy, and the zero-knowledge statement says plainly that not even Threema can read message content — that's the 10-side of the crypto half. It holds at 8 rather than higher because the access-control half is unevidenced: no SSO, no per-channel roles, no guest scoping, and nothing showing an admin can revoke a session — central user management and MDM are device policy, not room-level control, and identity verification isn't mentioned. 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 Team Lead

No message retention policy, no export format, no audit log and no eDiscovery appear anywhere in the evidence — the only retention facts are website cookies, forms and truncated 10-day logs, which say nothing about the message archive. The off-hours policy and the absence of any productivity analytics are works-council-friendly, but an archive I cannot produce for a lawyer is a liability in discovery, not just a privacy feature. 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 Team Lead

OnPrem self-hosting with air-gapped operation and white-labeling, plus an open-source claim, is a real custody option rather than a checkbox. It stops short of 8 because no export or migration path in or out — complete export including files and metadata — is documented anywhere in the evidence; custody I can hold but not leave with is only half of sovereignty. 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 Team Lead

There is a genuine API surface: integration API, admin API, broadcast API with bots, scheduled messages and gateway credits, plus AAD sync at an extra charge. But no webhooks, no slash commands, no SSO, no app framework, no documented rate limits, and the AI bridge is 'coming soon' — this is a messaging pipe, not a platform, so it lands between the anchors. 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 Team Lead

Swiss vendor running exclusively on its own servers in two named ISO 27001 datacenters in Zurich, with real GDPR engagement (Art. 27 representative in Bonn, a DPO) and a named subprocessor, plus an OnPrem option that largely removes the question. It misses the top because the contracting entity and primary law sit outside the EU (Swiss FADP), ownership is unknown, and the only disclosed subprocessor covers webinar tooling rather than a published full chain. 1 2 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 Team Lead

Core at EUR 3 and Professional at EUR 5 per user per month on annual billing are public, with tier limits spelled out (gateway credits, support response times). But OnPrem is 'CUSTOM', AAD sync is an unquantified 'additional charge', and VAT treatment is nowhere stated — I can compute the SaaS invoice for a headcount, but not the one for the self-hosted deployment this product is actually best at. 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 →