Business Instant Messaging

Wire (Messaging)

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Panel rating · 6 judges · How to read the stars

Category median

Sovereignty: 3 of 4 dimensions proven

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

by Wire Swiss GmbH · wire.com

An AI-assisted analysis of public evidence — not a hands-on test.

Every score, rationale and verdict on this page is AI-generated. Every claim cites the source it was read from. Nothing here is a human star review — and no score can be bought. How scores are made →

Method and versions

The Team Lead v1.0 · The Security Officer v1.0 · The Works Council Advocate v1.0 · The Compliance Counsel v1.0 · The Platform Engineer v1.0 · The Skeptic v1.0 · rubric v1 · evaluated 16 Sep 2026

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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, file sharing, audio/video messages and 500–2000-participant chats are confirmed, but the evidence is silent on channels, threading, mentions and search entirely — I cannot confirm a decision from eighteen months ago could be found again. A chat log nobody can search is not a record, it is a rumour. Scored just above the flat-chat floor for what is evidenced, held down by what is not. 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 Works Council Advocate

This is the rubric level 10 case in full: MLS end-to-end encryption as the only mode, open source on GitHub, ID Shield automatic certificate-based device checks so ordinary people survive key management, and the vendor stating plainly it has no access to keys and no backdoors. Multi-device E2EE across 8 devices, SSO/SAML and SCIM, guest links with passwords and password-restricted guest roles complete the picture. 1 2 3 4

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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

The deletion posture is what I fight for: messages leave the servers on delivery, retention is purpose-bound, self-deleting messages exist, and the vendor confirms no automated decision-making, no profiling and consent-based, self-hosted Countly analytics that share nothing — no individual activity scoring anywhere. But the legal-object half is absent from the evidence: no audit log of administrative actions, no documented admin export, no eDiscovery or legal hold, and an availability status with no evidenced user control. Deletion by default keeps it above the middle; the missing audit trail keeps it below it. 2 3 4

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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

Custody is genuinely achievable: 100% open source code on GitHub, comprehensive on-premises deployment support 'every step of the way' in the government offering, plus federation and multi-tenancy. What holds it back is that the evidence documents no export or migration path — an exit is implied by self-hosting rather than written down — and on-prem sits in an unpriced enterprise tier. Seven, not eight. 1 2 3

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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

Admins can deploy third-party integrated apps (bots), GitHub is listed, and SSO with SCIM provisioning is real — but that is the whole integrations story the evidence tells. No documented REST API, no webhooks, no slash commands, no rate limits, no sandbox. Just enough to be more than a closed app, nowhere near a platform. 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 Works Council Advocate

The substance is largely there: servers in Germany and Ireland, a full published subprocessor list with locations, and the one US processor (Stripe) named with its transfer safeguards and DPF certification. But the contracting entity is Wire Swiss GmbH in Zug, with Wire Germany GmbH existing only as an Article 27 representative — the anchor's named failing condition — and ownership is unknown. European in substance, not in contracting party; five. 3 4

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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

Free (5 people), SMB at €7.45/person/month annual or €8.94 monthly with SSO, SCIM and guest roles included, billing period stated — so a 100-person invoice is computable. But every organisation above 100 people, which is where the works councils I represent live, gets 'Custom', holding federation, data sovereignty and on-prem hostage to a sales conversation, and VAT, minimum terms and guest pricing are unstated. A clean five, no more. 2

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European sovereignty — proven facts

3 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.

Legal entity	Incorporated in CH	3/3 pts	5 Report an error
Ownership	Not determined	—	uncited Report an error
Data residency	EU only ⚠ unverified	3/3 pts	3 Report an error
Subprocessors	US CLOUD Act reach ⚠ unverified	0/2 pts	4 Report an error

Where this could be wrong

Evidence ages. The oldest capture behind this page is from 15 Sep 2026. Vendors change pricing and policies without notice; every fact reflects its source as of the capture date shown in the registry.
Weak sourcing — Data residency. The claim appears only in marketing copy on the security and MLS pages, not in a DPA or subprocessor list, and the unnamed hosting providers hold US federal certifications (FedRAMP, FIPS 140-2) suggesting an American provider.
Weak sourcing — Subprocessors. Zendesk is US-headquartered and is the only provider explicitly named; the hosting providers are not named, though their FedRAMP and FIPS 140-2 certifications suggest a US provider, and the push services APN/FCM (Apple/Google) are used for notifications but Wire states no message data is shared with them.
AI can misread a source. Extraction and judgement are automated; a citation guarantees traceability, not infallibility. If something here is wrong, say so — no account needed, every report is decided within 5 business days, and accepted corrections are published.

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.

18 product facts could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and were left out of this page and of the panel’s material. Know more? Tell us
10 compliance facts could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and were left out of this page and of the panel’s material. Know more? Tell us
10 legal facts could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and were left out of this page and of the panel’s material. Know more? Tell us
9 pricing facts could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and were left out of this page and of the panel’s material. Know more? Tell us
2 data facts could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and were left out of this page and of the panel’s material. Know more? Tell us
2 integrations facts could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and were left out of this page and of the panel’s material. Know more? Tell us
1 support fact could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and was left out of this page and of the panel’s material. Know more? Tell us
6 of the readings below were written against an earlier fact sheet — a fact has been corrected, added or pulled since. Until the panel next runs on this product you are reading the older judgement. Know more? Tell us

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Sources (14)

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

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