Cloud per-user vs self-hosted capacity pricing for team chat

Team-chat pricing is almost universally per-seat. You pay a monthly fee per user, usually between five and twenty-five dollars, and the bill scales linearly with headcount. That model is familiar enough that most buyers never question it until they do the arithmetic for a growing team.

TheChatApp now uses a hybrid model because cloud hosting and self-hosted software have different economics. Cloud is per billed user: Team is €3/user/month, Business is €5/user/month, and Enterprise is €8/user/month, with annual billing at €30, €50, and €80 per user. Self-hosted stays capacity-based because the customer is buying a server edition: Free covers 10 users, Business covers 50, and Enterprise covers 200.

Why cloud moved to per-user pricing

Fixed cloud tiers looked clean on a pricing table, but they created bad moments for customers. If Team covered 10 users and Business covered 50, the eleventh user could turn a small annual bill into a much larger one. The same thing happened at the jump from 50 to 51 users. That is not how a hosted product should feel.

Per-user cloud pricing keeps the next hire predictable. A Business customer knows another user is €5/month or €50/year. Tier choice still matters, but it now describes the bundle: storage, support, SSO/SCIM/Audit add-ons, legal hold, export, dedicated relay, and enterprise support. It no longer acts as a hard seat-count cliff.

Why self-hosted stays capacity-based

Self-hosted is different. When a customer buys a self-hosted licence, they are buying a server edition they operate themselves. Business is €2,495 once plus optional €995/year maintenance for up to 50 users. Enterprise is €14,995 once plus optional €4,995/year maintenance for up to 200 users. The software keeps running if maintenance lapses; relay access and security updates are what lapse.

That structure keeps the ownership promise intact. If you want predictable software ownership and your own infrastructure, self-hosted gives you that. If you want us to run the infrastructure, cloud gives you linear per-user billing without forcing a huge upgrade just because one more person joined.

The real numbers at fifty users

At fifty users on annual billing, the 2026 list prices for the major players look like this: Microsoft Teams Essentials at $2,400 per year. Zulip Cloud Standard at $4,000. Slack Pro at $4,350. Rocket.Chat Pro at $4,800. Mattermost Professional at $6,000. Webex Suite Business at $15,000. TheChatApp Cloud Business is €2,500 per year at fifty users.

The headline gap is real, but it is not the whole story. Slack ships a marketplace of over two thousand integrations and compliance certifications that TheChatApp does not have today. Microsoft Teams ships Office interop. Mattermost ships government certifications. If your team needs those specific things, the price may be buying something concrete. If it does not, you are paying for features you will never use, and that is a cost with no return.

What to check on your own chat bill

Three questions usually reveal whether your pricing model is working. First, what has the total chat bill grown to over the last twelve months, and was that growth planned? Second, how many of the paid features you are charged for are actually used day to day by more than ten percent of the team? Third, would you rather pay linearly for managed hosting, or buy a self-hosted server edition and keep the software under your own control?

Where to go next

If the hybrid model sounds like the right fit, the pricing page covers TheChatApp's cloud and self-hosted tiers in full. For a per-competitor breakdown, see the Slack comparison, the Microsoft Teams comparison, or the Mattermost comparison.