What is Element?
Self-hosted secure communications platform built on the Matrix open standard, offering end-to-end encrypted messaging, voice and video calls, and federation with support for air-gapped deployments.
Element pricing
Plans, per-tier features and add-ons, dated and linked to live pricing. Pricing changes often; always verify at source before you rely on it.
Free community plan. Enterprise and Sovereign plans require contacting sales.
Community
FreeNon-professional deployments and evaluations.
- Open source under AGPL
- Free frontend and backend
- Element Server Suite Community
- Synapse Community edition homeserver
- Element Call included
Enterprise
Contact salesProfessional use with enterprise-grade performance. Self-hosted with Synapse Pro.
- Element Server Suite Pro
- Synapse Pro homeserver with 90%+ resource savings
- Advance Security Advisory
- Curated full stack security updates
- Corporate compliance and control
- Advanced Identity and Access Management (LDAP, AD, OIDC, SCIM)
- Auditing and reporting
- Retention policies
- Data export
- Custom mobile push gateway
- Level 3 support with 4 business hour SLA
- Long Term Support (LTS) every 6 months
- Admin interface
- Federation controls
Sovereign
Contact salesAir-gapped deployment with complete sovereignty and no internet dependency.
- All Enterprise features
- Element Server Suite Pro
- Synapse Pro
- Air-gapped installation
- Operate without internet connectivity
- Dedicated mobile push gateway
What Element does
The capabilities that matter for collaboration software, normalised so it lines up with every alternative. “-” means we haven't confirmed it, not that it's missing.
- Messaging
- ✓
- Video meetings
- ✓
- Whiteboard
- ✗
- Screen sharing
- ✗
- Recording / transcription
- -
- End-to-end encryption
- ✓
- SSO / SCIM
- ✓
- Guest / external access
- ✓
- Compliance controls
- ✓
- Hosting
- Self-hosted only
- Max participants
- Unlimited 1:1 and group
- App marketplace
- ✗
- Public API / bot framework
- ✗
- Free tier
- ✓
Platform & deployment
Independently observed- iOS
- macOS
- Web
- Linux
- Android
- Windows
- Air-gapped
- Self-hosted
Integrations (3)
Independently observed- LDAP
- Active Directory
- SCIM
Element alternatives
Other collaboration software we track, ranked by the same independent score.
The Vioscale score: one lens on the evidence
Not user reviews and not a paid placement: a confidence-weighted blend of the independent signals below (adoption, activity, security posture, and more), which you can sort and re-weight yourself. Vendors can correct their listing but can never move their rank, and stars are weighted low as a vanity metric. It is one way to read the evidence for Element, not the verdict.
| Signal | Score | Weight | Contribution | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Capabilities | 87 | 32.00 | 2775.0 | ✓ |
| Price Level | 80 | 10.00 | 800.0 | ✓ |
| Reliability | 50 | 12.00 | 600.0 | ✓ |
| Pricing Transparency | 25 | 16.00 | 400.0 | ✓ |
| Security Posture | 30 | 12.00 | 360.0 | ✓ |
| Integrations | 17 | 18.00 | 311.7 | ✓ |
Computed . Re-weight it by intent, or see the full method.
All data & sourcesshow ↓
Every value we hold, with its source, retrieval date, and confidence. This is the evidence behind the score: don't trust it, verify it.
Features
| Attribute | Value | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Capabilities | {"hosting":"self","sso_scim":true,"free_tier":true,"messaging":true,"api_access":false,"whiteboard":false,"e2e_encryption":true,"screen_sharing":false,"video_meetings":true,"app_marketplace":false,"max_participants":"Unlimited 1:1 and group","compliance_controls":true,"guest_external_access":true} | mediumsource · 2026-08-03 · 60% |
Integrations
| Attribute | Value | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Count | 3 | mediumsource · 2026-08-03 · 60% |
Pricing
Reliability
| Attribute | Value | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Status page | Yes | mediumsource · 2026-08-03 · 60% |