#77 in Collaboration & CommunicationUpdated 2026-08

Element

by Element · Matrix-based encrypted messaging and collaboration you host yourself

BenchRank score

28.7

Visit website See full Collaboration & Communication ranking

Overview

Element is a messaging and collaboration app built on the Matrix open standard, covering chat, voice and video calls with end-to-end encryption by default. Organisations self-host it through Element Server Suite, connected or air-gapped, and federate with other Matrix systems. Clients run on Windows, Mac, Linux, mobile app stores, F-Droid and the browser.

Best for: Governments and organisations needing self-hosted, encrypted messaging they run and control.
Pricing: No figures are published: the self-hosted Community edition is free and open source, while Enterprise is priced per seat/month and Sovereign per deployment, both via sales.
Runs on: WebiOSAndroidmacOSWindowsSelf-hosted

Strengths and trade-offs

Strengths

Open source under AGPL, free self-hosted Community edition
End-to-end encrypted by default, including voice and video
Federates with other Matrix servers; data export to avoid lock-in
Air-gapped installs supported with no internet connectivity

Trade-offs

Community Synapse homeserver is not for production use
No published prices; Enterprise and Sovereign need a sales call
You host and run the servers yourself
Cross domain gateway and whitelabel app are paid add-ons

Pricing

Published plans and prices from Element’s own pricing page.

How this score is made up

Each dimension is scored out of 100 and combined into the headline score using fixed weights.

MCP support
Whether an agent can drive the product through the Model Context Protocol, and how much setup that takes.
API quality
Public API surface: machine-readable spec, official SDKs, documented auth, errors, rate limits and versioning.
Documentation
Publicly reachable docs — coverage, freshness, code samples and machine readability.
Agent friendliness
How readable the site is to an automated client: llms.txt, structured data, server-rendered content, crawler access.
Pricing transparency
Whether real prices are published, self-serve signup exists, and usage costs are knowable without a sales call.
Changelog
A public, dated record of what shipped and when — the clearest signal that a product is still alive.
Marketing site structure
Whether the site answers a buyer's questions: clear positioning, the pages that matter, and accessibility.
Page speed
How fast the site loads for real visitors: Chrome UX Report 75th-percentile LCP, INP and CLS, with a Lighthouse mobile run standing in where a site has too little traffic for field data.
Operational trust
Status page and incident history, security disclosure, compliance and data-processing documentation.

Measured, but not part of the score

Useful to know, but not a mark for or against the product — so these do not affect the ranking.

Openness
Source availability, self-hosting, data export and open standards. Scored and shown, but not part of the composite — paid SaaS is not worse for being paid SaaS.
Maintenance
Release cadence and repository activity. Scored and shown, but not part of the composite — it is only measurable for open repositories.

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Where this comes from

The Element pages BenchRank reads when it scores the product — its documentation, release notes, status and security pages, and its repository where there is one.

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