Clarification needed for the upgrade to v11

Troubleshooting
1

Hi everybody,

I have some questions about the upgrade to v11. Right now we are running Mattermost Free Edition on Ubuntu 22.04, installed with mattermost-omnibus. The about page states that this is the Mattermost Enterprise Edition.

In the message about the omnibus deprecation, it’s stated that the recommended migration path is to move to Standard Ubuntu/RHEL Deployment.

I had a look at the Server Maintenance part of the Administration Guide. In the Upgrade Mattermost Server section, it’s stated that upgrades are done by downloading and installing binaries.

Now my questions:

  1. When I’m installing Mattermost with apt, I’m not supposed to follow the guide to upgrade, right?
  2. Which version of Mattermost will be installed when using apt? I would guess the Mattermost Team Edition (MIT-Compiled License).
  3. What is the reduced user limit referring to? Is it 250 users per team[1] or for the whole server?
  4. What will happen to a Mattermost installation like ours that has more than 250, but well under 1,000 users?
  5. Would it be possible to stay on version v10.11 ESR when using mattermost-omnibus?[2] If yes, how?

  1. The “Mattermost v11 Changes in Free Offerings” post states: “(from thousands of users per ‘team,’ to 1,000, and now to 250)” which suggests that it is 250 users per team. ↩︎

  2. The “Mattermost v11 Changes in Free Offerings” post states: “Large Deployments (>250 users with GitLab SSO): Stay on v10.11 ESR for 12 months of security/maintenance updates…” ↩︎

2 Likes
2

Hi Markus! :waving_hand: You can find a detailed discussion about the omnibus deprecation and supported upgrade paths in this thread: How long will Mattermost be bundled in Omnibus GitLab? - it should help clarify what happens after v10.11 ESR and how to transition to a standard installation.

3

Hi John,

I found tricky problem on my small Ubuntu 22 omnibus instillation (I’m not using Gitlab):
mattermost-omnibus/jammy,now 10.12.0-0 amd64 [installed,upgradable to: 11.0.2-0]
mattermost/jammy,now 10.12.0-0 amd64 [installed,upgradable to: 11.0.2-0]
What migration path shoud be used in my case?
Standard apt upgrade fails when mattermost pacakge is beeing updated.
br
Tomek

4

Hi John,

thanks for the response. I have read the post you linked and the migration guide linked in the post before posting my questions. My questions came while reading the different posts and migration guides.

As I mentioned in my original post we are not using the gitlab-omnbus package. We are using the mattermost-omnibus package.

The most important question for me right now is: Can we stay on v10.11 ESR right now using mattermost-omnibus and get the security/maintenance updates you are shipping for gitlab-omnibus for the next 12 months?

If this is possible, what do we have to do in order to get those updates?

The second most important question for me right now is: What will happen to our mattermost instance when updating to mattermost version 11? We have several teams in our instance. The biggest team has just under 200 members and the whole instance has about 520 registered users.

I did not find any clarification if our server would be considered being above the limits mentioned and what would be the immediate consequences of being above the limit.

As we need to ensure service reliability for our users, we require clarity on the potential impacts before proceeding with the update.

Any clarification to these two questions is greatly appreciated.

Best regards,
Markus

1 Like
5

Subject: Mattermost v11 Upgrade Triggered Unexpected Retention Enforcement; Clarification & Options Requested

Hello Mattermost Team,

I’m reaching out following an in-place upgrade of a long-running self-hosted Mattermost instance (Omnibus → v11.1.1 on Ubuntu 22.04, PostgreSQL 14).

Immediately after the upgrade, our server began enforcing a 10,000 visible message history limit, hiding messages prior to May 16, 2023 (for now I suppose). To be clear:

  • No messages were deleted
  • All historical data remains intact in PostgreSQL
  • The change appears to be license-gated visibility enforcement newly applied in v11

This instance has been in continuous use since 2017, originally migrated from Slack for similar historical-retention reasons. The primary users today are my large extended family, not a commercial team.

Key concerns we’re hoping you can clarify:

  1. Where are the official limits documented?
    The in-product “limits” link currently resolves to an empty page (as of 2026-01-12):
    https://mattermost.com/pl/mattermost-entry-limits

  2. What exactly changed in v11 regarding enforcement?
    Historically, Omnibus installs behaved like Enterprise binaries with relaxed enforcement. v11 appears to retroactively apply limits without explicit warning during upgrade.

  3. Is there a supported path for small / non-commercial self-hosted instances
    that need:

    • Unlimited storage of messages (already true)
    • Occasional access to historical messages
    • Without per-seat pricing designed for enterprises?

  4. Are there options for:

    • A non-commercial / family tier?
    • Read-only historical access?
    • Temporary unlocks for export or archive use cases?

  5. Pricing transparency
    The pricing page now shows “Contact Sales” only, with no published ranges. This makes it difficult to assess feasibility before engaging further.

We understand and respect the need for sustainable licensing. Our concern is primarily around predictability, documentation, and suitability for long-lived personal family server.

Happy to provide logs, system details, or jump on a call, but we wanted to document the experience clearly first.

Thank you,
Sam Myers
Self-hosted Mattermost admin since 2019, and haven’t had an issue I could work through on my own since v5.29, I’m no Cory Doctorow but this kinda stinks.