At The Matrix Conference 2025, I shared the latest updates on Element Server Suite (ESS) - our distribution for Matrix-based deployments.
ESS includes both the Classic stack and the new Helm-based ESS stack (organised into three editions: Community, Pro and TI-Messenger). Let’s break down their capabilities, and take a look at what’s ahead on the roadmap.
Watch the whole presentation
Where we have come from: ESS Classic
ESS Classic is the legacy Matrix backend distribution from Element for professional use. It has been the backbone of our offerings for years and many of our customers continue to rely on it today. ESS Classic comes as a binary with an installer: You download it, deploy it and it guides you through the installation process of setting up the whole stack. While this sounds wonderful, it came with challenges.
ESS Classic used Kubernetes operators, requiring admin permissions on existing clusters which has proven cumbersome for many of our customers. Deployment took a long time and the stack suffered from scope creep with experimental features and black-box behaviour. Customers could not easily understand the stack or troubleshoot independently. It was not a best practice deployment method, was difficult to automate and unsuitable for modern deployment methods like GitOps. It also included a few components that we don’t produce ourselves, for example the monitoring stack, which made maintenance harder. Finally, ESS Classic did not provide a free edition or trial as you had to be a paying customer to use it.
A new ESS stack
With these learnings and challenges at hand, we planned for a new stack: the Helm-based ESS stack. Our goal was to design a deployment method according to industry standards. This would include automated deployments, versioned configurations, support for GitOps-style deployments, quick setup, usability for less experienced admins, curated components for quality and a lightweight stack for maintainability. The philosophy is fewer features, but higher quality and better stability. We also wanted a true community edition: A free and open source product for hobbyists, community use and commercial evaluation that could easily upgrade to Pro if needed.
The result is the new Helm-based ESS stack that comes in three editions: Community, Pro and TI-Messenger.
ESS Community is our Matrix distribution from Element for non-commercial use. It’s suited for casual small-scale community use cases and evaluations with up to 100 users. It’s Helm-chart based and focused on quality and ease of use. ESS Community includes:
- Synapse as the Matrix server
- Matrix Authentication Service (MAS) for user management and authentication
- Element Web as a browser-based Matrix client
- Element Call for audio/video conferencing
- Element Admin for administration
This is the first time Element offers a full backend distribution for free, fully open source (AGPLv3), ready for Matrix 2.0 and Element X, and deployable on any Kubernetes distribution with extensive step-by-step documentation.
ESS Pro is our Matrix backend distribution for professional use cases that’s suited for any deployment size. It's a Helm-chart based stack built according to industry standards. ESS Pro includes all ESS Community components, plus:
- Synapse Pro
- Element Pro
- Advanced Identity Access Management
- Secure Border Gateway (SBG)
- Sygnal (Push Gateway)
- Auditing
- Moderation
It also comes with all of the professional features for scaling, automation, central control for full autonomy and sovereignty. It includes Level 3 support, Long-Term Support (LTS), releases, Advance Security Advisories, Certifications (ISO, CRA, CE+, etc.) and SBOMs. It’s also available as an air-gapped solution. Keep reading for a closer look at the components, including a comparison between the Community and Pro editions.
ESS Pro for TI-Messenger is our distribution tailored to Germany’s TI-Messenger initiative (the standard for secure healthcare communications across the German healthcare system). It comes with the same commitments and services as ESS Pro but ships different components and features such as a modern, scalable and lightweight TI-Messenger Messenger Proxy. ESS Pro for TI-Messenger is compliant with the TI-M Pro and ePA specifications. It’s powering T-Systems’ TI-Messenger solution, which is being used by public healthcare insurer BARMER and other T-Systems customers.
Element Server Suite - the most advanced Matrix distribution available!
The power of Synapse Pro
Synapse Pro is Element's commercial implementation of Synapse targeted at professional use, and ships as part of ESS Pro. The Community edition of Synapse only supports small-to-midscale deployments, but many operations are manual and static as well as inefficient for large or multiple small deployments. Synapse Pro addresses these limitations: It enables scaling for massive size deployments effortlessly and automatically; saving resources to reduce operational cost, and easing operations along with improving operational stability. Synapse Pro is available in two flavors: for Large Hosts (more than 100 users up into the millions) and Small Hosts (many small deployments under 100 users).
Synapse Pro for Large Hosts includes Rust components to replace Synapse subsystems for better performance and security. Embedded in ESS Pro it offers autoscaling, high availability, and rolling upgrades with minimal downtime, saving 50–80% in infrastructure costs.
The Small Hosts solution is multi-tenancy, allowing multiple tenants in one Synapse process, segregated at the database level, with management APIs and a Kubernetes controller for shard management and automation. Small hosts save 90% in infrastructure costs. I had a separate talk about Small Hosts and this blog post breaks down the details.
Components of ESS Pro
ESS Pro offer a range of advantages, and a breakdown of these features include:
- Synapse Pro
- Next generation homeserver for professional use that provides dynamic scaling and 90%+ resource savings compared to Community Synapse.
- Element Pro:
- The Element clients for the professional workplace
- MAS (Matrix Authentication Service):
- Next-gen user management and authentication supporting Element X, with the ability to integrate external LDAP/AD user directories and Identity Providers (via OpenID Connect).
- Advanced Identity and Access Management:
- Integrates external identity management systems, synchronises user attributes, handles lifecycle management and provides group-based room access controls.
- Element Admin Console:
- Available in both Community and Pro, for managing users, rooms, registration tokens and system dashboards. Future plans include UI-based configuration for ESS deployments.
- Secure Border Gateway:
- Application-level firewall for federation and client controls.
- Auditing:
- Captures room data for compliance and integrates with log analysis tools.
- Moderation:
- Enables an organisation to administer all rooms from a central point.
ESS Community and ESS Pro feature comparison
ESS Community is designed for personal, casual and community use. Large workplace deployments need a different level of performance and flexibility, and a broader enterprise-grade set of features. The main differences between ESS Community and ESS Pro are highlighted in this comparison table.
| Community | Pro | |
|---|---|---|
| Trusted software (Official Matrix distribution from Element; the creators of Matrix) | ✅ | ✅ |
| Synapse homeserver (Community edition homeserver, actively developed by Element, but not for use in production environments) | ✅ | ❌ |
| Synapse Pro (Next generation homeserver for professional use providing dynamic scaling and 80%+ resource savings compared to Community Synapse) | ❌ | ✅ |
| Element Admin (Configure and control your deployment from a single pane of glass) | ✅ | ✅ |
| Advanced Identity and Access Management (Integrate with enterprise identity management systems like LDAP and SCIM to automate user management and mirror organisational structures within room hierarchies) | ❌ | ✅ |
| LDAP/AD authentication (Authenticate users directly against an external LDAP or Active Directory system) | ❌ | ✅ |
| Single Sign On (Richer support for SSO through OIDC/OAuth) | ❌ | ✅ |
| Auditing and reporting (In-room auditing to capture an official record of discussion and decision-making for regulation and compliance purposes) | ❌ | ✅ |
| Moderation (Corporate oversight and management of your organisation’s conversations, disabled by default) | ❌ | ✅ |
| Retention policies (Configure rules-based retention policies for messages and media, to meet your organisation's processes and compliance requirements) | ❌ | ✅ |
| Data export (Easily migrate your data, protecting against vendor lock-in) | ✅ | ✅ |
| Secure border gateway (Rules-based application firewall with federation controls to securely manage your Matrix network) | ❌ | ✅ |
| Vendor-backed product (Supply chain security guarantee for CRA compliance with vendor Software Bill of Materials (SBOMs)) | ❌ | ✅ |
| Performance guarantees (SLAs-backed, high availability and dynamic scaling) | ❌ | ✅ |
| Resource efficiency & power usage effectiveness (PUE) (Low resource footprint and multi-tenancy support via Synapse Pro) | ❌ | ✅ |
| Management of frontend client (MDM, certificate pinning, branding and server-pushed configuration support) | ❌ | ✅ |
Roadmap
The focus of the remainder of the year will be migrating ESS Classic customers to Matrix Authentication Service (MAS) - the next-gen authentication and foundation for next-generation clients. We’ll also be adding components to ESS Pro such as enhancing Element Admin, the highly-polished interface for administrators to manage the ESS deployment. It already includes powerful user and room management, easy registration token and personal access token management, and we’ll continue to add new powerful features. We’ll also be preparing customer migrations from ESS Classic to ESS Pro next year so that everyone can take full advantage of the new ESS stack.
Thanks to everyone for using ESS! If you’d like to dive deeper, watch the full session above.
