---
title: "What is Rocket.Chat?"
slug: "rocketchat"
description: "Discover Rocket Chat: a secure communications platform for mission-critical messaging, defence collaboration, and operational resilience across industries."
updated: 2026-09-04T13:36:38Z
published: 2026-09-04T13:36:38Z
canonical: "docs.rocket.chat/rocketchat"
---

> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.rocket.chat/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# What is Rocket.Chat?

[Rocket.Chat](http://Rocket.Chat) is a secure collaboration platform for organizations that need full control over their communications and data. You can run it on your own infrastructure, in a sovereign or air-gapped environment, or as a cloud-hosted workspace.

## What you can do with [Rocket.Chat](http://Rocket.Chat)

- **Team collaboration:** Communicate in channels, teams, discussions, and direct messages, with threads, file sharing, and search.
- **Omnichannel customer engagement:** Serve customers and citizens over the Livechat widget, email, WhatsApp, and other channel apps from one agent workspace.
- **Voice and conference calls:** Make calls with [Rocket.Chat](http://Rocket.Chat) Voice and connect conference apps such as Jitsi, Pexip, Google Meet, and BigBlueButton.
- **Federation:** Collaborate across organizations through Matrix federation while each participant keeps its own infrastructure and data.
- **Extensibility:** Install apps from the [Rocket.Chat](http://Rocket.Chat) Marketplace, build private apps, and integrate through the [Rocket.Chat](http://Rocket.Chat) API.

## Security and compliance

[Rocket.Chat](http://Rocket.Chat) includes end-to-end encryption, single sign-on with LDAP, SAML, OAuth, and OpenID Connect, attribute-based access control (ABAC), audit logs, and retention policies. Capability availability varies by plan. See [Our Plans](https://portal.us.document360.io/v1/docs/our-plans) for the current breakdown.

## Deployment models

You can deploy [Rocket.Chat](http://Rocket.Chat) three ways: cloud-hosted by [Rocket.Chat](http://Rocket.Chat), self-managed on your own infrastructure, or fully air-gapped for classified and isolated environments. [Choose Your Deployment Model](https://portal.us.document360.io/v1/docs/choose-your-deployment-model) compares them.

## Where to start

- To try [Rocket.Chat](http://Rocket.Chat) on your own server, follow the [quick start evaluation guide](https://portal.us.document360.io/v1/docs/evaluate-rocketchat).
- To compare plans and free entry points, see [Our Plans](https://portal.us.document360.io/v1/docs/our-plans).
- To size a production deployment, see [Reference Architectures by Workspace Size](https://portal.us.document360.io/v1/docs/reference-architectures).