Single-channel guest reporting and licensing
Overview
Mattermost is evolving how Single-Channel Guests are counted against license seats. Historically, guest users consumed a paid license seat, creating friction for customers migrating from other platforms, where a set number of single-channel guests are typically included at no additional cost.
This update transitions single-channel guests into a separate, subsidized category to incentivize external collaboration without increasing seat costs.
Licensing Logic
Total activated users: will no longer include single-channel guests
Single-channel guests: not counted as paid active users. Counted toward the new free single-channel guest allowance.
Multi-channel guests: are counted as paid active users. No change in behavior.
Free single-channel guest allowance: equal to the total licensed seats (e.g. 1,000 total licensed seats, 1,000 free single-channel guests allowed)
Enforcement Model
The single channel guest allowance will be enforced by soft warnings to admins-only. No hard limits will be enforced.
User Experience Overview
Only System Administrators receive visibility into SCG usage and overage status.
No changes to:
End-user, non-admin experience
Guest invitation flows
Channel guest management
User creation permissions
Multi-channel guest behavior
System console changes
New global warning banner for single-channel guest overage (dismissable)
If the single-channel guest count is greater than the allowance (total licensed seats), it will show as a warning with a tooltip stating:
Your workspace has reached the limit for single-channel guests. [Contact sales]
Visibility and dismiss logic
This banner is only visible to system admins and is dismissable. Once dismissed, the banner does not reappear.
It will only reappear if they’ve hit the limit again after resolving it.
Existing Global banner for total seats overage
With the logic changes being made to the definition of active users (e.g. excluding single-channel guests), the existing logic for warning banners to admins will just work as-is.
Edition and License page
A new row will be added under Active users that will show the count of Single-channel guests. If the count is greater than the allowance for single-channel guests, it will show as a warning with a tooltip stating:
Limit reached for single-channel guests
The number of single-channel guests cannot exceed the total number of licensed seats
System statistics page
A new metric will be added to the system statistics page for added visibility. This will display the Single-channel Guest count and will follow the same logic as the license page to warn admins when they’ve reached the limit.
Acceptance Criteria
This specification defines reporting transparency and soft-license enforcement without operational impact. The design remains minimal, aligned with existing license UI patterns, and avoids introducing complexity into guest management workflows.
The following defines the acceptance criteria:
Single-channel guests are excluded from primary seat count on the license page and system stats page.
Single-channel guests allowance equals the total license seat count
Overages trigger (visible to admins only)
Dismissable global banner warning
Warning highlight on license page
Warning highlight on system statistics page
No hard limits enforced