Top business messengers with guest accounts for users
Guest user accounts in business messengers allow external users to collaborate without breaking the company's workflow, maintain security, and control access. It's one of the ways to communicate with contractors or external partners, invite them to video meetings or chat rooms. What are the benefits of guest user accounts for organizations?
Secure collaboration with external users
Guest users can have limited access to team messenger features, such as private chats and viewing other users' profiles. Flexible permissions allow limiting the abilities of guest users to send messages or files. This makes collaboration with external users secure and efficient.
Access control and accountability
Admins can easily control the activities of guest users by granting or restricting certain permissions. At the end of collaboration, such external profiles can be disabled, and access to the communication channels will be blocked in this case.
Improved communication and productivity
Collaboration with external users helps to streamline communication and facilitate the whole workflow when the team can communicate in one tool, review conversations, and shared documents.
Team messengers that offer guest profiles
Not all team messengers offer a guest user feature due to the following reasons:
- License limitations
- User experience challenges
- Compliance and security
- Lack of necessary user permissions
- Architecture limitations
In this blog post, we will compare three vendors that offer the ability for guest users to join conversations.
Virola
Virola is a business messenger with a flexible permissions framework. The price depends on the number of online users. This means that by purchasing a certain number of extra profiles, admins can use them to set up for guest users and deactivate them when they are not needed.
In Virola, the admin can create a profile for a guest user and provide them with the link to connect to the Virola client. The following permissions can be applied to guest users:
- Limitation to create group chat rooms.
- Limitation to create private chat rooms.
- Limitation to see profiles of other users.
- Limitation to view task and meeting boards.
- Restriction on changing password.
- In chat rooms, guest users can be restricted from sending messages and files both in the main thread and discussions, editing or removing text messages, renaming or removing attachments, adding reactions, and seeing who has read the message.
- The usage of the following collaboration features can be limited as well: screen sharing and remote control, activation of intercom, creating meetings and issues, managing issues in the chat room, and sending nudges.
- Additionally, admins can add guest users to specific group chat rooms.
Virola allows configuring any type of access to Virola features for guest users. As a result, this makes the collaboration quite secure and convenient.
Rocket.Chat
A guest in Rocket.Chat is a restricted account type designed for:
- Temporary participants like external contractors or guest users.
- External users who need limited access to certain channels or discussions.
- Support or sales interactions (e.g., website visitors through live chat).
Guests can communicate with specific users or rooms but cannot freely browse the workspace or access private data unless permitted.
Rocket.Chat uses a role-based access control model. The guest role usually has the following limited rights:
- Can join only specific public or invited rooms.
- Can read and post messages but not create channels.
- Cannot search all users or view workspace-wide directories.
- Cannot access administrative settings.
Guest profiles in Rocket.Chat offer a controlled and configurable way to let external participants communicate without compromising internal data. Admins define exactly who guests can message, what rooms they can join, and how long their access lasts.
Mattermost
Guest accounts in Mattermost have limited access for external users, ensuring they only see what's explicitly shared with them. Guest access is available in Mattermost Cloud and self-hosted Enterprise or Professional plans (not in the free Team Edition by default).
Each guest user automatically gets the guest role, which limits what they can do.
By default, guests:
- Can access only the channels they are invited to
- Cannot search or browse other teams or channels
- Cannot create public channels, teams, or groups
- Cannot add new members
- Cannot use system-wide commands
- Cannot see the full team or member directory, which preserves confidentiality
Guest profiles in Mattermost provide a secure, controlled bridge between internal teams and external collaborators. They work inside existing teams and channels, follow strict visibility limits, and can be tightly managed and revoked when no longer needed.