Is Matter really free?

The Free plan is described as free forever and includes kudos, a template library and Feedback Friday. Celebrations, custom kudos for company values and analytics start at $1 per user per month on Basic, and rewards at $3 on Pro, both billed annually. Evergreen has no free tier; it is $3.99 per active user per month after a 14-day trial.

How do Matter coins work?

Coins are attached to kudos, celebrations and surveys on the Pro plan and redeemed for eGift cards, swag, charitable donations or payouts. The company pays for a reward only when an admin approves the request, separately from the subscription. Evergreen has no coins; three received seeds become one planted tree.

Does Evergreen have something like Feedback Friday?

Evergreen sends a weekly reminder to give seeds and a monthly team recap of who was recognised and for which values. It does not have Matter’s peer feedback or survey features.

Alternatives

Matter Alternative: Evergreen vs Matter

For teams comparing two chat-native tools. Matter is a kudos and feedback app in Slack and Teams with a free tier and a coin-based rewards layer; Evergreen has one plan and a tree instead of coins.

Matter at a glance

Pricing: Free forever for kudos and Feedback Friday; Basic at $1 and Pro at $3 per user per month billed annually, with monthly plans available; a surveys add-on at $2 per user per month; Enterprise quoted; rewards billed separately when an admin approves a request. (as read on 7 September 2026)
Best for: Matter is the right choice for a small team that wants free kudos in Slack or Teams today, likes a weekly Feedback Friday prompt, and may later add coins, gift cards or surveys as paid layers.
Website: matterapp.com

What Matter is

Matter is a kudos and feedback app that lives in Slack and Microsoft Teams. The Free plan gives you kudos with a template library and Feedback Friday, an automatic weekly prompt to recognise a colleague. Basic, at $1 per user per month billed annually, adds celebrations, custom kudos that can represent company values, and analytics. Pro, at $3, adds Matter coins that redeem for eGift cards in 200+ countries, company swag, charitable donations or payouts, plus challenges and incentives. Surveys are a $2 add-on, and Enterprise adds HRIS integration for an extra annual fee. Billing covers only members of the connected channel and is pro-rated daily, and the 14-day trial needs no card.

Who it suits

Small teams and startups. A five-person team can install Matter for nothing, and the Feedback Friday prompt is a low-effort way to build a habit. As the team grows it can pay for values and analytics, then for rewards, then for surveys, without leaving Slack. If you want one tool to grow into an engagement platform a dollar at a time, that path is well laid out.

The costs arrive as you climb. Rewards need Pro plus a rewards budget, and gift cards are a taxable benefit. HRIS needs Enterprise, an annual plan and another fee. Ten templates make kudos quick to send and easy to make identical, and the recognition messages pages exist partly because of that problem.

How the two products approach recognition

Evergreen is the same shape with fewer moving parts. A colleague gives a seed in Slack or Microsoft Teams with a message and optional value tags, and it is posted to a public channel. Every three seeds a person receives are planted as one real tree through a reforestation partner. There is one plan at $3.99 per active user per month, billed monthly for people who interacted, with value tags, reporting, a weekly reminder and a monthly recap all included, and a 14-day trial without a card.

The tree replaces the coin. Matter’s Pro users accumulate coins, request a reward, and an admin approves it. Evergreen users accumulate seeds and the company plants trees, with the total on a public impact page. One model gives the recipient a choice; the other gives the company something to report and removes the budget and the tax. There is a real difference in recipient experience here and the recognition guide is honest about it.

Evergreen does not do surveys, celebrations or challenges. If you want those in the same app, Matter has them and Evergreen does not intend to.

What switching involves

Because both live in chat, switching is mostly a matter of installing Evergreen in the channel Matter used and mapping custom kudos to value tags. If coins were in use, give people a deadline to request rewards. The weekly reminder takes over from Feedback Friday, and the first trees are usually planted within the first month.

Where Matter is strong

A free-forever plan with kudos, a template library and Feedback Friday, and a 14-day trial of paid features without a credit card.
Native to Slack and Microsoft Teams, billed only for members of the connected channel and pro-rated daily.
Low entry prices: Basic at $1 per user per month adds celebrations, custom kudos for company values and analytics.
Pro adds Matter coins redeemable for eGift cards in 200+ countries, company swag, charitable donations and flexible payouts, with challenges and incentives.
Pulse, eNPS, onboarding and custom surveys are available as a $2 add-on inside the same chat app.

Where it falls short

Headline prices are billed annually; values tagging and analytics need Basic and rewards need Pro, so the free tier is kudos only.
The rewards budget is separate and gift cards or payouts are a taxable benefit.
HRIS integration is Enterprise only, requires an annual plan plus an additional annual fee, and no HRIS vendors are named.
Ten kudos templates and a weekly prompt produce a lot of similar messages unless somebody curates the custom ones.

How Evergreen differs

One plan: Evergreen is $3.99 per active user per month with value tags, reporting, reminders and the monthly recap included, billed monthly for people who interacted. Matter splits those across Free, Basic and Pro.
Tree rather than coins: Every three seeds a person receives are planted as one real tree. There are no coins, no gift cards and no reward approvals, so nothing is taxable.
Public by default: Seeds are posted to a public channel with the message and value tags. The company gets a public impact page as well as a dashboard.
Recognition only: Evergreen does not do surveys, celebrations or challenges. It does peer recognition, values analytics and trees, and stops there.

Verdict

If budget is zero and you want kudos in Slack this afternoon, Matter’s free plan is a genuine option and Feedback Friday is a sensible nudge. If you are ready to pay a few dollars per person, want the whole feature set on one plan without a rewards budget behind it, and prefer a planted tree to a gift card, Evergreen is the cleaner choice.

Questions people ask

Is Matter really free?: The Free plan is described as free forever and includes kudos, a template library and Feedback Friday. Celebrations, custom kudos for company values and analytics start at $1 per user per month on Basic, and rewards at $3 on Pro, both billed annually. Evergreen has no free tier; it is $3.99 per active user per month after a 14-day trial.
How do Matter coins work?: Coins are attached to kudos, celebrations and surveys on the Pro plan and redeemed for eGift cards, swag, charitable donations or payouts. The company pays for a reward only when an admin approves the request, separately from the subscription. Evergreen has no coins; three received seeds become one planted tree.
Does Evergreen have something like Feedback Friday?: Evergreen sends a weekly reminder to give seeds and a monthly team recap of who was recognised and for which values. It does not have Matter’s peer feedback or survey features.