# Zulip Reviews **Vendor:** Kandra Labs **Category:** [Business Instant Messaging Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/business-instant-messaging) **Average Rating:** 4.6/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 117 ## About Zulip Zulip is an organized team chat application for distributed teams. Zulip’s 100% open-source software is available as a cloud service or a self-hosted solution. With conversations organized by topic, Zulip is ideal for both live and asynchronous communication Zulip serves startups, and small and mid-sized businesses, as well as communities with up to tens of thousands of members. It’s used by thousands of organizations around the world. Developed as an open-source project since 2015, Zulip is stewarded and financially supported by a values-driven company designed for long-term sustainable development. ## Zulip Pros & Cons **What users like:** - Users commend Zulip's **intuitive organization of conversations** , enhancing focus and clarity in team discussions. (13 reviews) - Users love Zulip's **intuitive interface** , allowing for easy navigation and effective communication across teams. (10 reviews) - Users appreciate Zulip's **intuitive user interface** and effective organization of conversations, enhancing their communication experience. (9 reviews) - Users admire Zulip's **intuitive communication features** , which enhance collaboration and keep discussions organized and efficient. (7 reviews) - Users value the **intuitive thread organization** in Zulip, enhancing team collaboration and discussion management significantly. (7 reviews) - Convenience (5 reviews) - Users find Zulip's **intuitive conversation organization** enhances communication efficiency and keeps discussions focused. (5 reviews) - User Interface (5 reviews) - Scheduling (4 reviews) - Customer Support (3 reviews) **What users dislike:** - Users face **integration issues** with Zulip, finding third-party tools challenging and experiences inconsistent and unreliable. (4 reviews) - Users find the **learning curve steep** due to a complex interface and unfamiliar threading model, hindering onboarding. (4 reviews) - Users find Zulip's interface **not intuitive** , complicating onboarding and navigation for non-technical departments and mobile users. (3 reviews) - Users face **file sharing issues** with limited attachment sizes and experience bugs affecting notifications and loading times. (2 reviews) - Users experience a **lack of clarity** in posting locations, causing confusion and unintended messages in channels. (2 reviews) - Limited Features (2 reviews) - Overwhelming Experience (2 reviews) - Software Glitches (2 reviews) - Admin Limitations (1 reviews) - Complexity (1 reviews) ## Zulip Reviews ### 1. Organized Team Chats with Topics, Custom Notifications, and Smooth Scaling **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Testnet s. | Assistant manager, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 08, 2026 **What do you like best about Zulip?** What I like best about Zulip is how it keeps conversations organized using topics inside channels. Unlike regular chat apps where messages get lost quickly, Zulip makes it easy to follow discussions without confusion. The interface is simple, notifications are customizable, and it works well for both team communication and project discussions. I also liked that it supports integrations and runs smoothly even with larger teams. **What do you dislike about Zulip?** One thing I dislike about Zulip is that the interface can feel a bit overwhelming for new users at first, especially because of the topic-based conversation system. It takes some time for teams to fully adapt compared to simpler chat apps. Also, some integrations and advanced settings require extra setup, which may not be very beginner-friendly. **What problems is Zulip solving and how is that benefiting you?** Zulip helps solve the problem of messy and unorganized team communication. Its topic-based conversations make it much easier to track discussions, especially in teams handling multiple projects at the same time. This has benefited me by reducing missed messages, improving collaboration, and saving time when searching for past discussions or decisions. It’s also very useful for remote and asynchronous work because conversations stay clear and structured even when team members reply at different times. ### 2. Zulip Review: Organized and Efficient Team Communication Tool **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** sambhav j. | Dealsquad, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 30, 2026 **What do you like best about Zulip?** What I like most about Zulip is its clean and structured UI/UX, especially the stream and topic-based messaging system. It keeps conversations well-organized, so it’s easy to navigate and find specific discussions without confusion. Along with that, Zulip supports useful integrations with tools like GitHub, which improves workflow. Its performance is smooth and reliable even with multiple chats running at once. The pricing is also reasonable, with a free version available, making it a good value for teams. Additionally, the onboarding process is simple, and support resources are helpful for new users. Overall, this combination of organization, efficiency, and usability is what I like best about Zulip. **What do you dislike about Zulip?** One thing I dislike about Zulip is that its topic-based system can feel confusing at the beginning. New users often take time to understand streams and topics, which makes the onboarding slightly difficult compared to simpler chat apps. The UI, although organized, can feel a bit overwhelming when there are too many streams and messages. In terms of integrations, while Zulip supports many tools, it is still not as extensive or seamless as some competitors. Sometimes, performance can feel slightly slower when handling very large conversations. Also, the advanced features are not very intuitive, which affects the overall user experience. Overall, Zulip is powerful, but the learning curve and slightly complex interface can be a drawback for beginners. **What problems is Zulip solving and how is that benefiting you?** Zulip solves the common problem of messy and unorganized team communication. In many messaging apps, conversations get mixed up, and it becomes difficult to track important discussions. Zulip solves this by using streams and topics, which keep messages properly organized. It also helps in reducing time waste because I can easily find specific conversations without scrolling through long chats. This improves productivity and makes teamwork more efficient. Another problem it solves is managing multiple discussions at once. With its structured system, I can focus on different topics without confusion. Overall, Zulip benefits me by making communication clear, saving time, and helping me stay organized while working or studying. ### 3. Ideal for Contractors with Multi-Organization Support **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 30, 2026 **What do you like best about Zulip?** I use Zulip to chat with a client and it lets me store messages easily. I love the nice interface, which really looks good. I appreciate the multi-organization feature, which is critical for a contractor like me. The initial setup was super easy; I have it on my Macbook and Phone. **What do you dislike about Zulip?** Even though I have dark mode enabled, the settings screen still shows up in light mode. It’s a minor annoyance, but I also realize this is the main settings area, not the organization settings. With that in mind, it makes more sense that it would look different. **What problems is Zulip solving and how is that benefiting you?** Zulip makes it easy for me to store and find messages, and the interface is clean and pleasant to use. The multi-organization feature is especially important for me as a contractor, since I can keep different workspaces separate. Overall, it helps me collaborate smoothly with my team. ### 4. Zulip’s Threaded Model Keeps High-Volume Team Communication Organized **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Oil & Energy | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 20, 2026 **What do you like best about Zulip?** The best thing about this Zulip platform is its capability of handling a high volume of communication and its structure. Their threaded conversation model makes our overall convovery organised than the other traditional chat tools, specifically for technical or even for distributed teams. **What do you dislike about Zulip?** Their interface and conversation model tools are slightly complex at the initial stages, specifically for users from Slack or even WhatsApp. This requires a mindset shift from the topics and streams. Though their user interface is powerful, it still needs more fine-tuning. Their intuition should be improved as well. **What problems is Zulip solving and how is that benefiting you?** Zulip solves the problem of hassle and unstructured communication in most of the chat tools, and conversation overlaps as well. With this platform, our discussions are organised by our topics, which makes our tasks such us track desissions and revisiting conversations, these are very remote and technical discussions. ### 5. Efficient Team Communication with a Learning Curve **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Michele S. | Csr, Hospital & Health Care, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 07, 2026 **What do you like best about Zulip?** I find Zulip to be an excellent communication platform for teams, as it allows organizing searchable discussions instead of fast-moving chat. Its topic-based structure and open-source flexibility make Zulip stand out compared to other messaging apps. I also appreciate its powerful search tool, customizable notifications, message filters, and the unlimited conversation history, which I find truly wonderful. **What do you dislike about Zulip?** I find the streams and topic systems can be confusing for users who are used to simpler chat apps like Slack or Discord. Also, the mobile experience and notifications can be inconsistent or lacking certain desktop features. Additionally, there is a learning curve with Zulip that can be a bit difficult. **What problems is Zulip solving and how is that benefiting you?** Zulip helps me keep team conversations organized and productive, offering powerful search tools, customizable notifications, and unlimited conversation history. Its topic-based structure and open-source flexibility make it a standout communication platform compared to fast-moving chats. ### 6. Highly Organized Topic-Based Conversations **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Frederick G. | Administrator, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 03, 2025 **What do you like best about Zulip?** The main advantage that helped me and that I liked about Zulip is its topic-based messaging system, which allows me to organize all conversations into specific channels within channels. This keeps information clear and allows for more focused conversations, enabling me to track different topics without getting lost in a sea of ​​messages. Another feature I liked is its excellent customer service; they are agile and very professional in their responses. The integrations with other tools like GitHub and Jira also make projects more fluid. **What do you dislike about Zulip?** Overall, I feel it's a good platform, but one area for improvement is its notification system. Sometimes it seems outdated and doesn't send notification reports until it's reopened. **What problems is Zulip solving and how is that benefiting you?** It has improved communication within my team. The topic-based organization and its integration with other platforms make it ideal for keeping everything organized and efficient. It has improved my performance and efficiency in responding correctly without getting into the wrong topic. ### 7. Great Features, But Mobile App UX Needs Improvement **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Neil W. | CMO, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 03, 2025 **What do you like best about Zulip?** Great team chat for desktop. Love the threads-within-channels UX, help keep discussions organised, feels more intuitive than Slack. The Zulip team are very responsive to issue reports and requests, both in their community and over email. Our dev team likes it so much for internal chat that we've started a new server for our external dev community to get support when building on our open-source software. Also a big fan of Zulip's open-source approach, looking forward to more updates. **What do you dislike about Zulip?** Mobile app UX still needs a lot of work IMO. Home screen should be recent conversations instead of inbox, a view which is completely missing in mobile. Generally feels fiddly to get to where you want. Also too easy to respond to messages in the wrong channel/thread, happens frequently. Mobile aside, the project is early, so still needs more polish, integrations, theme customization, etc. But despite these issues, I'd still recommend the platform. **What problems is Zulip solving and how is that benefiting you?** Internal team chat and external community support. ### 8. Organized Team Collaboration **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Stian J. | Software Developer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 30, 2025 **What do you like best about Zulip?** I like how I can stay up to date with my team that is working together on multiple things at once, without it feeling chaotic. Even though we work on several different things, Zulip makes it easy to focus on one thing at a time when you need to, and also catch up on what's been going on while you were gone. The way messages are grouped by short- or long-lived topics makes it much more organized than any alternative real-time chat I've ever used. **What do you dislike about Zulip?** Parts of the UI feel less polished than the more widely-used alternatives. **What problems is Zulip solving and how is that benefiting you?** Zulip helps my team stay organized while collaborating in real time. From day to day, some of us are together in the office, and some are working from home. The superior threading model means we can discuss multiple topics both sync and async. ### 9. Zulip: Organized Discussions and Generous Free Tier for Startups **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jesse W. | CEO, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 31, 2025 **What do you like best about Zulip?** The two-tiered structure of the channels split into topics makes it very easy to keep discussions focused. The free tier is very generous and more than plenty for our small startup. Whenever we had any issues, we could easily reach them and get them resolved. Overall, Zulip has become both a chat app and an organic repository of knowledge for our organisation. **What do you dislike about Zulip?** The interface can be a bit clunky at times, where sometimes it does things slightly differently than you'd expect. But I can't even come up with concrete examples right now, so it's not a major thing. **What problems is Zulip solving and how is that benefiting you?** We needed a chat app that could also become an organic repository of knowledge. We started with Slack, but the cuts to the free tier made it unusable. Moreover, conversations would get very messy with just one layer of channels. ### 10. Good idea, rough edges, painful for broad adoption **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 20, 2026 **What do you like best about Zulip?** The topic/thread model is smart, when it works you can follow discussions without drowning in noise. It keeps conversations organized and integrations route notifications well. For engineering teams it can reduce pointless pings when everyone follows topics correctly. **What do you dislike about Zulip?** In practice, Zulip is harder to adopt than people expect. New users are confused by streams/topics, admins spend time training people, and the mobile app is unreliable. notifications are inconsistent and often duplicated. Search is weak for older threads, and some integrations behave erratically. The UI feels dated and clunky compared to Slack or Teams, which makes onboarding slower. For self-hosting, upgrades and scaling can be painful without strong ops experience. **What problems is Zulip solving and how is that benefiting you?** It does keep threads discoverable, reducing some meetings, but the overhead to maintain discipline (topics, muting, notification rules) often offsets those gains for larger, less-disciplined teams. ### 11. Good Chatting Channel **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Pratiksha D. | SEO Expert, Marketing and Advertising, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 12, 2025 **What do you like best about Zulip?** It is easy to use. Handy and fulfill all my important things. I can send invites to people and can chat in groups and in personal space as well. It helps in customization as well. The interface is really good and also very fast. I use it 2-3 times a week. The implementation is easy since it is more like Slack and Discord. I am already familiar with it. The customer support is okay. Sometimes takes time, but resolves all the issues. I have heard that it is easy to integrate, but I have not integrated anything with this either, but all in all, it was good. **What do you dislike about Zulip?** I do not face any issues. Since it is more like Discord and Slack. **What problems is Zulip solving and how is that benefiting you?** Helps in fast messaging. Helps me keep my files safe, and it is also one of the fastest modes of communication. ### 12. Intuitive UI, Perfect for Efficient Team Communication **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Amanda W. **Reviewed Date:** November 20, 2025 **What do you like best about Zulip?** I love Zulip's intuitive user interface, which I find to be beautifully simple and easy to navigate. The range of options available when responding to coworkers, such as the code option which I frequently utilize, enhances my communication efficiency. I also find it extremely useful that Zulip makes it easy to copy and paste screenshots and send videos, which flexibly supports different communication needs. Creating new channels centered on different topics is seamless and simplifies topic management within the team. The initial setup was effortless, with an administrator conveniently adding my account. I appreciate receiving a welcome email that contained all the necessary information for quick onboarding, along with preserving the organization URL for any potential integration with other tools. The desktop feature is another asset, allowing me to work conveniently from my computer. Since starting to use Zulip, I have encountered virtually no problems, and it proves to be a robust communication tool for our organization. **What do you dislike about Zulip?** I sometimes accidentally post in the wrong channel or create a new topic unintentionally. The default text suggests a 'new topic' or 'default response', which can lead to posts being mistakenly filed under a new topic instead of the intended existing channel or group. This requires me to go back, delete, and repost in the correct location. The system isn't always clear on where a message is being posted, leading to these errors. However, with more familiarity, this issue occurs less frequently for me. **What problems is Zulip solving and how is that benefiting you?** I quickly communicate with coworkers both publicly and privately using Zulip's intuitive interface, which simplifies navigation and offers options like code snippets and multimedia sharing. ### 13. Zulip’s Structured Channels and Custom Notifications Outshine Slack and Mattermost **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Danny G. | n/a, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 31, 2025 **What do you like best about Zulip?** I really like the enforced structure - conversations are organised into channels (top level) and then topics (lower level), which is a really nice way of organising things, which Slack and Mattermost don't have. In both Slack and Mattermost you have threads instead, which is fine, but I feel like there needs to be a strong group norm on using those, which in my communities there does not seem to be. Zulip provides a slightly firmer nudge to seperate out different conversations. It is also possible to move conversations into the right place if people start them in the wrong place, which I like. It's also possible to set your notifications more finely in Zulip than it is in Slack or Mattermost, which I really like. I also like that there is a free hosted option, and since it is open-source it would be possible to move yourself onto a self-hosted open if the community were to grow and you didn't want to pay Zulip. They're also generous in providing free premium accounts to open-source and research projects. There's also a very active support community (which uses zulip as a forum chat, of course!) which seems more responsive and grass-roots than the Mattermost forum. I'm excited that there is a matrix bridge, although I haven't looked into that properly yet. **What do you dislike about Zulip?** I think it would be cool if it were proposing/advancing an open standard so that it could be interoperable with other tools (would it be possible to use zulip as a matrix client, for example?). This is scraping the barrel though - there's nothing I particularly dislike about Zulip. **What problems is Zulip solving and how is that benefiting you?** Open-source team chat with free hosting ### 14. Clean UI and GitLab Integration Make Team Collaboration Effortless **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Nian-Ze L. | Assistant Professor, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 30, 2025 **What do you like best about Zulip?** I use Zulip to organize the communication and collaboration among my research team. Since we frequently need to discuss the implementation of our software tools, I greatly appreciate the integration with GitLab and the Markdown support. Besides, Zulip has a clean UI, which allows new team members to quickly get used to it. **What do you dislike about Zulip?** I have been using Zulip for more than 5 years. So far it has worked for my use cases very well. **What problems is Zulip solving and how is that benefiting you?** It streamlines the communication of my lab. Without Zulip, our team might need to use traditional communication channels, such as emails or social media platforms, which are bad for coordinating software development and privacy. ### 15. Effortless Topic Management and Seamless Integrations **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 10, 2025 **What do you like best about Zulip?** Zulip has become our go-to tool for daily communication. The way it organizes conversations into topics feels intuitive and helps keep discussions focused. It's especially well-suited for technical staff, since it supports straightforward formatting with MarkDown. If you need to add more functionality, the API is user-friendly and makes it easy to create new integrations quickly. Reaching out to support is also convenient, as you can contact them directly through their own Zulip instance. In my experience, their responses are usually prompt and courteous. **What do you dislike about Zulip?** Unfortunately, our non-technical departments struggle to get started with Zulip because of its primarily text-based interface. Introducing a non-power user mode, perhaps with a more WYSIWYG approach, would make onboarding these teams faster and reduce their initial resistance. **What problems is Zulip solving and how is that benefiting you?** This is a straightforward and efficient solution for chat communication. ### 16. Feature-Rich, User-Friendly, and Fast Support **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jeewantha A. | director, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 31, 2025 **What do you like best about Zulip?** The software offers a wide range of features and has a user-friendly interface. Its analytics are helpful, and I appreciate the quick response time. **What do you dislike about Zulip?** The attachment size is insufficient, and I would also like to see a lower price category for organizations with a larger number of users. **What problems is Zulip solving and how is that benefiting you?** We previously used Skype, but this platform has resolved all our team collaboration issues and provides a much faster, more responsive app. However, it would be helpful to have an application, in addition to the main app, that does not require a constant internet connection, so it can be used in areas where internet access is unavailable. ### 17. Intuitive and Suitable for Developers, but Needs Graphical Improvement **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Nello M. **Reviewed Date:** December 17, 2025 **What do you like best about Zulip?** I like that Zulip is intuitive and versatile. I use the concept of channels a lot for each work group I follow, and I find the notification feature very interesting, which I use to be alerted of any MRs to review. Additionally, the initial installation on k8s was easy. **What do you dislike about Zulip?** Graphically, it is not very appealing **What problems is Zulip solving and how is that benefiting you?** Zulip is useful for Slack-style chat for developers, sharing code, reminders, and questions. I use channels for work groups and notifications to review MRs. ### 18. Very stable and dependable **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Alexander S. | People and Company operations, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 30, 2025 **What do you like best about Zulip?** This software has always been reliable for me; it has never crashed or gone offline. I find it consistently dependable, and it doesn't consume much processing power. It's also straightforward to learn and easy to use. **What do you dislike about Zulip?** I don’t have something specific, maybe in the future it could have more out of the box integrations. **What problems is Zulip solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are a globally distributes company with no main hq. The team is scattered and without Zulip async comms would be impossible. ### 19. Uncluttered Asynchronous Chats, But Multiple Logins Can Be Annoying **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jesper C. | Assistant Professor, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 31, 2025 **What do you like best about Zulip?** Zulip is the only platform that allows for asynchronous communication on several different topic without it ever getting cluttered or confusing. **What do you dislike about Zulip?** You need a separate login for each Zulip server you're in, which can be mildly annoying if you have to switch computers. **What problems is Zulip solving and how is that benefiting you?** Communication within international teams ### 20. Effortless Team Communication Hub **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ritzie L. **Reviewed Date:** December 16, 2025 **What do you like best about Zulip?** I like Zulip for its ability to connect everyone in one chat app. It helps me take multiple channel chats to assess project-driven teams, making chats easier and more convenient. The initial setup was easy. **What do you dislike about Zulip?** Zulip should improve the app much more. **What problems is Zulip solving and how is that benefiting you?** Zulip connects everyone in one chat app, making chats easier and convenient with multiple channel chats for project-driven teams. ### 21. A Reliable Daily Essential **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Defense & Space | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 02, 2025 **What do you like best about Zulip?** Organization of discussions is outstanding, awesome searchabilty, very very fast with low CPU and RAM usage. Never had an issue, using it daily for 4 years in our remote first organization. **What do you dislike about Zulip?** The downside is when I have to use other platforms when interacting with clients...it makes me suffer a lot. **What problems is Zulip solving and how is that benefiting you?** Since we work entirely remotely, Zulip has become our main tool for daily communication and collaboration. ### 22. Great for managing communications in our Ultimate Frisbee Association **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sébastien L. | President of Ultimate Bègles, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 10, 2025 **What do you like best about Zulip?** We have been using Zulip for two years now at Ultimate Bègles (an Ultimate Frisbee association in Bègles (France) of about 100 members). Zulip has been a great choice for many reasons. We were searching for a way to get away from emails and dozens of independent whatsapp groups to share information to our members. What we found with Zulip is a great way to develop our members' sense of belonging to our association. One of the statistics which surprised me the most is that 47% of the 35 231 messages exchanged on Zulip over a two years period are direct messages. As the president of the association, I like many aspects of Zulip: - we can forward emails (received from the federation, from the city, other clubs, other associations, updated schedule of the next tournament, etc.) directly to Zulip channels so that this information is available - there is a phone app (representing 65% of our messages sent) - there is a web app (representing 35% of our messages sent) which is very practical for writing longer posts or more technical content or for a few of our members who do not have a phone - members are free to join public channels and have access to the information posted before they joined - you can do poll using the "/poll" syntax to decide for the date of the next meeting - a discussion can be marked as "solved" - we have a few global channels (Announces, Results) to share global announces or recent results of our teams at tournaments to everyone - we can create private channels to discuss the Administration, the Money, the Coaching decisions privately. As an admin, I like: - message sent to the wrong discussion can me moved to the good one - the title of a subject can be changed (for instance to merge two discussions on the same topic) - we can download a tarball of everything allowing us to download our data and continue with an independent server. - the zulipchat.com server works 100% of the time. It was never down for the last 2 years of usage. As a coach, I like: - players can announce their presence/absence to a training with just a thumbs up/down - we create a new channel for discussing travel/lodging for each tournament, not to spam the other members not going As a user, I like: - members are free to join/quit the public channels of their choice depending on what information they want or don't want to receive - direct messages can be sent to a group of members - while using the web-app, you can copy-paste an image from the pastebin directly in the text - files already uploaded in zulip have a link which you can easily copy to share the same file in another channel/discussion **What do you dislike about Zulip?** It is not a mainstream software. Therefore, Zulip is new for the vast majority of our new members. We need to teach and accompaign them at the beginning. **What problems is Zulip solving and how is that benefiting you?** I need a tool that allows the members from my association to communicate between them. A typical problem is the organization of a local tournament. Not everyone is interested to participate to the organization. Also, some people you don't suspect might be interested. Also, some members may decide very lately that they have time to help. Zulip allows every person to join the organization (join the channel) whenever they want and help. No matters who or when, the information is available. No member is excluded by being late or involontarily put aside. ### 23. Great communication platform **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Loic S. | Membre du comité, responsable IT, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 18, 2024 **What do you like best about Zulip?** Channels and conversation threads are very useful for compartmentalizing various conversations. The web/desktop interface is pleasant and intuitive. The support and documentation are very effective. **What do you dislike about Zulip?** The mobile application's interface is a bit confusing and not very intuitive. But these issues seem to be resolved in the new version of the app, currently in beta version. **What problems is Zulip solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are a small association, and we used WhatsApp for management before switching to Zulip. This solved several problems. Firstly, Zulip is more "asynchronous," each volunteer can respond when they have time, whereas WhatsApp is instantaneous, requiring the message to be managed as soon as it is received and is also used for personal purposes, mixing association work with daily life. Secondly, information is not compartmentalized in a WhatsApp group. The structure of conversations in Zulip allows us to be informed only about topics that concern us. Finally, the search function in Zulip (coupled with the conversation structure) allows us to better find information when we need it. ### 24. Excellent product that has really made cooperation within our team easier and more fluid. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Richard J. | President, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 02, 2024 **What do you like best about Zulip?** This product makes team cooperation much easier. Conversations can be categorized and threaded, with good formatting options. It's easy to set up, available on multiple platforms and (for us) works seamlessly across them. Vastly superior to the main competitor, which we used for years but have now dropped in favor of Zulip. We use this more than email to communicate. A big plus for our team, which deserves a shout-out for the Zulip team, is that we work on a project (an Android RPG game) that has no monetary income whatsoever, so Zulip allows us to use the full product for free. Such generosity is rare. **What do you dislike about Zulip?** Not a lot of bad things to say. No spell checker is a downside. I guess it's on the to-do list, but not there yet. Any other complaints would just be nit-picking. **What problems is Zulip solving and how is that benefiting you?** Zulip is the principal means of communication for our team. It's easy to categorize messages for the whole team or to send private messages, and it's easy to find information later (especially if it was bookmarked!) ### 25. Awesome to animating a CS-interested community. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Iago B. | Research Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 27, 2024 **What do you like best about Zulip?** We've been using Zulip for a couple of months now with our ≈40 people organization gathered around sharing knowledge, training and support for CS-related skills (especially programming) in our research lab (Ecology/Biodiversity/Evolution). We can't wait to use it more and to welcome like 100 more persons. And more: we're not afraid: Zulip *will* scale :) We find it fresh, powerful, flexible, extensible and convivial. Especially when it comes to tracking multiple diverging asynchronous conversations : being able to move messages accross topics to keep things focused and tidy is a killer feature. I also like how old resolved topics naturally sink away from the focus as new conversations start spinning on top of them. Finally we've got an excellent FOSS for just that <3 **What do you dislike about Zulip?** It's hard to have people opt into *yet another* chatroom. People get fed up with the multiplicity of chat groups they're already involved in: Mattermost, Slack, Discord, Teams, Whatsapp, Matrix/Element.. because they figure it's *yet another app to install and to regularly check*. But it's wrong: all these run smoothly in simple browser tabs within a single window, or you can use Ferdium to have them all in the same app. Transitioning from big techs to FOSS becomes a breeze :) **What problems is Zulip solving and how is that benefiting you?** Animating the community, provide day-to-day chat support to solve each other's programming problems, discuss and etup upcoming training sessions. ### 26. LaTeX + Code Rendering, Great for Academia **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Research | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 31, 2025 **What do you like best about Zulip?** LaTeX & Code rendering. Sponsored Pro plan for academic teams. **What do you dislike about Zulip?** Topic structure is unfamiliar to new users. **What problems is Zulip solving and how is that benefiting you?** Team communication ### 27. It’s offer improve communication increased productivity enhanced collaboration scalability security **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Isreal E. | Business analyst, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 24, 2025 **What do you like best about Zulip?** It’s allow ability to share and manage files directly within Zulip, streamlining their workflow and reducing the need for external file-sharing services. **What do you dislike about Zulip?** Sometimes Zulip relies on integrations with third-party video conferencing tools, which may not be as seamless as native integration. **What problems is Zulip solving and how is that benefiting you?** It’s helps real-time messaging and @mentions enable teams to communicate quickly and efficiently, reducing the need for email and other slower communication methods. Zulip's real-time messaging and collaboration features enable teams to work together more effectively, even when distributed across multiple locations. ### 28. Intuitive abd easy to use with a simple and clean interface **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Samuel H. | School teacher, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 30, 2025 **What do you like best about Zulip?** It’s helps keep conversations organized making it easier to follow discussions and reducing noise and facilitates team collaboration and communication enabling teams to stay focused on important conversations **What do you dislike about Zulip?** I wish for more files storage options including the ability to save files directly to zulip and minor bugs such as issues with notifications settings and slow loading **What problems is Zulip solving and how is that benefiting you?** Is solving several problems helps teams manage information overload by organizing conversations into threaded topics making it easier to follow discussions ### 29. A super-ergonomic tool with an Open Science flavour **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Alexis M. | Researcher, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 01, 2024 **What do you like best about Zulip?** Zulip has unlimited history (=no loss of project history), a clean and clear interface, super-intuitive classification of topics, possibilities for one-to-one interactions, and it is not in the hands of big players who hold all the cards & can change the rules of the game at any moment. It was introduced to our organization by a very professional & very picky programmer and is up to all our hopes. I recommend it without hesitation at all. **What do you dislike about Zulip?** With the best efforts I am not able to find back sides to Zulip. It does the job neatly & efficiently and I was never frustrated with it at any point (although I'm by self-report a fussy user). **What problems is Zulip solving and how is that benefiting you?** Zulip solves the issue of fast communication on neatly organized threads (by topic), in a context where crowded e-mail inboxes never get un-piled properly and colleagues tend to spend significant time searching through e-mail messages with less than fully satisfactory results. It benefits our multi-partner projects by allowing people who are not participating real-time to reconnect at any time and see how the thinking developed. We also use tickets in Git sites but find Zulip better for open conversations between team members without the whole world having access to our real-time chats & thinking. ### 30. Zulip is perfect for physics/math teams! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Gerson J. | Professor, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 01, 2024 **What do you like best about Zulip?** I run a research group in theoretical physics, and Zulip is a perfect fit to organize our discussions. We organize the projects into streams, assiging users accordingly to the collaborations. Withing each stream we organize the discussion in topics that help us track info later, like references and developments. Zulip natively supports Latex/Markdown for math equations and proper Markdown for codes, which makes the conversations that require equations and codes rich and clear. All conversations, either on streams or single/group direct messages are quite easy to navigate and organize. All those features are superior to Zulip's alternatives like Mattermost and Slack. Particularly, Mattermost is quite similar to Zulip, but the way it splits conversations into subtopics are confusing, while Zulip's topics are clear. Regarding Slack, their support for Latex/Markdown/Codes is insuficiente, while Zulip's is perfect! For all those reasons, Zulip is the perfect group chat tool for physicists. **What do you dislike about Zulip?** (i) The Android app could be better. There are missing features. (ii) I would like a group calendar a boards integrated to Zulip nativelly. (iii) I would like an option to hide some streams from the default view on the sidebar. In this case it would be interesting to have an "archive" option that freezes the stream and removes it from the sidebar list, but keeps it acessible for reading following some different route on the interface. Also, it would be nice to remove some active streams from the sidebar, since we often have some streams that need to stay active, but we only access it every now and then. For instance, I keep a stream with a discussion on how to access our servers that needs to be updated sometimes, but not often, and new members need to read it, but old members will probably never open it, unless some updates are posted there. **What problems is Zulip solving and how is that benefiting you?** I allow for easy communication with my research team, including a proper way to write and read complex equations and codes. It stores the conversations and allows for easy reference when needed. ### 31. Effective, efficient, and always in context thanks to the threads. + polls + tz translations. :) **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Eduardo M. | Consultor independiente en investigación, diseño y desarrollo en sistemas sociotécnicos complejos, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 01, 2024 **What do you like best about Zulip?** Zulip allows me to manage multiple conversations on multiple contexts and organizations with incredibly clarity and efficiency thanks to how it manages threads. It has complete keyboard control and marking threads as done is a pleasure and helps to keep the focus. Polls and international timezone translation are a great bonus, as the automagical formatting and (if you like it) the expandable super comfortable editor (not only a tiny tidy little window). :) I also absolutely love that we can self-host the server, how stable it is and how easy it is to upgrade it. Also, hyper zealous organizations will adore that you can export all your information to keep it safe in some other place. It is a great example of what can Free/Libre Open Source Software can create. Did I mentioned that it also has great accessibility? What else can we ask for? :) **What do you dislike about Zulip?** 2 things that I don't dislike but would like to see: - I would like to be able to quickly record audio and have it translated to text (I remember some talks about that a time ago), and - I'd love to have a faster mobile app (also, I believe this in on course already). **What problems is Zulip solving and how is that benefiting you?** Communication and coordination (both synchronous and asynchronous), specially in teams in diverse space and timezones. An absolutely fundamental need today. ### 32. Zulip as life saver for small research group **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Stefan B. | University professor, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 01, 2024 **What do you like best about Zulip?** Zulip has enabled modern work-related communication within our small research group, making it easy to collect/keep information grouped according to research project. In addition to connecting our team, it's convenient to add outside contributors / research partners. Being able to use mathematical notation is a huge plus in my line of research. The free access to the professional version which does not "forget" information after 3 months (Slack ..) is essential for us. And it's great that we do not have to self-host. On the rare instances that we needed support or encountered a bug, the problem was solved quickly. My group uses the product daily. **What do you dislike about Zulip?** It may not look as shiny as its competitors. But all one needs is in the right place. **What problems is Zulip solving and how is that benefiting you?** As a research group at a public university, we cannot afford monthly expenses for software. We are also too small to self-host some of the open source alternatives. Thus, the free access to the full version is perfect for us. ### 33. Great tool for academic groups and research software **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Michael R. | "projektassistent" in German, roughly "postdoc", Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 01, 2024 **What do you like best about Zulip?** Zulip is a useful tool for communicating in groups with the least noise possible. The threaded model is really good, and much more useful than I thought it would be. The whole thing was easy to set up and the web client means that I don't have to install software just to chat to colleagues. It integrates reasonably well with the outside world (in our case, GitHub) which is legitimately useful to catch up with project progress. **What do you dislike about Zulip?** I'm not entirely convinced that workplace instant messaging is a Good Thing and would prefer something 'slower' like e-mail or something with more friction like a telephone call when it's really urgent. But this is not really Zulip's fault, and it does its best to minimise noise. **What problems is Zulip solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are a mid-size group of computer scientists across several countries that develop a research tool. We use Zulip to communicate, either about the tool itself or about the group around it (research meetings, papers, etc). We needed something with persistent message storage (what did I say about that thing 3 years ago?), and the usual instant-messaging features like groups or user management. ### 34. Zulip manages the communication within our research lab **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Gianluca D. | Professor, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 01, 2024 **What do you like best about Zulip?** Zulip provides a spam-free environment for communication with a mid-size group, further divided into smaller subgroups. Our application for a free Cloud Standard hosting plan has been approved very quickly (we are a research lab within a public University). I really appreciate that the entire history is searchable and that threads are very well supported. We use zulip every day (and multiple times a day), both on the desktop and on a phone/tablet. We add new users regularly (e.g. all students that are doing some project with us) and they have been able to use it immediately and without complaints. The fact that it is open source guarantees that our messages are not stored in a silo, giving us a much larger leverage than other competing platforms. The world clock feature has helped us several times when collaborating with people far away. **What do you dislike about Zulip?** The mobile applications are not as good as the web version, even though they are improving. I would like to have (many) more integrations. **What problems is Zulip solving and how is that benefiting you?** We avoid getting too many emails and spam. All messages on zulip are coming from within the team and are relevant. ### 35. Great platform for research groups! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Michael D. | Associate Professor, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 31, 2024 **What do you like best about Zulip?** I use zulip for communication inside my academic research group, and it works perfectly. I love the threading model (the main reason I prefer it to slack!), and it's super easy to make private channels for each different research project, public channels for scheduling, etc. Now I even use it to take notes on projects as we go (rather than my old method of either OneNote or Overleaf). **What do you dislike about Zulip?** The mobile app is not great, but that's OK -- since we're using it for research, we're all pretty much using it from the dekstop anyway. **What problems is Zulip solving and how is that benefiting you?** Zulip makes it easy to communicate among my research team, and keep each research project organized. I used to just use email, but that made it impossible to keep projects organized -- each project would have a number of different email threads, which ended up being very confusing. Then I tried using slack, but the threading model was horrible. Zulip makes this super easy! ### 36. Amazing tool for managing a community **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Lloyd M. | Work group co-chair, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 31, 2024 **What do you like best about Zulip?** Our standards organization started using Zulip about 8 years ago. The ability to differentiate between streams (high-level collections of discussion threads users can follow or not) from threads is hugely powerful. We often have 5-20 different conversations happening simultaneously in the same stream and without threading, everything would be a muddled mess. The ability to add plugins to support specific software languages or other specialized content has been icing on the cake. The ability to monitor streams, to filter streams by keyword, to search within or across streams, the ability to link to any discussion and make the stream public have all been essential for a public-facing organization like ours. I've needed to use a variety of other tools in the same spacewith various customers and within my own company and none of them compare in terms of functionality or ease-of-use. (And the support we receive from the Zulip maintainers has been spectacular.) **What do you dislike about Zulip?** Newcomers sometimes struggle to understand the distinction between streams and threads and occasionally post to the wrong place, but it's easy enough for community moderators to move content as necessary and the learning curve is shallow enough that everyone gets the hang of things pretty quickly. **What problems is Zulip solving and how is that benefiting you?** We use it to support communication in a community of over 25k active users. Our volunteer organization has a large number of work groups, each of which has a variety of projects and areas of interest. Participants span the globe. Zulip is our primary tool for coordination of project work as well as our means of supporting the community. Our shared discussions offer a goldmine of content for those new to the organization and help us maintain an institutional memory as participants come and go. The private message and private group functions make it easy to have quick discussions between individuals, leadership, or other closed groups. ### 37. Zulip has helped my international research group keep in touch **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jonas S. | Doctoral researcher, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 08, 2024 **What do you like best about Zulip?** It was very easy to get a free Zulip Standard subscription for research purposes. Zulip has a lot of features, so you don't have to jump through hoops to have more complex functions like math in messages and bot support. I also like how the messages are organised into channels and topics. Its performance is also good, so it's smooth to navigate. **What do you dislike about Zulip?** It's sometimes confusing to navigate different topics because I get lost between where the topic I want is and where the app is currently focusing. Also, some features are still lacking. Muting notifications for group DMs is sorely needed, and drag-and-drop file upload doesn't always work properly. Also, the Android app is not up to par on features compared to the (Linux and Windows) Desktop app(s). **What problems is Zulip solving and how is that benefiting you?** Zulip is a really good instant messaging service, and it's helping me communicate fast with many people. ### 38. Easy to Set Up and Use **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Doug O. | Executive Director, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 27, 2024 **What do you like best about Zulip?** I run a small non profit where I work with a very large group of teacher/contractors. Zulip is intuitive, and it works really well with this kind of distributed network. I rarely need help, but when I do resources are good and staff at Zulip are highly responsive. I use Zulip to communicate with my staff and these contractors; I use Asana for task based communications among staff. It's a great pairing. We use Zulip continuously. One other thing--if you think of a feature Zulip should have, it often has it. The other day I wanted to see if I could schedule my DMs in Zulip, and another staff member immediately figured it out and showed me how to do it. So it's simple to use, but it has real depth. **What do you dislike about Zulip?** One thing that I don't mind much but I'd mention is that Zulip isn't as focused on aesthetics as some-this doesn't bother me at all, but perhaps some might prefer something that looks a little more slick. To me functionality and ease of use are much more important. **What problems is Zulip solving and how is that benefiting you?** Organizing internal communication--it's made our staff communication much easier to manage. ### 39. Zulip is a great chat program that facilitates logically separated conversations for busy people. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Daniel B. | Chief Innovation Officer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 24, 2024 **What do you like best about Zulip?** Ability to write integrations with the tools I use, github, JIRA, Buildbot. The searchability is pretty good too. I particularly like the ability to migrate conversations in a topic that have diverged from their original starting point to a totally new topic, and then ignore/or continue the original topic to its conclusion. Marking topics as resolved helps keep an informal checklist of your todo items. **What do you dislike about Zulip?** If you don't catch a diverged topic quickly enough to move to a new conversation its intrusive to do multiple moves to make there be multiple logic flows. This normally happens when there's a diversion for 10 or so message, and then it continues back. A finer granuality move rather than one or all following would be appreciated. **What problems is Zulip solving and how is that benefiting you?** Purposes: closer to Community messaging with a product userbase; Intergration with tooling to act as kinda monitoring on a few external activitiies. Communication across a couple of close organisations. Benefits include ease of joining for new users, and intuitive layout of how to begin interacting. Ease of integration with 3rd party services is a big plus. The fine grained permission controls is a good benefit that enables deligation of significant privileges. ### 40. Perfect tool for asynchronous math courses or collaborative research **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Francesco S. | Assistant Professor, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 04, 2024 **What do you like best about Zulip?** 1. On the top of my list: seamless integration of LaTeX 2. Regular updates with always-improving features. 3. The desktop application is very useful and readable. 4. The desktop application has been easier to use in the latest updates, with a more novice-friendly gui (although I find the keyboard shortcuts faster). 5. Customer support is very quick and helpful. E.g. when I changed jobs, they were able to migrate my account privileges to my new workplace account. **What do you dislike about Zulip?** Even if I toggled the notification badge on my desktop application, I don't seem to be getting notifications, only in my phone app. Hence I sometimes forget to answer them if I receive them away from my desk. **What problems is Zulip solving and how is that benefiting you?** Communicating scientific explanations in mathematics using LaTeX, both to my classes (especially during the pandemic) and to my research colleagues. ### 41. Real-Time Communication Without the Chaos **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 31, 2025 **What do you like best about Zulip?** It's structured real-time communication without the chaos of Slack. **What do you dislike about Zulip?** Some users have complained about the app in the past. Hard to navigate. **What problems is Zulip solving and how is that benefiting you?** Structured real-time communication. ### 42. Confortable to use, could be the best alternative to Slack or Teams **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Kazuyuki S. | Associate Professor, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 09, 2024 **What do you like best about Zulip?** Zulip allows us to create not only "Channels", but also "Topics" under each Channel. This feature is unique to Zulip and it allows us to classify a huge amount of posts/discussions/information in a neat way. **What do you dislike about Zulip?** When two messages are posted by the same person (regardless of time interval between the two), they are merged and look like a single post. It would be great if we could post two messages as indivisual ones. **What problems is Zulip solving and how is that benefiting you?** To proceed discussions with each group member in parallel and organize my reserch group. It allows us to share information and discussions among the group members that are often helpful for organizing the research group. ### 43. A comprehensive team chat solution for collaborative teams **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Kelly K. | Product manager, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 02, 2025 **What do you like best about Zulip?** It allows users to organize conversations by topic, making it easy to follow discussions and find information **What do you dislike about Zulip?** The unique threading model and features overwhelming, requiring time to adjust and learn **What problems is Zulip solving and how is that benefiting you?** streamlined communication features, such as @-mentions and direct messages, facilitate efficient communication among team members. ### 44. Versatile messaging platform for a research center **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Rasmus P. | Professor, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 01, 2024 **What do you like best about Zulip?** We have used Zulip as the internal messaging platform for the BARC research center at University of Copenhagen for over two years. Users are BARC researchers, visitors and students. It is used for everything from organizing social activities to coordinating research projects and papers. The user interface is friendly and the threaded nature of channels is powerful. We will definitely keep using it for the foreseeable future. **What do you dislike about Zulip?** Getting used to threads can be confusing for new users (sometimes messages end up in the wrong thread by mistake). Also, don't expect a lot of integrations with other tools -- at least we tend to use Zulip as stand-alone, using links to point to external resources. **What problems is Zulip solving and how is that benefiting you?** See above ### 45. Still the best threading model for team chat software **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 05, 2024 **What do you like best about Zulip?** Zulip works differently from most other team chat software, and takes getting used to. Both the core concepts (channels vs topics) and the layout of the UI are a bit different than you might expect if you are used to tools such as Slack or Discord. However, I think that the way Zulip works ends up being much better than those other tools once you get used to it. The compact,no-nonsense UI gets out of your way, and the enforced hierarchy of channels and topics makes conversations easier to organize. It is also easy to extend and integrate with other software through custom bots, linkifiers, and so on. **What do you dislike about Zulip?** In some places, Zulip can lag behind the competition when it comes to features or performance. The Android app sometimes takes a while to connect to the server and fetch new messages, vs. Slack's app which often feels instant. Management of permissions and user groups feels under-developed. For example, there is a user group feature, but no way to automatically grant access to private channels based on group membership. **What problems is Zulip solving and how is that benefiting you?** Zulip allows our globally-distributed open source software development team to collaborate in real-time. ### 46. Zulip is a great way to keep knowledge organized from chats and help onboard newcomers **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Keith W. | Associate Professor, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 04, 2024 **What do you like best about Zulip?** Zulip's structured model is the best way to keep the knowledge from chats organized and findable -- which is great if you're scatter-brained, and great if you have new people joining your organization who will need to find knowledge embedded in past chats. Every message has a "channel" and a "topic", which means it's easy to find related messages and the history of a given topic (even if it stretches back over weeks or months). **What do you dislike about Zulip?** It's often not an app that people already have installed on their phones -- I think for people more tangentially involved in an organization, it feels like "yet another space to pay attention to." Although I'm not sure it's worse than "yet another Slack." **What problems is Zulip solving and how is that benefiting you?** Zulip lets everybody in my group participate and avoid burdening other people with duplicate requests for information -- the history is well-organized and past messages on threads are easily findable (even if they stretch across months). ### 47. An attractive novelty **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Renewables & Environment | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 04, 2024 **What do you like best about Zulip?** Finally a single place to focus all discussions and topics, without the scattering of a mailing list. This gives value to the group and makes it possible to trace discussions and documents that may go back even months or years. **What do you dislike about Zulip?** Many of the people who use it complain about the very reason we, as administrators of the group, recommended its use: the fact that you have to be registered and use an application other than email to post. **What problems is Zulip solving and how is that benefiting you?** So the main problem that we have solved with Zulip as a scientific community is the retrieval of documents or internal discussions about documents. The mailing list (which we still use anyway, because some people find it hard to switch to Zulip) is very scattered, often the subject of the e-mails, after a few passes, no longer corresponds to the contents of the messages. With Zulip this is solved by the use of channels, each of which basically corresponds to a specific subject. This solves, at least for us, many things and gives us the opportunity to have a searchable archive - something that with the mailing list is almost impossible, unless you are very disciplined, both individually and collectively. ### 48. FAForever @ Zulip: 5 years+ and never looking back **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Games | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 01, 2024 **What do you like best about Zulip?** First of all, Zulip has basically all the default features you expect from a messenger: * There is a desktop app to install, but it also works in the browser. * There are mobile apps too (some extra words on these later). * You need to create an account to get it. It can be free to join, or invite only. Login is possible with username & password or single sign on providers like Google, Github etc. * There are private areas with restricted access as well as public areas. And of course there is private messaging between a single user and multiple users. Of course there are also Webhook integrations for receiving messages from the outside world (e.g. Github notifications) and bots you can integrate. * You can bookmark messages for later. * Begun messages are sent as drafts (as many as you want) * You can directly ping people and jump to your reactions/mentions. That is our everyday use. There are fancy features like commands with bots, statistics, integrations, but I really need them much so I don't know the latest state. So far I didn't notice anything "missing" compared to other tools. Now here comes what is different and special about it: Zulip has a unique approach on how discussions are organized. Well actually it's not that unique, as it works more similar to the structure of bulletin boards. But it is unique compared to other chat tools. Every message is sent to a dedicated channel. Just like in IRC, Slack, or Discord. Then each message ends up in a certain topic that only exists inside the channel. You can pick existing topics (or it is auto-selected if you respond to an existing message), you can create a new topic or if you don't care at all you just use the default (no topic). While other solutions like Teams, Slack or Mattermost offer "Threads" based on a single message, these threads tend to vanish as the original message and they are not "core" to the user interface. So why is this such an improvement? First of all: You cannot manage thousands of channels. Because people first of all need to find it and then join and eventually leave it all the time. But channels are a much broader topic. Let me give you an example on what we use channels for: a channel for the production servers, a channel for the test server, one for moderation purposes and one for each software component we provide. So people who are interested or responsible for a certain thing subscribe to this channel. Now inside the channels there are new questions or topics opened: A certain downtime, a certain bug or feature, consistently sent push notifications from an uptime monitor or Github. Obviously not everybody is interested in every topic. I would like to know what is going on with our desktop client, but I am not interested in every Github issue or pull request opened - but the maintainer is. So I just mute just the topics I am not interested in. But all new topics I get a chance to look at and decide whether to approach them Topics can also be marked as resolved. A feature most commonly used in "support"-alike discussions. And I can search for topics by name. Helping me find older cases or some special topics where we stored some knowledge. Our production server channel has a "how-to" topic where there are many commands stored that we occasionally need. Doesn't that belong into a better knowledge management tool? Well maybe, but only if you have one… In the ui you can watch the combined feed of all channels, or all the messages of a topic. There used to be a way to see the combined feed of a channel, but it seems to have been removed. I assume because it used to be a problem to answer to the wrong topic based on which message was currently selected. Speaking of which: Posting in wrong channels is a thing - especially for new joiners. But it is possible to move messages to other topics and/or channels (just a single one, or all starting from that one). There is a permission model around this, but to me it seems crucial that everybody can do this and actively tries to keep these things because… **What do you dislike about Zulip?** Communication is hard. Efficient communication is even harder. It takes some level of discipline to keep things sorted. Not everybody is willing to invest in that. It is important to understand the reasons for that, because for me the success of introducing Zulips concepts stands and falls with the acceptance of users. If you try to run your organization on Zulip and you can't convince people to use it right you lose the benefits of it and the incurred drawbacks will drive people to other tools (potentially outside of your control). This happened at FAForever, but since we are all volunteers it did not matter to me. Many sub-teams decided to either move to the official FAForever discord or even form their own with their own set of rules, way of working, permissions etc. This leads to a lot of unnecessary friction trying to reach people across multiple platforms. And I would assume this is not a feasible approach in a company environment… In my opinion Zulip has two strengths: * Organizing multifaceted discussions in a structured way serving the needs for different people with different focus points * Particularly suitable for messages with contents of software developers However, the sub-teams that did not accept Zulips were mostly * not software developers, but mostly content creators * working in a closed bubble with little need to interact with other teams * indifferent about finding past content in structured ways So for these groups, Zulip had provided little benefit. And on the downside there is to say: Zulips strengths work best on a desktop computer or notebook, but not on mobile devices. There are mobile apps, but in my opinion the complexity in the ui cannot be simplified to touch based usage. Or maybe it is possible, but the Zulips UX does not offer it. But I personally think we just hit the natural limits of mobile apps here. **What problems is Zulip solving and how is that benefiting you?** Zulip solves the problem of organizing instant messaging in a structured way that allows users only to focus on the topics they want or need to know about. FAForever uses it as the central messaging platform for the (core) contributors of the project. ### 49. Zula does it better **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Dan M. | President, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 26, 2024 **What do you like best about Zulip?** Zulip serves as a communication hub for a dispersed community of small groups. It provides privacy for each of the groups and also the flexibility of creating channels for collaboration among them. One of the best features of the platform is the ability to thread discussions within the private channels. No more having to sort through different topics that come in during the same time frame. To be able to discuss specific issues in a single thread within a private channel is a game changer. It isn't enough to have posts in chronological order. We need to be able to sort by topic. Zulip does this and I don't know any other platform that does. Also, it is private and self-contained and it is open source. You don't get nagging to upgrade or or pay more for something. What a relief! Most of our users use zulip for our extended community only, which means that anything that comes to them through the platform is separate from their other media streams. Finally, there is a feature list that is a mile long. It seems like every week or so I discovered something that zulip does that I didn't know it did. Kudos to the development team! I am an enthusiastic advocate of Zulip. I think some of my friends get tired of me nudging them to make better use of its capabilities. **What do you dislike about Zulip?** The downside to zulip is that it is unfamiliar. Users are inclined to resist using it because it isn't slack or something else that they already know. Very frustrating. Moreover, the extra functionality is sometimes difficult for people to grasp. Once they do, it's beautiful. Another downside may be strictly cosmetic. It doesn't have a lot of the flash and flowers that make some communication portals look pretty. As an administrator I prefer function over aesthetics, but I suspect some users are disappointed that there aren't more ways to beautify the interface. They Wonder if zulip is a second class substitute for the more flashy stuff they've used before. Be assured that it isn't, but I wonder if some users think that way. I think the app could stand some tweaking to enhance usability and attaching files take some getting used to. **What problems is Zulip solving and how is that benefiting you?** Communication within small groups. Communication among small groups. Direct messaging between individuals. Flexibility to create groups for special interests and needs. We need a comprehensive communication tool that allows channels to function autonomously but also collaborate with other groups. Moreover, it is helpful to bring direct messaging into the same platform. Finally, we conduct a lot of meetings which results in group decisions. To be able to refer to the history of discussions is extremely helpful. It is the equivalent of taking detailed minutes of meetings. ### 50. Chat platform **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Holga E. | Teacher, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 21, 2025 **What do you like best about Zulip?** Zulip organized conversation into threads, making it easy to follow and participate in discussions **What do you dislike about Zulip?** Zulip’s unique threading model abd feautures can be overwhelming for new users **What problems is Zulip solving and how is that benefiting you?** Zulip’s threaded conversation and real-time chat enabled teams to communicate more effectively ## Zulip Discussions - [Does Zulip have an app?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/does-zulip-have-an-app) - 1 comment - [View Zulip pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/zulip/reviews?section=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-06-03+17%3A55%3A49+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=d0d6f07f-f8f5-43d6-9f80-dd1e6e0649a9&secure%5Btoken%5D=f7fb06004fd0ac2425d09002e478a7edf2202c38fd9d97bdf7a6ae0cb47a12e9&format=llm_user) ## Zulip Integrations - [GitHub](https://www.g2.com/products/github/reviews) - [GitLab](https://www.g2.com/products/gitlab/reviews) - [Jira](https://www.g2.com/products/jira/reviews) ## Zulip Features **Business Instant Messaging** - File Sharing - Notifications - Search **Business Instant Messaging ** - Audio Conferencing - Video Conferencing **Business Instant Messaging** - Mobile Application - Web Application - Integrations **Generative AI - Business Instant Messaging** - Text Summarization **AI - Business Instant Messaging** - AI Powered Search - Smart Notifications - AI Powered Language Translation - Content Generation **Agentic AI - Business Instant Messaging** - Cross-system Integration - Natural Language Interaction ## Top Zulip Alternatives - [Slack](https://www.g2.com/products/slack/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (37,364 reviews) - [Rocket.Chat](https://www.g2.com/products/rocket-chat/reviews) - 4.2/5.0 (348 reviews) - [Mattermost](https://www.g2.com/products/mattermost/reviews) - 4.3/5.0 (353 reviews)