Zulip

Pros

Great customer support, they are super willing to help for both open source projects and research groups.The experience is just flawless, there is absolutely no need for slack when zulip exists.We rely heavily on the history log in zulip to look up old charts that were shared via Zulipand to document important points.Also we can share accounts with collaborators, which eases communication a lot, since zulip also worksvery well in its browser version.

Cons

The only thing I don't like about zulip is thatthere is no option to change the math behaviour and use $$ instead of the default ```math environment.This is however a super low priority thing.

Pros

The chat functionality in the web client is awesome for distributed teams - well, for any team, actually. Splitting in topics, all the formatting options, integration of automation really great.
If somebody has only used, let's say, MSTeams chat, Zulip will blow them out of water. From excitement.

Cons

The mobile app didn't seem to be as polished - for example, the recent topic view could not be found anywhere.

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Reasons for Choosing Zulip

Switched From

Reasons for Switching to Zulip

Pros

The topics are very useful for organizing discussion The ability to move material under the appropriate topics is very useful. You can see all of the important (active) discussions under a stream at a glance. It is great that you can mark certain topics as completed because this makes it easy to assign to-dos on the fly.

Cons

The inability to easily upload photos or content from your phone (compared to Slack or other messaging apps) is a big downside. On OSX Zulip somehow keeps crashing. I also wish the team's custom emojis appeared at the top of the emoji list (true of Slack).

Pros

We try to use and support smaller and open source technologies, and Zulip really fits the bill for team communications. I also like the fact that there's a self-hosting capability, though we haven't done it yet.

Cons

I don't have any dislikes. It's a little rough around the edges compared to Slack and Teams, but that has never been a problem.

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Pros

Compared to Slack or MS Teams, Zulip is much easier to keep organized using the topics (filters for topic within a channel).
Moreover, proper and clean formatting using Markdown and full LaTeX formula support (like with Mathjax) makes this my preferred tool for coordinating research collaborations.

Cons

The clients are very slightly less polished compared to big business alternatives (but they do work reliably)

Pros

Zulip's top feature is the ease with which you create named threads, you just type in the thread title, and then start a conversation.

By using named threads, conversations are way easier to search, and feel less like a chat, more live a live forum.

Cons

Everything was great for me, I have recommended Zulip to my past employer and there are still using it, and I'm now using it in my team as well.

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Pros

It's such high-quality software for it to be an open-source tool. Despite some advanced features requiring payment, you can get most of the fundamentals along with some really cool tools on the completely free plan.

Cons

It would be nice if you could attach your personal Zoom room to the "Start Meeting" button. This may already be a feature, or be a paid feature, but I'm not entirely sure that it's available. The channel structure of Zulip relying on topic threads does require slightly more manual organization than a continuously running channel.

Pros

The flexibility of setting up different group discussion channels along with the availability of private communications between individuals. We also like the ability to post a message in a channel from an e-mail source.

Cons

The android, while quite usable when you get familiar with it could be improved for first users. Upon opening of the app, if there are no new messages, the blank screen and the icons do not visual clues about how to use the app. Also the zulip icon on the Android launcher screen sometimes fails to show an remindera new message has arrived.

Pros

Open-source, free tier is fantastic, ease of use, conversation labels make it fairly easy to find threads

Cons

I think Slack thread UI is a little more intuitive. I miss being able to branch off from an existing conversation and see number of replies to that thread.

Pros

The interface with Channels, Topics, and Private chats

Cons

It's missing a notes feature, but that's not its core function.

Pros

Reliable. Easy to use. Powerful Search. Threaded Conversations. Integration with other tools (jenkins, ...)

Cons

Not plug and play for a small team but once setup it's OK.

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Reasons for Switching to Zulip

Pros

Channels with topics, custom emojis, email alerts, mobile app, push notifications

Cons

Don’t have any complaints other than sometimes the iOS app gets a little slow or out of sync with incoming push notifications

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Zulip

Pros

I’ve been using Zulip as an open source alternative to slack. I use it for quick communication with my research group of 15-20 students. It provides easy navigation and organisation into channels and topics. Unlike slack, it does not delete messages after 90 days!

Cons

Some actions don’t feel intuitive. IIRC, various roles in the organisation have not worked as expected.
New posts get added to a ‘no topic’ - and need to be moved manually.
Adding a new person to a DM creates a new conversation- they can’t see older messages.

Pros

It's a wonderful, smooth, secure alternative to Slack - perfect for our growing community.

Cons

Nothing - all great! I only wish I had found it earlier.

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Pros

Its ethos-driven approach and excellent functionality

Cons

no major issues; sometimes slightly lacking in flexibility between channels/subjects

Pros

It is exactly what we need for our research lab, and does not have superfluous features or bloat that makes the app unusable. We totally rely on it, and have yet to encounter any problems.

Cons

Nothing. This is excellent software and i hope it remains available as is.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Zulip

Pros

The easy ways to organize information and people on separate channels. Usually I think being hyper-compartmentalized on other platforms makes things worse, here I think it actually works. I really like breaking down projects/topics more and pulling in who I want on a channel.

Cons

The notifications on my browser aren't effective. It could be user error but I'm supposed to get desktop notifications and they don't appear, on my bookmarks bar the red # showing messages is very delayed. I also think visually when writing a reply in a channel, it gets messy so I often choose to start a new message than reply directly to one.

Pros

Simple, direct, integrated with the tools we use (GitLab and GitHu mainly).
However, the thing I love the most is that it does its job and doesn't try to do everything (like managing my calendar and email).

Cons

Bots are not intuitive, especially if you're using the could version.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Zulip

Pros

It is a stable chat with all the features I currently expect. And I prefer Zulip over other systems because of its nicely working topic-based chat. Other systems call this also "threads". It sounds like a small thing but this can make discussions much more structured and searchable. Although it also requires a tiny bit more understanding e.g. how to move comments into other topics or similar but is mostly self-explanatory.

Cons

The design is a bit old fashioned, but I still prefer this "clean UI" over other solutions.

I'm also not sure about the state of the video conferencing for zulip (I think they offered it via jitsi?), but I do not expect this from a chat system at the moment.

Also it seems that zulip chats are not e2e encrypted, but not my highest priority.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Zulip

Pros

Open source
Flexibility
Diversity of functions
Improvement over time
Great desktop app

Cons

The smartphone app could be improved, in particular the handling of several organizations simultaneously

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Zulip

Pros

No tracking. We don't want our data accessible or monetisable by Big Tech.

Cons

That it's not so well known. Were it so, would more integrations be available?

Pros

Open source and provide free instance.
Minimal while include most useful features.
Best part: built-in bot support, which allows me to watch GitHub update, interact with Zulip using email, etc.
Also: has terminal version.

Cons

CJK characters search is poor. For example, searching "非常" should return "非常好的作品", as Chinese does not use space as word delimiter.
Web interface seems a little boring.

Pros

Everything works smoothly, you can create channels, manage private messages, share files, organize meetings, be notified of what you care about

Cons

at the beginning I had a few problems with notifications, but easy to fix

Pros

It's very easy to keep track of messages among groups and on key topics, it has support for a lot of useful text features like including math and images in messages, and it just runs smoothly.

Cons

There are a couple quality-of-life addons that I would like to see, such as being able to sort messages by whether they include files, and the ability to pin messages to the top of specific topics. Otherwise, though, it's very feature-complete.

Pros

Zulip has a very intuitive & made for team collaboration

Cons

The user interface is good, but they can improve the user experience. Make it easy for teams to go back & forth on the topics, sometimes it becomes very cluttered when working on more than one project.