About Zulip

Zulip is the only modern team chat app that is designed for both live and asynchronous conversations. Zulip topics create a separate space for each discussion, so different conversations will never get in each other's way. Teams of all sizes rely on Zulip - Fortune 500 companies, open-source projects, startups, and many others. Zulip is 100% open-source enterprise-grade software, self-hosted or in the cloud.
Zulip Software - Main message view
Zulip Software - Recent topics
Zulip Software - Main message view - thumbnail
Zulip Software - Recent topics - thumbnail

Zulip pricing

Zulip has a free version and does not offer a free trial. Zulip paid version starts at US$6.67/month.

Starting Price:
US$6.67/month
Free Version:
Yes
Free trial:
No

Alternatives to Zulip

Zulip Reviews for UK Users

Feature rating

Value for Money
4.9
Functionality
4.6
Ease of Use
4.6
Customer Support
4.8
5 reviews of 114 View all reviews
Sjur
Sjur
  • Industry: Higher Education
  • Company size: 1,001–5,000 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source
Value for Money
5
Functionality
5
Ease of Use
5
Customer Support
5

4
Reviewed on 10/03/2023

Zulip one of the best team collaboration tools

Zulip has turned out to be a very nice and friendly tool for team collaboration, as well as for keeping an eye on development (through GitHub integration).

Pros

Ease of setup, ease of use, and integration with other tools and services.

Cons

I would like more flexible integration with GitHub, without much setup. Better and easier IRC integration.

Joshua
  • Industry: Research
  • Company size: 10,000+ Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source
Value for Money
5
Functionality
5
Ease of Use
5
Customer Support
5

5
Reviewed on 09/03/2023

Zulip is awesome!

Love it! I use it for my research group, for collaborations both within and outside the group, and for teaching, both for managing course staff and for interacting with students in the class.

Pros

Threading & thread titles like email (unlike Slack or MS Teams). But b/c its focused on just one part of the organization, it helps keep my actual email less cluttered. Built-in support for math in LaTeX is helpful for research. Ability to add guests lets us have collaborators join our group instance but only have access to certain streams (stream : Zulip :: channel : Slack). Privacy features are great to have a mix of discussions.

Cons

Originally I felt like I wanted a more robust feature for keeping track of read/unread messages. But having used it now for several years, turns out I didn't really need that feature and get along just fine without it. Organizing conversations in Zulip works great!

Nivedh
  • Industry: Information Technology & Services
  • Company size: 201–500 Employees
  • Used Daily for 1+ year
  • Review Source
Value for Money
4
Functionality
4
Ease of Use
3
Customer Support
3

4
Reviewed on 26/10/2021

Alternative solution to other expensive software to manage organizational communication

Pros

Zulip is a good software , I liked the chat feature and controls/restrictions we can add for the specific users.

Cons

Not as such , most of the things are good

Miguel
  • Industry: Higher Education
  • Company size: 201–500 Employees
  • Used Weekly for 2+ years
  • Review Source
Value for Money
5
Functionality
5
Ease of Use
5
Customer Support
0

5
Reviewed on 14/03/2023

Zulip for a CS department in a University

Our main use of Zulip is to have forums of discussions for each subject and also for collaborating between the faculty members and between students. It's a more lively environment than that of the forum in Moodle.

Pros

It's really nice to have streams (channels) for each subject/research groups/student groups; each stream is self-administered by the teachers or by the students themselves. I also like the organization in Topics inside each stream and the possibility to focus in just one topic. It's handy to be able to direct message with a group of others users. Being a CS department it's handy to have syntax highlighting (as I write this review I discovered code playgrounds!)

Cons

I'd like to have the possibility to use topics inside Direct Messages; it'd be nice to have separate conversations in parallel with some other person(s) having the ability to focus on this or that topic.

Alternatives Considered

Google Chat, Telegram, Rocket.Chat, Discord, Mattermost and Slack

Reasons for Choosing Zulip

We had a limited account on Slack and we lost the history after two or three months after reaching some quota. Therefore we considered various alternatives (see below).

Switched From

Slack

Reasons for Switching to Zulip

We voted between all the alternatives and the winner was Zulip. The possibility of using an instance of Zulip hosted in (and maintained by) Zulip was a very important point for us.
Evelien
  • Industry: Hospital & Health Care
  • Company size: 2–10 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source
Value for Money
5
Functionality
4
Ease of Use
4
Customer Support
5

5
Reviewed on 10/03/2023

Much better than email or other chat apps

It has been great. Our team uses it all the time. We can certainly recommend Zulip.

Pros

Zulip is much better than email for our team conversations. It is much more organized and makes it easier to find old but relevant messages. I like the stream/topic way of organizing things. The search history is great and it is convenient that the 'all messages' screen offers a chronological overview of all messages. You can choose who can follow which stream, it has great third-party integrations (Tweets show up quite nicely).

Cons

The app no longer shows badges when there are new messages. The desktop version is great but the app has some small issues (for example if you select on the topic, sometimes the message box disappears).

Alternatives Considered

Slack

Reasons for Switching to Zulip

Zulip has a better message organization structure with streams and topics. It supports research and non-profits and it is open-source.

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