Zulip is the best chat/asynchronous communication tool that I have tried so far. It is not perfect, but for an organization with many members and generating hundreds of messages per day, it is the best option to keep things organized.We have been using Zulip at our institution only for ~1 month, but despite the inertia to change from previously used tools, we are now ~60 members, with more than ~4500 messages, and most people seem to be very happy with the change and not looking back.

+ open source (https://github.com/zulip)+ Cloud Standard Plan free for Research (https://zulip.com/plans/) + messages do not get deleted after a certain period of time.+ Unique topics feature that helps keeping conversations together (invaluable when a large number of members and conversations. Much better than threads in Slack/Discord/etc).+ Several interfaces: Web, Desktop (Mac, Linux, Windows), Mobile (ios, Android)+ strong and very active developing community https://zulip.com/development-community/+ rich formatting of messages: https://zulip.com/help/format-your-message-using-markdown+ integration and bots: https://zulip.com/integrations/

+ Mobile app not too polished yet + Not easy to create sub-organizations at the moment (but the Team is working on that)

I really love the way Zulip organizes conversations into named topics. It relieves a lot of stress to know that even after a vacation or some time working on a different project, I can always quickly and easily catch up on everything that's been going on. No other chat application offers such a great conversation model.Zulip is also open source and offers both self-hosting and cloud hosting, including free hosting plans for open source and academic projects.

The phone app can only log into one organization at a time, but this is not a big problem for me, since I don't enable mobile notifications, but .

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

Not as such , most of the things are good

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.

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!)

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.

Best communication tool to run my research group. Highly recommended to all (small and big) labs in computer science, machine learning and AI.

Zulip offers the most logical and practical way to arrange threads and conversations into semantic streams. It offers the perfect integration with LaTeX which is fundamental to write math and hence to support scientific discussion in my team.

Zulip on the smartphone is still not as polished as the web or desktop app. It would be great to have the same fluid interface at your thumb disposal.

We are a research group at a mid-size university and I need to communicate with collaborators (less than a dozen) and with students (a few dozens at a time).Zulip has always provided a clear way to communicate.

We like the threaded model of discussion, which is similar to email. We appreciate that search is unlimited.Overall, it is always been very reliable. I cannot remember a downtime.

Integrations with other services are quite complex to setup, For instance, I would have liked a much deeper integration with webex and google calendar.

I am using Zulip for different research groups, both for collaborating with colleagues, but also to send information within our organizations.

Zulip is just amazing for researchers with regards to all aspects. It is the only discussion platform which supports Latex natively, and it also has the best way to organize messages and topics. It can be fine-tuned very easily (for example, by automatically linking arxiv number to the website). I like the fact that markup is done with markdown, and that it contains useful tools such that timezone-aware times and dates. Being open source is another major advantage, and the community is very supportive.

I don't see any major problem with Zulip, except maybe the possibility to create sub-instances within a given organization.

Much less FOMO than with other team chat products.

The interface is really calm, and the threaded model works really well in terms of encouraging long-form conversation and notes that can be referred back to and found many months and years in the future. Group discussions become almost a knowledge base. There's much less 'fear of missing out' and feeling like you always need to be online / ready to pounce on a conversation, as it's much easier to revisit something hours (or days, weeks, years) later and add content and contribute to it.I found the web-hooks very easy to use - in my case, any Git commits get referred to (with links) in a special #github channel with the repositories being individual threads. It is then very natural to have a conversation here with your collaborators about the latest works, discuss what to do next etc. I also adapted some code which interfaces to the Zotero reference manager, so that new papers added to our shared Zotero group get injected into their own thread on a #zotero channel. Again, this a very natural place to discuss papers, assign readings, plan journal clubs etc.

It's somehow a bit less fun / responsive; it's not so good at being a place for cat videos, or fast paced emoji filled water cooler chats.

We have 500 people in the learning community. Many of whom really make good use of Zulip to communicate and share ideas and ask questions. But I find many people do not spend the time to learn it and do not set it up properly, and miss out.

I love how every message has its place. It is so easy to find the right place to post a message so the right people see it. I love the how easy it is to customise the alerts, so you do not get swamped with alerts that are not important to you. Zulip has a clean and simple interface, unlike others which can be so confusing. I love how if someone puts a post in the wrong stream, it can easily be moved to the right place.

I would love to be able to set up alerts for people who struggle to do it themselves. Obviously they would need to give permission for me to do this. At the very least there could be one stream that everyone gets notifications for, so I can push out important announcements.

Very convenient to work with a multitude on teams within an organization with different members and being able to keep up with a lot of different topics. Even if you were away for some time, it is easy to keep track and get informed about the current status of a multitude of topics.

The feature that within channels a multitude of topics are possible and the ease to subscribe or stop following specific channels.

The text formatting (bold/underline etc) options are available, but in a clumsy technical way (not intuitive, you need to remember specific text codes)

It took some time for us to realizse the potential Zulip offers and figure out how to set up the right amount of streams and themes. We are always trying to keep it clean and simple as to keep everyone engaged. Trying to wean everyone from using Email is a task!

We were specifically looking for a platform that would enable our nearly 100 teammembers to communicate, share resources, plan meetings etc. The challenge was that 80% are not digital natives and needed a tool that was easy to use and intuitive. Zulip offers everything we needed without being overloaded with features that can sometimes distract. Keep it simple is the way to go for us.

We would love to have an intergrated calender that is easily accessible for all users. Some features are difficult to understand (and therefore not within our reach) without some knowledge of programming. (construct a narrow etc.)

We use Zulip for communications in our CS department, totaling at the moment 1k users. The experience is mixed: people active in Zulip love it, but some students do not take the most out of it because they prefer the more shiny Discord. In my experience, a voice chat option and a more modern look would help keep those people in.Overall, as a professor, the structure of threads makes communication seamless in the subjects I teach. As such, I'm very happy with the tool.

I find the thread model of Zulip to be unbeatable. In my experience, people feel at lost for the first couple of days, but once they get it, they see the value of having every message belonging to a thread. This makes topics and messages very easy to search just by scrolling.

What is currently missing is the easy voice chat that Discord or Slack provide. Some people complain about the interface, for not being easy enough to use and/or for having a retro-style (I like it actually, but I transmit what I've heard).

Zulip as allow us to improve the communication between de members of our organization in synchronous and asynchronous way. Zulip adapts easily to the different interactions between the members.

Zulip give us an horizontal and virtual space to get in contact all the members of our institute. It allows an easy and decentralized way to create different channels of communication between de members while keeping a complete record of all the communications.

Perhaps a better integration with web browsers and linux desktop environment, through notifications or a desktop application.

It has been amazing.

It is very scalable, and easy to add structure to different discussion threads, share files, and create meetings.

I can't think of any. Zulip is superior to any other solution we have tried to organize the Lean community

Team communication while working on several projects.

The division into streams and then subdivision into topics is very natural.

Really nothing to dislike - it is perfect for what I use it.

Great product with an exceptional value.

Zulip is a full on Slack replacement for a fraction of the cost. I really prefer the topic threading to the freeform nature of Slack as well. Truly an ideal replacement.

My biggest issue is the lack of a scheduled message feature. I schedule messages/emails to my team all the time to help things pop up at appropriate times and ease anxiety if I am working on something off hours. I can use the terminal client to schedule a message, but I really want it in the main software.

We've found it great at coordinating our research group.

The best part of Zulip is the way that every conversation is tagged with a lightweight "topic" (so we can always find information later) and the ability to quickly catch up with everything threaded in one chronological view. You don't have to click around to different "rooms" and you don't end up with everything jumbled together and unfindable. The threading works vastly better than Slack or Discord.

New users often find it a bit unfamiliar if they're used to Slack.

Zulip is an easy to use chat app similar to Slack or Mattermost. The single best feature is that it has a two level categorization of messages: the traditional channel (called a "stream") that people can subscribe to, but also an additional "topic", more similar to an email subject. This allows to use zulip also for more long-lived discussions, as it is easy to find messages much later by referring to the topic.Additionally, it is easy to use and supports everything that is expected from such a chat app (standard and custom emoji, reaction gifs, markdown formatting, bots, integration with other tools, etc.)

The UI is not as pretty as its competitors, but its functionality more than makes up for it.

As a professor, I've used Zulip for my research group and for running several classes. I'm a longtime Zulip enthusiast, having used it for years as part of the Recurse Center community. I love how the threading model keeps things organized, and the API is extremely well documented and easy to use. It's got tons of handy features like code syntax highlighting and LaTeX rendering. I use the hosted version, but since it's open source and self-hostable, I could always switch to self-hosting and have full control if I wanted, unlike alternatives like Slack. I wouldn't want to use anything but Zulip!

The Zulip Android app sometimes lags behind in features.

Topics in streams. It prevents creating too many streams while organizing relevant chats together.

UI customization. It supports custom CSS, but it's not easy to do for everyone.

Our zulip instance ties the whole community together, from new users to core developers, as well as associated communities (e.g. user groups in specific localities, and research collaborations).

Zulip has excellent organisation: conversations are divided up into streams and threads and direct messages, and you can focus on the parts that matter. We have everything from open, all-purpose streams for new users, down to private streams for core developers.

The mobile app is not quite as good as the desktop app; particularly I often find myself wanting to go back to message I read 10 minutes earlier, and not being able to find it.

Excellent

Zéro bugQuick and efficientEasy to search

Sometime complex to use for non daily users

It works very well for us, easy to find things given the separation of topics

Separation of topics instead of one stream with everything

Missing native video/audio integration. Would have been really nice to have connected to streams/topics

Overall, Zulip is a great tool for communication. Team members can stay in the loop of relevant information and not be overwhelmed by information that is irrelevant to their tasks and work. Plus, being free and Open source is another great benefit

Zulip is free and opensource and works on all platforms (windows, mac, linux, android and ios). It offers all standard chat methods needed for team communication. Communication can be organized through streams and topics and team members can be subsrcibe to these topics and stay in the loop with relevant information. The software is free to use, and you can even host it in your own servers for flexibility. Additional integration is also possible and includes a lot of popular services such as GitHub, Heroku, Zendesk and more. There is a paid plan which is cheap and offers additional features like company branding and 10GB storage per user. Communication can work smoothly as you can stay informed about topics relevant to you and ignore the rest, which can be a lot of messages when you are working in a diverse team.

Overall, there was nothing that was lacking in particular. There are no features like video calling or calendars built in, which might be possible to add via integration but was not tested personally. But Zulip gets the job done if you are only looking for a chat client to communicate in an organized manner.

I was using a free plan from slack, that is also an excellent tool. But the rules changed and zilip, besides offering me the possibility to import my chats from slack, it has some advantages over slack that are really very useful.

Zulip successfully implements many features (over other tools), such as search and topic segregation which, in my opinion, are essential to have an organized discussion. Also, you don't have to throw your data away if you need to change your zulip provider or even if you need to switch to another tool. For example, I was able to import my data from slack and it worked very well. In the future, I can install zulip on my personal server and keep the code running by my own means.

It's not very pretty and some features (like replies to posts) are easily used by programmers, but are not so smooth for the layman.Not being used by many people is its main con because people generally reject changing from one tool to another, enen if the other shows itself better.