Zulip
About Zulip
Zulip Pricing
Zulip is 100% free and open source, with no proprietary version. Self-host without paying a dime, or contact us to inquire about enterprise support options. We offer free Zulip Cloud hosting with up to 10,000 messages of search history. For unlimited history and other premium features, sign up for Zulip Cloud Standard for $6.67/user/month. Sponsorships and special education pricing are available. Zulip sponsors free Zulip Cloud Standard for hundreds of worthy organizations.
Starting price:
$6.67 per month
Free trial:
Not Available
Free version:
Available
Most Helpful Reviews for Zulip
1 - 5 of 114 Reviews
Angel
Verified reviewer
Research, 201-500 employees
Used daily for less than 6 months
OVERALL RATING:
5
EASE OF USE
5
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
5
Reviewed April 2023
Zulip is a great chat/asynchronous communication tool.
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.
PROS+ 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/
CONS+ Mobile app not too polished yet + Not easy to create sub-organizations at the moment (but the Team is working on that)
Reason for choosing Zulip
Mostly because of its open-source nature, its free cloud plan for Research and it unique topic feature.
Reasons for switching to Zulip
Other options were propietary and we wanted to have control of our messages and be able to download them and self-host the platform if necessary.
Catalin
Research, 51-200 employees
Used daily for more than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
5
EASE OF USE
5
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
FUNCTIONALITY
5
Reviewed March 2023
Much better than Slack and Mattermost
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.
CONSThe 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 .
Reason for choosing Zulip
Mattermost didn't support threads at all when I made this choice, and even now it only support's a limited Slack-like thread model.
Reasons for switching to Zulip
I hated Slack, since as soon a channel become high traffic it was a mess ... super stressy to catch up with what was going on.
Nivedh
Information Technology and Services, 201-500 employees
Used daily for less than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
4
EASE OF USE
3
VALUE FOR MONEY
4
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
3
FUNCTIONALITY
4
Reviewed October 2021
Alternative solution to other expensive software to manage organizational communication
Zulip is a good software , I liked the chat feature and controls/restrictions we can add for the specific users.
CONSNot as such , most of the things are good
Miguel
Higher Education, 201-500 employees
Used weekly for more than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
5
EASE OF USE
5
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
FUNCTIONALITY
5
Reviewed March 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.
PROSIt'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!)
CONSI'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.
Reason for choosing 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.
Reasons for switching to 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).
Antonio
Computer Software, 2-10 employees
Used daily for less than 12 months
OVERALL RATING:
5
EASE OF USE
5
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
5
Reviewed March 2023
Best tool to communicate in a research group
Best communication tool to run my research group. Highly recommended to all (small and big) labs in computer science, machine learning and AI.
PROSZulip 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.
CONSZulip 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.
Reason for choosing Zulip
Slim, faster and with beautiful information hierarchies
Reasons for switching to Zulip
Slack is overpriced, but most crucially offers a non-sensical way to organize information and communicate. Math is not fully supported from day zero.