Zulip

Review of Zulip Software: system overview, features, price and cost information. Get free demos and compare to similar programs.

Overview

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 Screenshots

Zulip Features

Features of Zulip
Access Controls/Permissions
Alerts/Notifications
Calendar Management
Collaboration Tools
Discussions/Forums
Document Management
@mentions
Screen Sharing
Secure Data Storage
Task Management

Zulip Integrations

GitHub logo
GitHub

Customer Reviews

See why people love Zulip

5 Star
90%
4 Star
10%
3 Star
0%
2 Star
0%
1 Star
0%
Alejandro G.

Alejandro G.

Verified User

Research · 2-10 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years
Dec 22, 2025

Zulip is essential for running a succesful research group

Everything feels well done, and it's not a RAM hoarder unlike other similar systems.

What they liked
  • 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
Room for improvement
  • 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
Switched From

They lacked transparency and actually to export the information from Slack it was quite painful to do so.Also they did not have math mode at the time, and we rather liked the more open attitude of slack.

Madison C.

Verified User

Automotive · 51-200 employees

Used daily for less than 12 months
Dec 22, 2025

Highly Recommended

It's been great! Teams crashed, wouldn't open properly and had to manually boot up the "old" version for it to work, it would randomly close in the middle of the work day or fail to show a notification so messages were missed. Zulip has none of these issues.

What they liked
  • Easy to set up and easy to use
  • Microsoft Teams was giving me and my coworkers nothing but headaches until I found Zulip as an alternative
  • UI is great and straightforward, and works seamlessly with my phone
  • The search function is great and saves me a lot of time when looking for a specific keyword
  • I would recommend Zulip to anyone
Room for improvement
  • No cons from me
  • Works exactly how I hoped it would and has made internal communications simple and reliable
Switched From

Teams was unreliable; would close itself or fail to display notifications leading to missed communications.

Malak J.

Verified User

Computer Software · 2-10 employees

Used weekly for less than 12 months
Dec 22, 2025

Cool idea, lots left on the table for execution

Verified reviewer

What they liked
  • Loads of UI config options, has a native mobile app that pairs with it
  • I haven't yet found a bug in how the software is intended to work
  • Messaging is speedy and reliable
  • Super easy to move messages from one channel/place to another, so if you're re-organizing you both don't lose things and also can better consolidate knowledge that accidentally got spread around in different areas
Room for improvement
  • Super confusing UI, even after going through all of the config to make it look/act more like you'd expect from a typical modern chat app
  • Constantly losing threads of conversation in different places, even after thoughtfully consolidating channels
  • Even the mobile app push notifications are weird because if you get more than one message you can no longer tap the notification to go to the message
Why they chose it

"Security, primarily. The ability to self-host was important to other people on the team. OSS was a nice touch."

Rudo K.

Verified User

Environmental Services · 11-50 employees

Used daily for less than 12 months
Dec 22, 2025

Excellent threaded communications app

We started to use Zulip to have threaded conversations about many different subjects after finding that things were getting lost on Chat, and it worked super well for our purposes. Highly recommended for dynamic remote teams.

What they liked
  • Intuitive UI to have threaded conversations
  • Searchability and findability
  • Ease of use, minimal onboarding
Room for improvement
  • Nothing comes to mind, really
  • It's a great application (both web and mobile), and it does exactly what it needs to
Switched From

Threaded conversations and findability / indexing

Marius M.

Verified User

Entertainment · 2-10 employees

Used daily for less than 2 years
Dec 22, 2025

The best collaboration platform

It's always been fantastic, from documentation to the community chat and open-source code, as well as implementing integrations.

What they liked

Ease of use, mature and stable software, attentive support team, high quality code and experienced developer/product team

Room for improvement
  • A few nice-to-have features have not matured, such as widgets
Switched From

Switched for better privacy, easier integration, and simpler yet more effective features.

Nazmus S.

Verified User

Information Technology and Services · 2-10 employees

Used daily for less than 6 months
May 28, 2026

A great Business application , would recommend.

Seamless experience. A great business centered application. Probably having some official videos about the usage of the application would have been nice.

What they liked
  • - Ability to create additional folders and topics under a channel
  • - Security and user assignment - Haven't used the bot but i can imagine the use of it
  • - Mobile APP for easy access
  • - Ability to invite user outside the organization
Room for improvement
  • - Sometimes takes time to load on mac after inactivity
  • Have to restart to make it work
  • - Sound notification is not easy to setup on windows
Switched From

Open source, Cost effective, more advanced than slack.

Krzysztof B.

Verified User

Computer Software · 11-50 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years
May 28, 2026

Golden review from Warsaw Dynamics

I like UI, channels/topics organization. Please to use it. Totally would recommend to other software teams/companies.

What they liked
  • Zulip comes at reasonable price
  • Whenever we contacted Zulip support we received response in timely manner
  • People familiar with Slack do not have problem with switching to Zulip
  • Web version works great
  • I love plain and simple markdown
  • Bots integration works well
Room for improvement
  • Notifications on phone do not work
  • Not a problem for me because after work I do not need notifications
  • Search does not always work, looking for a "youtube" do not find links to youtube
  • Often content of code snippets are excluded from search

Toby K.

Verified User

Computer & Network Security · 2-10 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years
May 28, 2026

Simple, effective and not overloaded

Verified reviewer

What they liked
  • Simple, effective, and not overloaded
  • Zulip is the perfect solution for us with a lot of control, while keeping it easy to organize
  • The self-hosting options are great if you want more control
Room for improvement
  • Creating bots might be a bit confusing at first as there are many different options and docs
  • But ultimately it worked great

William T.

Verified User

Education Management · 2-10 employees

Used daily for less than 12 months
May 28, 2026

Improve my scientific communication

Verified reviewer

What they liked
  • I find very useful to group all possible topics that currently I'm working on with my team and mark as resolved the ones which seem to be done
  • For the latter it is quite nice that one can always revisit what was done in the past, even if it was resolved
  • Likewise, typing of equations using LaTex commands works pretty well
Room for improvement
  • When discussing various topics, it would be nice to be able to reply comments in a separated box
  • At the moment, I reply comments by using the option "quote"
  • Probably, the Zulip team could improve in that

Stefano D.

Verified User

Research · 51-200 employees

Used daily for less than 12 months
May 28, 2026

Zulip is great for researchers

Very, very positive. I use it for my research activity, where I share news with my collaborators across the globe.

What they liked
  • The platform is free for researchers, works on every OS, and allows you to type in markdown
  • It’s well-structured for multi-directional conversations
Room for improvement
  • It has a few bugs when refreshing, and often I have to restart the application
  • When this happens, I miss messages for my collaborators

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