Zulip
Team chat organised by topic inside each channel, so conversations stay readable when you come back hours later.
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4 more ways to get Zulip
Package managers
- Chocolatey
choco install zulip - Homebrew
brew install --cask zulip - Flathub
flatpak install flathub org.zulip.Zulip - Snap Store
snap install zulip
About Zulip
Zulip's distinguishing feature is threading done properly. Every message belongs to a topic within a channel, so a busy channel is a list of named conversations rather than one scrolling river. Catching up after a day away means reading the three topics that matter and skipping the rest, which is the thing other chat tools handle badly.
The server is open source and self-hostable, with a hosted Zulip Cloud as an alternative, and it is free for open-source projects and similar communities. This listing is the desktop client, which supports signing in to multiple organisations, desktop notifications with inline reply, tray integration, a multi-language spell checker and automatic updates.
Strengths
- Topic-based threading inside channels, which makes catching up genuinely practical
- Self-hostable, or hosted, with free plans for open-source communities
- Sign in to multiple organisations from one desktop client
- Desktop notifications with inline reply, tray integration and spell checking
Limitations
- The topic model takes getting used to and needs team discipline to work
- The desktop client shares most of its code with the web app, so it inherits its quirks
- Self-hosting is real infrastructure work
- Smaller ecosystem of integrations than Slack
Details
- Pricing
- FreemiumThe server and clients are free and open source and can be self-hosted at no cost. Zulip Cloud has a free tier and paid plans, and is free for open-source projects and similar communities.
- License
- Apache-2.0
- Developer
- Zulip
- Platforms
- Windows, macOS, Linux
- How it runs
- Downloadable app
- Account
- Required
- Works offline
- No
- Best suited for
- A team that has too many conversations happening at once in one channel
- Categories
- Messaging
- Last verified
- Added
- Provenance
- Selected from the TechWalrus downloads catalog (Messaging); facts checked against the developer's own pages, 2 sources on file.