Zulip Reviews & Product Details - Page 2

I use zulip for communication inside my academic research group, and it works perfectly. I love the threading model (the main reason I prefer it to slack!), and it's super easy to make private channels for each different research project, public channels for scheduling, etc. Now I even use it to take notes on projects as we go (rather than my old method of either OneNote or Overleaf). Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The mobile app is not great, but that's OK -- since we're using it for research, we're all pretty much using it from the dekstop anyway. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Our standards organization started using Zulip about 8 years ago. The ability to differentiate between streams (high-level collections of discussion threads users can follow or not) from threads is hugely powerful. We often have 5-20 different conversations happening simultaneously in the same stream and without threading, everything would be a muddled mess. The ability to add plugins to support specific software languages or other specialized content has been icing on the cake.

The ability to monitor streams, to filter streams by keyword, to search within or across streams, the ability to link to any discussion and make the stream public have all been essential for a public-facing organization like ours.

I've needed to use a variety of other tools in the same spacewith various customers and within my own company and none of them compare in terms of functionality or ease-of-use. (And the support we receive from the Zulip maintainers has been spectacular.) Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Newcomers sometimes struggle to understand the distinction between streams and threads and occasionally post to the wrong place, but it's easy enough for community moderators to move content as necessary and the learning curve is shallow enough that everyone gets the hang of things pretty quickly. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It was very easy to get a free Zulip Standard subscription for research purposes. Zulip has a lot of features, so you don't have to jump through hoops to have more complex functions like math in messages and bot support. I also like how the messages are organised into channels and topics. Its performance is also good, so it's smooth to navigate. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It's sometimes confusing to navigate different topics because I get lost between where the topic I want is and where the app is currently focusing. Also, some features are still lacking. Muting notifications for group DMs is sorely needed, and drag-and-drop file upload doesn't always work properly. Also, the Android app is not up to par on features compared to the (Linux and Windows) Desktop app(s). Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I run a small non profit where I work with a very large group of teacher/contractors. Zulip is intuitive, and it works really well with this kind of distributed network. I rarely need help, but when I do resources are good and staff at Zulip are highly responsive. I use Zulip to communicate with my staff and these contractors; I use Asana for task based communications among staff. It's a great pairing. We use Zulip continuously.

One other thing--if you think of a feature Zulip should have, it often has it. The other day I wanted to see if I could schedule my DMs in Zulip, and another staff member immediately figured it out and showed me how to do it. So it's simple to use, but it has real depth. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

One thing that I don't mind much but I'd mention is that Zulip isn't as focused on aesthetics as some-this doesn't bother me at all, but perhaps some might prefer something that looks a little more slick. To me functionality and ease of use are much more important. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Ability to write integrations with the tools I use, github, JIRA, Buildbot.

The searchability is pretty good too.

I particularly like the ability to migrate conversations in a topic that have diverged from their original starting point to a totally new topic, and then ignore/or continue the original topic to its conclusion.

Marking topics as resolved helps keep an informal checklist of your todo items. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

If you don't catch a diverged topic quickly enough to move to a new conversation its intrusive to do multiple moves to make there be multiple logic flows.

This normally happens when there's a diversion for 10 or so message, and then it continues back. A finer granuality move rather than one or all following would be appreciated. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

1. On the top of my list: seamless integration of LaTeX

2. Regular updates with always-improving features.

3. The desktop application is very useful and readable.

4. The desktop application has been easier to use in the latest updates, with a more novice-friendly gui (although I find the keyboard shortcuts faster).

5. Customer support is very quick and helpful. E.g. when I changed jobs, they were able to migrate my account privileges to my new workplace account. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Even if I toggled the notification badge on my desktop application, I don't seem to be getting notifications, only in my phone app. Hence I sometimes forget to answer them if I receive them away from my desk. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Zulip allows us to create not only "Channels", but also "Topics" under each Channel. This feature is unique to Zulip and it allows us to classify a huge amount of posts/discussions/information in a neat way. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

When two messages are posted by the same person (regardless of time interval between the two), they are merged and look like a single post. It would be great if we could post two messages as indivisual ones. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

We have used Zulip as the internal messaging platform for the BARC research center at University of Copenhagen for over two years. Users are BARC researchers, visitors and students. It is used for everything from organizing social activities to coordinating research projects and papers. The user interface is friendly and the threaded nature of channels is powerful. We will definitely keep using it for the foreseeable future. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Getting used to threads can be confusing for new users (sometimes messages end up in the wrong thread by mistake). Also, don't expect a lot of integrations with other tools -- at least we tend to use Zulip as stand-alone, using links to point to external resources. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Zulip works differently from most other team chat software, and takes getting used to. Both the core concepts (channels vs topics) and the layout of the UI are a bit different than you might expect if you are used to tools such as Slack or Discord. However, I think that the way Zulip works ends up being much better than those other tools once you get used to it. The compact,no-nonsense UI gets out of your way, and the enforced hierarchy of channels and topics makes conversations easier to organize. It is also easy to extend and integrate with other software through custom bots, linkifiers, and so on. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

In some places, Zulip can lag behind the competition when it comes to features or performance. The Android app sometimes takes a while to connect to the server and fetch new messages, vs. Slack's app which often feels instant. Management of permissions and user groups feels under-developed. For example, there is a user group feature, but no way to automatically grant access to private channels based on group membership. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Zulip's structured model is the best way to keep the knowledge from chats organized and findable -- which is great if you're scatter-brained, and great if you have new people joining your organization who will need to find knowledge embedded in past chats. Every message has a "channel" and a "topic", which means it's easy to find related messages and the history of a given topic (even if it stretches back over weeks or months). Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It's often not an app that people already have installed on their phones -- I think for people more tangentially involved in an organization, it feels like "yet another space to pay attention to." Although I'm not sure it's worse than "yet another Slack." Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.