Zulip

Pros: It's threaded by default, efficient and feature-rich. Love the structure of it all. Reasonable priced. Guests are free (hosted version). Search actually works, and there are many notification settings.

Cons: Some media, such as embedded images/video, could be displayed nicer. Some notification settings are missed, e.g.: "don't disturb in these hours" etc. Design and UX polish is getting better, but it still seems a bit lagging compared to other competitors.

Pros: - 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.

Cons: - 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.

Pros: Zulip has been an exceptional tool for our research group. Its threaded messaging makes it far easier to follow multiple topics at once compared to chat platforms that collapse everything into one stream. The search and navigation features are excellent; messages are easy to retrieve months later, which has made it ideal for keeping track of discussions and shared resources between meetings. The value for money is outstanding, especially for an academic setting (academic sponsorship FTW!). The integration and automation options (bots/webhooks, GitHub/Zoom integrations) have streamlined our workflow. It’s also an excellent way to organize knowledge between meetings, so important context doesn’t get lost.

Cons: The learning curve can be a bit steep for new users unfamiliar with streams and topics, but this is rare in the real-world. The mobile app interface feels less fluid than the desktop or web versions, but is still a great convenience. A few minor integrations require manual setup or API familiarity.

Pros: 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!

Cons: 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.

Pros: 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.

Cons: It has a few bugs when refreshing, and often I have to restart the application. When this happens, I miss messages for my collaborators.

Pros: The possibility to organize the different conversation based on topics and channels, so you never missed anything.

Cons: The UI isn't beautiful but really functional. All the rest I think is well though and offers what's needed.

Pros: 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!

Cons: No cons from me. Works exactly how I hoped it would and has made internal communications simple and reliable.

Pros: Intuitive UI to have threaded conversations. Searchability and findability. Ease of use, minimal onboarding.

Cons: Nothing comes to mind, really! It's a great application (both web and mobile), and it does exactly what it needs to.

Pros: Ease to use. Customizable. Transparent. Fair. Moreover, they have a responsive and competent customer support, for the one time we needed it.

Cons: Channel threading is a great option, until you don't need it. The UI is less polished, compared to other competitors, but in the end this turned out to be a plus: We are here for the functionalities, not for the gifs.

Pros: 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.

Cons: 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.

Pros: 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.

Cons: Creating bots might be a bit confusing at first as there are many different options and docs. But ultimately it worked great.

Pros: Great value for money, Opinionated and strictly sorted in topics, New stable mobile app, Secure, Custom emojis are fun, Simple user management

Cons: Slow to implement new features. Would love to get a proper "archiving option for topics, not just adding a checkmark.

Pros: I know most businesses use Slack, but the problem with Slack is that there's not enough structure to the conversations, which all get interleaved, which makes it impossible to get information out of them retrospectively. Zulip is exactly the right structure -- each topic is its own conversation thread -- to make the chat history easy to review and retrieve information from even at high conversation volume.

Cons: Because Zulip is a less common platform, most folks haven't used it before and have a bit of a learning curve to get fluent in it. I especially recommend that folks invest the time in learning the basic keyboard shortcuts.

Pros: It's easy to use, I like the color-coding and ability to create channels & topics. If you've used any other type of group chat you'll pick it up

Cons: if you have a lot of channels & topics it can take a while to scroll through relevant ones or sometimes it's hard to find what I'm looking for, especially when it auto-collapses between DM and channels

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

Cons: A few nice-to-have features have not matured, such as widgets.

Pros: I use and recommend Zulip for all organizations and groups. The organization and storage of messages has enhanced the productivity of myself and colleagues for years.

Cons: There isn't anything I would change about Zulip.

Pros: The easy ways to organize information and people on separate channels. Usually I think being hyper-compartmentalized on other platforms makes things worse, here I think it actually works. I really like breaking down projects/topics more and pulling in who I want on a channel.

Cons: The notifications on my browser aren't effective. It could be user error but I'm supposed to get desktop notifications and they don't appear, on my bookmarks bar the red # showing messages is very delayed. I also think visually when writing a reply in a channel, it gets messy so I often choose to start a new message than reply directly to one.

Pros: How discussions are structured, it allows me to navigate between multiple subjects / teams without being lost. It simplifies async work between team members. Basically it's an hybrid between a forum and a chat.

Cons: Onbaording colleagues can be hard because of the UX a bit different from other apps. For instance the lack of a WYSIWYG message editor. Also lacks the ability to create categories to put channels in it.

Pros: Most organized communication/"chat" tool. Easy to catch up on conversations. Solves the problem of "cross-talking" in channels. Also the most programmer-friendly tool, the syntax highlighting, markdown and LaTeX support are extraordinary.

Cons: Doesn't have an integrated video meeting + screen sharing tool, but it can integrate with other tools.

Pros: The fact that it's free for small companies... It's an ideal way to try out and see whether it is a good fit for our organization. Zulip is very intuitive: all our 9 employees were able to start working with it without any training or instruction.

Cons: There's nothing I don't like about Zulip.

Pros: The chat functionality in the web client is awesome for distributed teams - well, for any team, actually. Splitting in topics, all the formatting options, integration of automation really great. If somebody has only used, let's say, MSTeams chat, Zulip will blow them out of water. From excitement.

Cons: The mobile app didn't seem to be as polished - for example, the recent topic view could not be found anywhere.

Pros: The flexibility of setting up different group discussion channels along with the availability of private communications between individuals. We also like the ability to post a message in a channel from an e-mail source.

Cons: The android, while quite usable when you get familiar with it could be improved for first users. Upon opening of the app, if there are no new messages, the blank screen and the icons do not visual clues about how to use the app. Also the zulip icon on the Android launcher screen sometimes fails to show an remindera new message has arrived.

Pros: I use Zulip to communicate with classes of 25–40 students. It is far more efficient than using the communication tools in Canvas, and the mobile app is great for students and for me. Plus there is fantastic support for Markdown, code blocks, images and videos, etc.

Cons: There is really nothing I find lacking about this software.