12 ms·

Zulip 4.0: Threaded open source team chat

617 points by karlicoss 5y ago

encryptluks2 5y ago
Hope to see more open source projects migrate to something like this. It is crazy the amount of fundamental open source projects I see investing heavily in Slack and other paid services.
- mdaniel 5y ago
  Or, worse (IMHO) when they tie themselves to Slack but don't pay for it, thus having messages thrown into the trash I hold out high hopes that eventually Zulip will gain enough mental marketshare that folks will switch, since Zulip offers free hosting for open source projects, unlike ~~Slack~~ Salesforce with their bazilliontrillion dollars that they can't afford to spend to "sponsor" workspaces
  - sgt 5y ago
    We do this and see it as a benefit. If something is important enough not to take out of a chat, is it really that important? I have been hesitating paying for Slack because I feel the usage patterns of Slack will change if we do. I think power users of Slack tend to use email less, and that's precisely what I don't want. I want to continue using e-mail for more important things and keep chat as a non critical service.
  - telesilla 5y ago
    A project I work on uses free slack and once a month exports the chat and saves them on github, ensuring the conversations are maintained in case we need to go back and review any critical decisions.
itamarst 5y ago
The "threaded" part is key here. Slack threads are useless compared to Zulip. In Zulip you can create threads on the fly from existing messages, so if discussion starts diverging you can turn it into a new thread. It's just a fundamentally superior model.
- mushufasa 5y ago
  Zulip is one of the very few software tools that I really find a joy to use, because they make it easy to work within the correct patterns. Seriously, it's hard to express this experience until you've tried it. If you look at their feature lists, you can't appreciate the craft and love and thought put into Zulip that makes it stand out from other chat systems. And you may live in the chat systems with your distributed teams all day.
  - aesyondu 5y ago
    > Zulip is one of the very few software tools that I really find a joy to use I'd like to know what the others are.
    - mushufasa 5y ago
      like that magical moment when you understand unix pipes and how to powerfully tie things together with a shell one-liner except without requiring years to master
  - StavrosK 5y ago
    My current company uses Slack and I groan every time I have to use it. I miss Zulip greatly.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- karlicoss 5y ago
  Yep! I think the author highlights it well > I received over 20,000 messages in chat.zulip.org during my paternity leave. I really enjoyed reading everything and replying to the hundreds of topics where I had something to contribute or someone to thank. Systematically reading months of history would have been impossible with any other tool!
  - stefan_ 5y ago
    Wait what? We are supposed to do that? My reaction after months long paternity leave to something like Slack messages would be "mark all read".
fblp 5y ago
Congrats zulip team! A very inspiring open source product.
corytheboyd 5y ago
Wow I didn’t even know this project existed, and you’re telling me it’s FOSS?!
- dsr_ 5y ago
  And they tag issues with labels like "good first project". It's very welcoming.
karlicoss 5y ago
Apart from the threading model, I love Zulip for its openness. It's quite sad Slack and Discord are often the first choice for open communities. They are siloed and unless you are deliberately searching in a specific workspace, you'll never run into the information in a search engine. In comparison, Zulip: - provides HTML export functionality https://github.com/zulip/zulip-archive#zulip-html-archive https://github.com/zulip/zulip-archive#zulip-html-archive (example https://leanprover-community.github.io/archive https://leanprover-community.github.io/archive ) - URLs are nice and encode meaning (e.g. https://memex.zulipchat.com/#narrow/stream/279601-hpi/topic/work.20on.20grafana.2Finfluxdb.20integration https://memex.zulipchat.com/#narrow/stream/279601-hpi/topic/...) ... compare with Slack/Discord meaningless character sequences - I'm excited about https://github.com/zulip/zulip/issues/4817 https://github.com/zulip/zulip/issues/4817 , which would allow viewing workspaces in 'guest' mode, without registering at all
- Operyl 5y ago
  To be fair, the Discord URIs are passed around in chat, etc. They're not that opaque, for a guild message it's just serverid/channelid/messageid. The numbers are snowflakes.
- slimsag 5y ago
  I think once Zulip gets a "guest mode", it will be a huge boon in its adoption for OSS communities. I love Zulip!
  - tabbott 5y ago
    > I think once Zulip gets a "guest mode", it will be a huge boon in its adoption for OSS communities Agreed! To clarify the terminology, "guests" in Zulip (and other team chat products, e.g. Slack) generally refers to users with an account but with limited access. https://zulip.com/help/roles-and-permissions https://zulip.com/help/roles-and-permissions has more detail on that. We've been tentatively planning to use the term "web-public streams" for streams that an open community has configured to be accessible without creating a Zulip account. The project is quite far along; the latest PR is here: https://github.com/zulip/zulip/pull/16728 https://github.com/zulip/zulip/pull/16728 (The PR looks stale, but that's only because we paused integrating it to focus on finishing 4.0; I would be sad if we don't have it at least in beta this summer.)
hardwaresofton 5y ago
Zulip's an awesome F/OSS chat option, consider contributing to it, even if it's only translations in your native language. The project seems healthy, and is growing at a good pace and adding more features and people aren't burning out, seems to be doing a lot of things right as far as F/OSS project management goes. Tim is also a joy to interact with.
the_duke 5y ago
I was skeptical about Zulip when I first tried it. What is it supposed to be? A chat? A forum? Why is the UI so ugly? But after using it a while I now really dislike Slack et al, both in professional teams and for open source communities. Zulip can give you the best of both worlds. It's a regular chat. But the threading model also encourages long-form, more forum or email like discussions. Threads are easily discoverable and it's trivial to catch up on all the relevant discussions that you missed, while skipping everything that doesn't concern you. You can still have some regular chat channels for typical ephemeral discussion that no-one is expected to read. It's really a great tool. The only downside is the very subpar UX when compared to Discord or even Slack.
- mushufasa 5y ago
  I have heard a few people complain about the UI but I like it, and it seems comparable to other chat apps. What about Slack/Discord is better? Genuinely trying to understand. As for UX, I think Zulip has a strong advantage w/r/t the threading model, which you seem to be saying as well.
  - slimsag 5y ago
    I have heard complaints where I work that less-technical foks find the UI unpleasant/confusing. I think it is due to a combination of the keyboard shortcuts being front-and-center and the threading model seeming "complex" (really, just logically structured) I'm not sure there is a strong/good argument against it, though. e.g. word processors are "more complex" than text files for sure, but people have learned the benefits of those. I think the education / user-onboarding flow could be improved perhaps.
    - gvurrdon 5y ago
      The usual complaints I get (as an admin of an instance) are: 1. "Hard to search"/"Can't find anything". 2. Off-topic responses because people post in whatever the most recent thread they used happens to be (results in (1)). I like it, though, due to having some similarities to a forum.
  - 5y ago
alex-a-soto 5y ago
Previously at EI2030, we were using Discord, and it wasn't easy to find and keep track of information as we were growing. We've transitioned to Zulip and couldn't be happier. The article from monadical describes it best: "...[Zulip] creates an organized repository of knowledge as a side effect" Thank you to the Zulip team! https://monadical.com/posts/how-to-make-remote-work-part-two-zulip.html https://monadical.com/posts/how-to-make-remote-work-part-two... https://ei2030.zulipchat.com/ https://ei2030.zulipchat.com/
ipsum2 5y ago
Sort of off topic, but does anyone know why Dropbox acquired Zulip and preceded to do nothing with it?
- uyt 5y ago
  It seems to be an acquihire and they didn't care for the product. This happens fairly often in general. Glad they at least got to opensource it instead of just killing it.
- bredren 5y ago
  I can’t speak to decision making, but I can add one viewpoint. My understanding is that Zulip was called Chime internally. Management pushed teams to use the tool, and it was tried but the interface was not polished. Slack was already out and despite how it is seen today, slack far more appealing. Slack’s interface, single sign-on and mobile app availability made it hard for Chime to compete.
  - tabbott 5y ago
    > My understanding is that Zulip was called Chime internally. I don't think this is accurate. At least, I'm aware of a chat project called Chime at Dropbox circa 2015 that was not based on Zulip and at least at the time did not materially involve anyone from the original Zulip team. (I suppose some of those things could have changed since I last heard anything on the topic).
    - bredren 5y ago
      Okay, I was not there, so if you know you know. It seems additionally strange that after buying Zulip in March 2014 a wholly separate chat application would be in use. But stranger things happen.
xx789 5y ago
Looks good but how does it compare to matrix/element?
- brunoqc 5y ago
  The thread feature is fucking awesome. I hope matrix implements something similar.
- vlmutolo 5y ago
  I have very little experience with Zulip, so take this with a grain of salt. Just like Matrix, Zulip is open source and can be self-hosted. They both target instant-messaging use cases. Zulip has a far more advanced threading model than Matrix. Currently, Matrix only has basic replies in the spec. In practice, everything in a Matrix room is in a single thread. It definitely makes it hard to follow conversations that are long-lived or in busy rooms or both. Matrix is federated and Zulip isn't. You can run your own Matrix server and communicate with all the other Matrix servers that already exist. Rooms live on multiple servers and are resilient to the failure of any participating servers as long as one remains. Matrix is far more general than Zulip. It acts as a store for arbitrary, eventually-consistent, ordered JSON data. Most of the time this is used to create an instant messaging service, but it can be used for much more. Zulip subjectively has a nicer default client than Matrix (Element). Zulip's is special-built to handle its unique threading model. It's also worth noting that Matrix is adding support for arbitrary threading [0]. I'm really looking forward to this. It should allow us to build a Zulip clone fully in Matrix with all of the benefits that come with the Matrix ecosystem. [0]: https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/blob/kegan/msc/threading/proposals/2836-threading.md https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/blob/kegan/msc/thre...
  - mekster 5y ago
    > You can run your own Matrix server and communicate with all the other Matrix servers that already exist. What's the benefit of this? Seems like a very niche feature. > Most of the time this is used to create an instant messaging service, but it can be used for much more. What other use could there be? I'd want a software that does one thing well because to this day there isn't even a chat solution that rules all the others.
dang 5y ago
Some past threads: Zulip 3.0: Threaded Open Source Team Chat - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23860338 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23860338 - July 2020 (133 comments) Zulip 2.1: open-source team chat - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21779717 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21779717 - Dec 2019 (1 comment) Zulip 2.0: Open source team chat - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19284321 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19284321 - March 2019 (96 comments) Zulip Server 1.9: HipChat import and much more - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18400988 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18400988 - Nov 2018 (123 comments) Zulip – Open-source, threading-based Slack alternative - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17622987 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17622987 - July 2018 (99 comments) Slack channels are a waste of time - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17622707 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17622707 - July 2018 (49 comments) Zulip 1.8: Free software Slack alternative with email-style threading - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16863675 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16863675 - April 2018 (148 comments) Zulip Server 1.6 released - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14506426 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14506426 - June 2017 (14 comments) Dropbox has open-sourced Zulip - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10279961 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10279961 - Sept 2015 (313 comments) Dropbox Acquires Zulip, A Stealthy Workplace Chat Solution Still In Private Beta - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7419408 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7419408 - March 2014 (14 comments)
deleted 5y ago
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nautilus12 5y ago
Whats to keep slack from just adding this feature and blowing their value prop out of the water?
- edoceo 5y ago
  Slack is the legacy dinosaur now. So adding a dramatic feature shift like this to a mature product will be problematic for a big old project like them. They've got "enterprise" clients to consume their focus.
- netcraft 5y ago
  As someone who is subjected to slack, I kind of hope this happens. I have my doubts they ever will though, or would be able to do it well.
- tabbott 5y ago
  When I founded Zulip, one of my stated goals was to change how the world communicates to be more efficient, just as my goal in founding Ksplice was to make rebootless updates ubiquitous. So if Slack and all of its clones copy Zulip's model, I'd call that a success for us having changed the way people work. That said, Zulip is 100% open source under the Apache license (very rare these days), and that will remain a differentiator, as you can't self-host Slack, nor can you audit its source code or fork it to solve a problem specific to your use case. (We also have a lot of other innovative features, like native LaTeX support, customizable linkifers, etc.). That said, topics are not something one can just copy in an existing chat app -- there's a lot more to Zulip's topic-based threading model than "a feature". * Being able improve organization by renaming and splitting topics, move topics between streams, etc., is critical to the reading and conversation experience. This requires lot of thought about subtle technical and user experience details. (E.g. if someone renames a topic, and you were in the process of composing a reply, your compose box updates to the the new topic). * Tracking unread counts on a per-message basis, rather than a "pointer within a channel", which is required for splitting topics to do something sane. This, in turn, requires clever data structures so that the moment the browser loads, you can see where all 35000 unread messages are. (Folks routinely have that when they come back to a busy open community after months away). * All sort of clever performance and client-side caching things to make it feel like the browser has all your data so that clicking around feels instant. * Dozens more things along these lines. And those are just the engineering details. The bigger part of topics that it requires an overhaul of the whole UI. At least for us, a huge fraction of features are different than they would otherwise be because of topics (E.g. Zulip's compose box supporting sending to a different place than what you're looking at, and fading messages that weren't sent to that place to help users avoid mistakes). This sort of overhaul is hard to do, and even harder to do with a large existing userbase. As a result, if Zulip fails, I'd be very surprised if it's because other companies copied Zulip's model so well that there was no reason to prefer Zulip's topics implementation. Far more likely is some combination of our competition having infinite marketing dollars, inertia in organizations that don't realize how much better their working experience could be, and Microsoft's campaign to make everyone unwilling use anything other than Teams, because "we already bought Teams with our Office 365 subscription".
alberth 5y ago
>Giphy integration. Am I the only person who’d prefer their, potentially corporate, chat not be tracked by Facebook. Facebook owns Giphy [0] [0] https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/15/facebook-to-acquire-giphy-in-a-deal-reportedly-worth-400-million/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/15/facebook-to-acquire-giphy-...
- jimkleiber 5y ago
  Whoa FB bought Giphy? I guess I missed that in the heat of the pandemic. Goodness I wish there were fewer acquisitions.
- halfmatthalfcat 5y ago
  Is Tenor still independent?
  - dustyharddrive 5y ago
    tenor was purchased by google in 2018 (https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/27/google-acquires-gif-platform-tenor/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/27/google-acquires-gif-platfo...) (edit to add info and link)
- anderskaseorg 5y ago
  Nope, you aren’t. Zulip proxies all external images in messages through the server, including those from Giphy, to stop them from being used to track you. (Also, Giphy integration can be disabled per-organization by an organization administrator.)
  - ArmandGrillet 5y ago
    Side note: Signal does this as well, this is why privacy-oriented services still offer a Giphy integration.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
jimmyed 5y ago
Zulip has a notoriously bad db schema. For example, a single write in a 5000 member public group would result in 5000 writes to the user table.
- tabbott 5y ago
  > Zulip has a notoriously bad db schema. Interesting, I've never heard that rumor before. > a single write in a 5000 member public group would result in 5000 writes to the user table. This hasn't been true since we implemented soft deactivation in 2017. You can read about the feature in our documentation here; I think it's a pretty cool design: https://zulip.readthedocs.io/en/latest/subsystems/sending-messages.html#soft-deactivation https://zulip.readthedocs.io/en/latest/subsystems/sending-me... The optimization takes advantage of the fact that public groups with 10Ks of members tend to have a lot of totally inactive users, and so if you have a good way to know that only 600 of them have logged in during the last 2 weeks, your server can run like it only has 600 users. It is true that Zulip writes a tiny UserMessage table row with (user_id, message_id, flags) for every active recipient of a message, we need to do so in order to track the unread state for all of those recipients (as well as related details, like mobile push notifications state). We need to write to that row a second time when the user reads the message. With modern postgres and SSDs, writing 1000 rows is really cheap, and so part this is extremely fast when sending messages with 1000 online recipients, which isn't a thing real users do constantly anyway (since that's effectively an announcement, not a chat message). Folks who are curious can read https://chat.zulip.org/#narrow/stream/3-backend/topic/send_message.20slowness/near/1176710 https://chat.zulip.org/#narrow/stream/3-backend/topic/send_m..., which is related optimization work we did this week that made it into this release. (You could have a bad experience if you use remote storage that rate-limits "IOPS", though, because AWS at least used to count each row as an IOP and would use your full quota for 20s if you marked 20K messages as read with a 1000 UOP/s plan).
  - darkwater 5y ago
    > It is true that Zulip writes a tiny UserMessage table row with (user_id, message_id, flags) for every active recipient of a message, we need to do so in order to track the unread state for all of those recipients (as well as related details, like mobile push notifications state). We need to write to that row a second time when the user reads the message. No software architect here so I might be completely off the target but, is not read/unread count something that squares perfectly with the "eventually consistent" model? You don't need to write it down to the persistent storage right now as long as the client UI has it, then some kind of cache has it (so mobile can be in sync when refreshed) and then you persist it to the DB.
josephcsible 5y ago
Zulip is my favorite modern chat program because it's actually 100% FOSS, unlike Mattermost and RocketChat, which are only "open core" because they put a bunch of important features in closed-source enterprise modules.
aidenn0 5y ago
Recently there was a an article about how everyone should just use e-mail. People would talk about slack/discord &ct. I find all of those to be strictly worse than e-mail for me. Zulip is the only chat I've used that is better than e-mail for some purposes. It's got great export functionality and it's the only tool I've used that has better threading than e-mail. Every message has a thread, and therefore a subject, and you can dynamically re-thread sub-conversations.
JaggerJo 5y ago
We recently switched to it for work. The electron app is okay - but a real mac app would be nice..
- bdcravens 5y ago
  Is there a chat app that is native anymore? I know Hipchat was back in the day, but the 2 I've used in recent years (Slack and Cliq) are both Electron as well. (As is Mattermost, but I haven't used it)
  - pritambaral 5y ago
    As someone who always has a terminal open, I consider Zulip Terminal[1] a native app. 1: https://github.com/zulip/zulip-terminal https://github.com/zulip/zulip-terminal
- usr1106 5y ago
  Why would you need an app on the desktop? Honest question. I have used zulip in the browser for 3 years and I don't know what I would be missing.
  - JaggerJo 5y ago
    Good question indeed, I'd say it comes down to: - apps fit my workflow better - even if its just a different icon in the dock. - having an actual non web tech based app would be great because web apps always behave slightly different than real native apps.. (It's really hundreds of small things that are just weird - always feels like you use a app in a portal..)
alberth 5y ago
I really love Discord light theme https://miro.medium.com/max/7168/1*iwfLW4rnn6U-mlUQpmBAfg.png https://miro.medium.com/max/7168/1*iwfLW4rnn6U-mlUQpmBAfg.pn... If Zulip had a similar theme, I really believe they’d covert way more non-tech individuals. Longer post on discord light theme https://blog.discord.com/light-theme-redeemed-c541b7ab13e9 https://blog.discord.com/light-theme-redeemed-c541b7ab13e9
tbarbugli 5y ago
How many users can you handle on a server and how does it scale horizontally in terms of connections?
Snuupy 5y ago
I love Zulip. I've been self-hosting since the 3.1 or 3.2 release for a group of friends and the threading model works great, especially when you log in after a break (whether that's 8 hours to go to sleep or 2 weeks after a vacation). When I was looking at setting up a chat server for me and my non-technical/mixed group of friends (so they couldn't use IRC and set up bouncers), I considered matrix, zulip, rocketchat, IRC, mattermost, and slack. When I had issues (I use the docker install), the team was very responsive on their zulip server (chat.zulip.org). For those of you already using Zulip, I prefer this dark theme over the standard (bright) blue one: https://github.com/zulip/zulip/issues/11845#issuecomment-544161023 https://github.com/zulip/zulip/issues/11845#issuecomment-544... Thank you Tim and the Zulip team for the great software.
switch007 5y ago
The Zulip Django source code (the "zerver" subdirectory) is a great read too. It's Python 3 with a lot of typing hinting (has no mypy errors). Unlike a lot of Django code bases it heavily uses function-based views. It also uses relatively few third-party django apps.
nolok 5y ago
I am not familiar with the github sponsors, patreon and all ... I would like to sponsor them in the name of a company I run, do any of those options give me an actual invoice ? Zulip is such a joy to use after other solutions. Threads are something that's hard to bend your team around at first (mainly non tech users), but they seem so obivous afterwards and it's hard to use another team chat without them. One of the few things I wish it had was better admin and audit tools, because in my industry that is mandatory and while you can do it by poking the database yourself a reliable, featured tool would be great. As-is I use Zulip for internal chat and another solution for external (with customers). In general, in its control panels and settings and options Zulip maybe feels a bit too "power user, then we restrict" than the other way around, eg when having an external user on my network it's a bit overwelming that their settings screen includes the entire org settings (but they can't change them). Pushing to your team is one thing, but when pushing something to customers or 3rd party any unwanted complexity is a major pain point. Frankly in general Zulip doesn't LOOK like something you want to show to the people you ask money from (your customers), just like your car dealer doesn't want you looking at the inside of the car's engine. I know it's a difficult complaint to tackle because it's not about functionnality but purely perception. Hope the team does well and looking forward to the future
- tabbott 5y ago
  Thanks for being interested in sponsoring us! Contact us (https://zulip.com/help/contact-support); https://zulip.com/help/contact-support); there's a few options for how we might get you an invoice. The product feedback on external guests is very helpful! You're encouraged to stop by chat.zulip.org and start threads in #feedback about each item if you'd like to help design how we address it, but in any case I'll discuss them with the community. (For readers missing context, Zulip provides read-only access to many organization-level settings to normal users as a form of documentation on the organization's policies and what options exist that one might ask an administrators to adjust).
sam_goody 5y ago
I use Zulip all the time at work. It is ugly, sometimes will post to a different thread than you expect (not incorrectly, just the UI is very unclear where you are posting to), and has an infuriating tick that if you click off the the input box, it deletes everything you typed. Otherwise, it gets the job done with minimum fuss.
- karlicoss 5y ago
  Hmm, does it delete? I think it ends up in 'drafts'?
  - sam_goody 5y ago
    Well, lookit that. There is this drafts button, and I had not even realized it. Thanks, you just made my day!
  - szaliony 5y ago
    I have just registered to write the same thing :) I think that must be the problem. It's not a very easy to discover feature and I was also pretty pissed about losing my messages — until I discovered the drafts. I guess the idea was that once you exit the input box Zulip doesn't know which thread you are going to reply to — and in order to avoid sending messages to wrong threads it just clears the box (yet keeps your text). Makes sense in the threaded model, but could be highlighted a bit more. We have tried using Zulip at my company and the main complaint has been UX.
    - tabbott 5y ago
      Thanks for the feedback! We know this is a real UX problem, and we're working on it. Before Zulip 4.0, there was a "Saved as draft" notice that appeared on closing the compose box, but empirically, that was invisible to some users, who had the terrible experience of fearing their message was lost. The 4.0 release replaces the notification with a darker and better located notification, which will likely help some users. But we'll only know for sure whether it's still invisible to some users with time. In any case, we're planning several more changes to improve the drafts user experience that didn't make it into this release. https://github.com/zulip/zulip/issues/17396 https://github.com/zulip/zulip/issues/17396 is one current issue on the topic.
elric 5y ago
Does anyone have any experience with both Zulip and Mattermost? Currently on Mattermost and wondering if it would be worth the hassle to switch. The threading does seem nice...
- mekster 5y ago
  Mattermost isn't bad but not good either. I'd switch to anything else if it provides user friendlier interface but currently all the other open source alternatives provide even worse interface.
  - it33 5y ago
    Mattermost CEO here, thanks for being a user! We'd love to improve, are there one or two things top of mind for us to change?
    - mekster 5y ago
      Hi. Here are my gripes. Minor but surely adds up when used everyday. 1. The reply button is too far away and small. It probably doesn't hurt to add text next to the icons like shown in the video in 4 to increase the click area. https://i.imgur.com/DozvaBu.png https://i.imgur.com/DozvaBu.png 2. The replying message doesn't look intuitive, as, a bar to the left of a message looks like a quote instead of a live message I just typed. https://i.imgur.com/lqefGBs.png https://i.imgur.com/lqefGBs.png 3. The quoted reply message's layout doesn't look right. I really want a bit more roomy implementation than put everything condensed in 1 line. You can see a roomy implementation in 4's video. https://i.imgur.com/voCziha.png https://i.imgur.com/voCziha.png 4. Quoting of messages In another chat app (Chatwork), I can quote a message explicitly and I can also select a part of another message to quote only that, which is very useful when just responding to a part of another message especially when that message was long. https://i.imgur.com/8dnqMZE.mp4 https://i.imgur.com/8dnqMZE.mp4 5. Not seen in the above video but if someone else quotes me, the whole message's background gets highlighted, so I can easily notice. 6. Mobile app needs to be able to access multiple servers but I'm sure you already have this request from many. 7. You said in another post that people get logged out automatically for security reasons but I think that puts a lot of inconvenience as I can only explain to those infrequent users it's some kind of bug because they wouldn't agree it's a "feature" when they lose further push notifications by not doing anything wrong themselves. This is the biggest reason I cannot recommend Mattermost when it can be seen as unreliable. 8. This is probably never going to be changed but I don't like that everyone has to join a global room when they join a team. I'd rather want people to only join specific channels. Kind of puts a wrong pressure to have everyone who don't even talk to usually in a same room and a possibility to type something wrong to everyone isn't a plus either. I can make many teams but that loses visibility to all the channels I belong to in a single view. 9. Ability to disable automatic formatting globally. It's always annoying when people just type symbols only to end up the message looking funny and I want to disable automatic formatting. In fact, I don't remember when I ever needed to format my message in a chat when I'm not composing a wiki page. Simply typing "text[new line]---[new line]text" would yield this. https://i.imgur.com/wcv8s7J.png https://i.imgur.com/wcv8s7J.png I still think it's the best self hosted chat solution but lack of much visible improvements for years (I know you're keep making constant updates on the server component) is making me lose much faith on where it's going.
ChrisRR 5y ago
It's nice to see a quick description of what the project is in the title There's too many projects (even on the front page right now "Scala 3.0.0") for which I have no idea what they are, and I completely skim over.
eis 5y ago
We gave Zulip (and Mattermost, Element/Matrix, Rocket Chat etc) a try when our company was looking for self hosted alternatives to Slack. Zulip seemed like technically the most polished product. Smooth and easy get-running experience (Element was the polar opposite). Lightweight UI that doesn't feel buggy. I'd have liked to see a bit bigger font but what ended up being the showstopper was that new users were very confused about how to write in a channel (or stream how they call it). Everything needs to be in a second level "topic". In pretty much every other chat app one can just select a channel on the left and get a text input field where you can write your message. In Zulip though you don't get the text input. You have to either create a completely new topic which new users really don't understand or click on any of the past messages in the stream to create a reply to that topic (but not that specific message). I suppose it works well after you understand the messaging model but it represents such a high initial point of friction that we had to give up on it. Non-technical users had a really hard time and the switch from Slack was not high enough on the priority list to push through with it. tabbot: if you happen to see this, please please consider some kind of easy-mode which: - by default always shows the text input no matter if you clicked on a stream or topic - doesn't put the cursor in the "topic" input but the actual message input - allows sending a message by pressing enter - scrolls the window down when sending a message - scrolls the window all the way down when clicking on a stream - has a slightly bigger font size - maybe also some simplification of the UI. You don't need the name of the stream above every message (see https://i.imgur.com/oeBY5yk.png ) I'm convinced with a bit of work to make it easier for new users you'll have a big boost in growth.
- jdiez17 5y ago
  I had a similar experience with Zulip when I tried to set up a chat tool for our research group. I liked the ideas of topics and such, but other people weren't so enthusiastic to learn about a whole new chat paradigm. In the end we switched to Mattermost and we are quite happy with it.
  - mekster 5y ago
    Mattermost doesn't seem to be improving at all for years. I just don't get how it's difficult to reply or quote someone's message when it's such a basic chat feature. Instead they invent weird code like "shrug" thinking it's funny during business chat. Also I often get logged out of mobile app and notifications stop reaching which makes it very unreliable as a business tool. They need to fix where it matters.
volta83 5y ago
The Rust project uses Zulip and I love it. The onboarding cost is real, it takes ~5 min for someone to learn the tool which is far above the expectations of most users that expect it to just be "a chat".
pyaamb 5y ago
not seeing any mention of encryption
- anderskaseorg 5y ago
  Zulip uses standard HTTPS encryption for traffic and Argon2 for passwords. See https://zulip.readthedocs.io/en/latest/production/security-model.html#encryption-and-authentication https://zulip.readthedocs.io/en/latest/production/security-m....
orsenthil 5y ago
With Zulip, why do you need two namespaces for every chat content? I find it hard to understand it, and thus it hasn't clicked with me yet.
- eigenspace 5y ago
  One namespace (Stream) is a long-lived, durable category. The second namespace (Topic) is the specific conversation you're in and is more like an email subject line. Topics are lightweight and can be split, merged and moved around as needed.
dathinab 5y ago
I have some experience with Zulip through the rust zulip server and I have to say as far as I can tell Zulip is the best choice for this kind of communities. The threading model might not be the best choice for all use-cases, but for a open-source project related community its superb (IMHO).
roamerz 5y ago
Many thanks to the Zulip team and all who have contributed to this amazing project. We went live on 4.1 and appreciate the bug free installation and there being no ‘Enterprise Only’ features. Inclusion of Active Directory integration was a key must have feature for us. We use Zulip to communicate between 9 separate organizations that happen to share a common app that uses AD for authentication so having to not have an additional password was awesome. We have been anxiously waiting for some features in this update and will be installing it in a couple of weeks. This project imho is exactly what open source should be. Kudos!!!
hahamrfunnyguy 5y ago
I took a quick look at the website, but couldn't answer my question quickly. Is Zulip suitable for integrating into an existing application where everything happens within the app? I am working on an application that needs chat and user-to-user messaging and it needs to happen in the app. Options like Slack, Discord, Mattermost aren't suitable. This really isn't something I want to write from scratch. .NET Core based App FWIW.
- jasonblais 5y ago
  Mattermost PM here, thanks for the mention and the feedback! We have seen some users integrate Mattermost into an existing application. I'm not sure if these resources may be helpful? - docs.mattermost.com/integrations/embedding.html - https://forum.mattermost.org/t/recipe-embedding-mattermost-in-web-applications-using-an-iframe-unsupported-recipe/10233/2 https://forum.mattermost.org/t/recipe-embedding-mattermost-i... If you have any questions or feedback, would love to hear as well.
hifly 5y ago
is there anyone here old enough to remember Lotus Notes from the 90s? what does Zulip offer that I couldn't do then? (plus being able to then develop custome views, forms, etc)?
rkda 5y ago
Would love to use Zulip for work but right but forwarded emails end up being empty and our current office is still currently email-centric. Teammates and management won't use if it they can't interact with it via email.

617 points by karlicoss 5y ago

Hope to see more open source projects migrate to something like this. It is crazy the amount of fundamental open source projects I see investing heavily in Slack and other paid services.

mdaniel 5y ago
Or, worse (IMHO) when they tie themselves to Slack but don't pay for it, thus having messages thrown into the trash I hold out high hopes that eventually Zulip will gain enough mental marketshare that folks will switch, since Zulip offers free hosting for open source projects, unlike ~~Slack~~ Salesforce with their bazilliontrillion dollars that they can't afford to spend to "sponsor" workspaces
- sgt 5y ago
  We do this and see it as a benefit. If something is important enough not to take out of a chat, is it really that important? I have been hesitating paying for Slack because I feel the usage patterns of Slack will change if we do. I think power users of Slack tend to use email less, and that's precisely what I don't want. I want to continue using e-mail for more important things and keep chat as a non critical service.
- telesilla 5y ago
  A project I work on uses free slack and once a month exports the chat and saves them on github, ensuring the conversations are maintained in case we need to go back and review any critical decisions.

itamarst 5y ago

The "threaded" part is key here. Slack threads are useless compared to Zulip. In Zulip you can create threads on the fly from existing messages, so if discussion starts diverging you can turn it into a new thread. It's just a fundamentally superior model.

mushufasa 5y ago
Zulip is one of the very few software tools that I really find a joy to use, because they make it easy to work within the correct patterns. Seriously, it's hard to express this experience until you've tried it. If you look at their feature lists, you can't appreciate the craft and love and thought put into Zulip that makes it stand out from other chat systems. And you may live in the chat systems with your distributed teams all day.
- aesyondu 5y ago
  > Zulip is one of the very few software tools that I really find a joy to use I'd like to know what the others are.
  - mushufasa 5y ago
    like that magical moment when you understand unix pipes and how to powerfully tie things together with a shell one-liner except without requiring years to master
- StavrosK 5y ago
  My current company uses Slack and I groan every time I have to use it. I miss Zulip greatly.
deleted 5y ago
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karlicoss 5y ago
Yep! I think the author highlights it well > I received over 20,000 messages in chat.zulip.org during my paternity leave. I really enjoyed reading everything and replying to the hundreds of topics where I had something to contribute or someone to thank. Systematically reading months of history would have been impossible with any other tool!
- stefan_ 5y ago
  Wait what? We are supposed to do that? My reaction after months long paternity leave to something like Slack messages would be "mark all read".

fblp 5y ago

Congrats zulip team! A very inspiring open source product.

corytheboyd 5y ago

Wow I didn’t even know this project existed, and you’re telling me it’s FOSS?!

dsr_ 5y ago
And they tag issues with labels like "good first project". It's very welcoming.

karlicoss 5y ago

Apart from the threading model, I love Zulip for its openness. It's quite sad Slack and Discord are often the first choice for open communities. They are siloed and unless you are deliberately searching in a specific workspace, you'll never run into the information in a search engine. In comparison, Zulip: - provides HTML export functionality https://github.com/zulip/zulip-archive#zulip-html-archive https://github.com/zulip/zulip-archive#zulip-html-archive (example https://leanprover-community.github.io/archive https://leanprover-community.github.io/archive ) - URLs are nice and encode meaning (e.g. https://memex.zulipchat.com/#narrow/stream/279601-hpi/topic/work.20on.20grafana.2Finfluxdb.20integration https://memex.zulipchat.com/#narrow/stream/279601-hpi/topic/...) ... compare with Slack/Discord meaningless character sequences - I'm excited about https://github.com/zulip/zulip/issues/4817 https://github.com/zulip/zulip/issues/4817 , which would allow viewing workspaces in 'guest' mode, without registering at all

Operyl 5y ago
To be fair, the Discord URIs are passed around in chat, etc. They're not that opaque, for a guild message it's just serverid/channelid/messageid. The numbers are snowflakes.
slimsag 5y ago
I think once Zulip gets a "guest mode", it will be a huge boon in its adoption for OSS communities. I love Zulip!
- tabbott 5y ago
  > I think once Zulip gets a "guest mode", it will be a huge boon in its adoption for OSS communities Agreed! To clarify the terminology, "guests" in Zulip (and other team chat products, e.g. Slack) generally refers to users with an account but with limited access. https://zulip.com/help/roles-and-permissions https://zulip.com/help/roles-and-permissions has more detail on that. We've been tentatively planning to use the term "web-public streams" for streams that an open community has configured to be accessible without creating a Zulip account. The project is quite far along; the latest PR is here: https://github.com/zulip/zulip/pull/16728 https://github.com/zulip/zulip/pull/16728 (The PR looks stale, but that's only because we paused integrating it to focus on finishing 4.0; I would be sad if we don't have it at least in beta this summer.)

hardwaresofton 5y ago

Zulip's an awesome F/OSS chat option, consider contributing to it, even if it's only translations in your native language. The project seems healthy, and is growing at a good pace and adding more features and people aren't burning out, seems to be doing a lot of things right as far as F/OSS project management goes. Tim is also a joy to interact with.

the_duke 5y ago

I was skeptical about Zulip when I first tried it. What is it supposed to be? A chat? A forum? Why is the UI so ugly? But after using it a while I now really dislike Slack et al, both in professional teams and for open source communities. Zulip can give you the best of both worlds. It's a regular chat. But the threading model also encourages long-form, more forum or email like discussions. Threads are easily discoverable and it's trivial to catch up on all the relevant discussions that you missed, while skipping everything that doesn't concern you. You can still have some regular chat channels for typical ephemeral discussion that no-one is expected to read. It's really a great tool. The only downside is the very subpar UX when compared to Discord or even Slack.

mushufasa 5y ago
I have heard a few people complain about the UI but I like it, and it seems comparable to other chat apps. What about Slack/Discord is better? Genuinely trying to understand. As for UX, I think Zulip has a strong advantage w/r/t the threading model, which you seem to be saying as well.
- slimsag 5y ago
  I have heard complaints where I work that less-technical foks find the UI unpleasant/confusing. I think it is due to a combination of the keyboard shortcuts being front-and-center and the threading model seeming "complex" (really, just logically structured) I'm not sure there is a strong/good argument against it, though. e.g. word processors are "more complex" than text files for sure, but people have learned the benefits of those. I think the education / user-onboarding flow could be improved perhaps.
  - gvurrdon 5y ago
    The usual complaints I get (as an admin of an instance) are: 1. "Hard to search"/"Can't find anything". 2. Off-topic responses because people post in whatever the most recent thread they used happens to be (results in (1)). I like it, though, due to having some similarities to a forum.
- 5y ago

alex-a-soto 5y ago

Previously at EI2030, we were using Discord, and it wasn't easy to find and keep track of information as we were growing. We've transitioned to Zulip and couldn't be happier. The article from monadical describes it best: "...[Zulip] creates an organized repository of knowledge as a side effect" Thank you to the Zulip team! https://monadical.com/posts/how-to-make-remote-work-part-two-zulip.html https://monadical.com/posts/how-to-make-remote-work-part-two... https://ei2030.zulipchat.com/ https://ei2030.zulipchat.com/

ipsum2 5y ago

Sort of off topic, but does anyone know why Dropbox acquired Zulip and preceded to do nothing with it?

uyt 5y ago
It seems to be an acquihire and they didn't care for the product. This happens fairly often in general. Glad they at least got to opensource it instead of just killing it.
bredren 5y ago
I can’t speak to decision making, but I can add one viewpoint. My understanding is that Zulip was called Chime internally. Management pushed teams to use the tool, and it was tried but the interface was not polished. Slack was already out and despite how it is seen today, slack far more appealing. Slack’s interface, single sign-on and mobile app availability made it hard for Chime to compete.
- tabbott 5y ago
  > My understanding is that Zulip was called Chime internally. I don't think this is accurate. At least, I'm aware of a chat project called Chime at Dropbox circa 2015 that was not based on Zulip and at least at the time did not materially involve anyone from the original Zulip team. (I suppose some of those things could have changed since I last heard anything on the topic).
  - bredren 5y ago
    Okay, I was not there, so if you know you know. It seems additionally strange that after buying Zulip in March 2014 a wholly separate chat application would be in use. But stranger things happen.

xx789 5y ago

Looks good but how does it compare to matrix/element?

brunoqc 5y ago
The thread feature is fucking awesome. I hope matrix implements something similar.
vlmutolo 5y ago
I have very little experience with Zulip, so take this with a grain of salt. Just like Matrix, Zulip is open source and can be self-hosted. They both target instant-messaging use cases. Zulip has a far more advanced threading model than Matrix. Currently, Matrix only has basic replies in the spec. In practice, everything in a Matrix room is in a single thread. It definitely makes it hard to follow conversations that are long-lived or in busy rooms or both. Matrix is federated and Zulip isn't. You can run your own Matrix server and communicate with all the other Matrix servers that already exist. Rooms live on multiple servers and are resilient to the failure of any participating servers as long as one remains. Matrix is far more general than Zulip. It acts as a store for arbitrary, eventually-consistent, ordered JSON data. Most of the time this is used to create an instant messaging service, but it can be used for much more. Zulip subjectively has a nicer default client than Matrix (Element). Zulip's is special-built to handle its unique threading model. It's also worth noting that Matrix is adding support for arbitrary threading [0]. I'm really looking forward to this. It should allow us to build a Zulip clone fully in Matrix with all of the benefits that come with the Matrix ecosystem. [0]: https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/blob/kegan/msc/threading/proposals/2836-threading.md https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/blob/kegan/msc/thre...
- mekster 5y ago
  > You can run your own Matrix server and communicate with all the other Matrix servers that already exist. What's the benefit of this? Seems like a very niche feature. > Most of the time this is used to create an instant messaging service, but it can be used for much more. What other use could there be? I'd want a software that does one thing well because to this day there isn't even a chat solution that rules all the others.

dang 5y ago

Some past threads: Zulip 3.0: Threaded Open Source Team Chat - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23860338 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23860338 - July 2020 (133 comments) Zulip 2.1: open-source team chat - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21779717 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21779717 - Dec 2019 (1 comment) Zulip 2.0: Open source team chat - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19284321 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19284321 - March 2019 (96 comments) Zulip Server 1.9: HipChat import and much more - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18400988 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18400988 - Nov 2018 (123 comments) Zulip – Open-source, threading-based Slack alternative - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17622987 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17622987 - July 2018 (99 comments) Slack channels are a waste of time - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17622707 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17622707 - July 2018 (49 comments) Zulip 1.8: Free software Slack alternative with email-style threading - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16863675 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16863675 - April 2018 (148 comments) Zulip Server 1.6 released - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14506426 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14506426 - June 2017 (14 comments) Dropbox has open-sourced Zulip - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10279961 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10279961 - Sept 2015 (313 comments) Dropbox Acquires Zulip, A Stealthy Workplace Chat Solution Still In Private Beta - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7419408 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7419408 - March 2014 (14 comments)

deleted 5y ago

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nautilus12 5y ago

Whats to keep slack from just adding this feature and blowing their value prop out of the water?

edoceo 5y ago
Slack is the legacy dinosaur now. So adding a dramatic feature shift like this to a mature product will be problematic for a big old project like them. They've got "enterprise" clients to consume their focus.
netcraft 5y ago
As someone who is subjected to slack, I kind of hope this happens. I have my doubts they ever will though, or would be able to do it well.
tabbott 5y ago
When I founded Zulip, one of my stated goals was to change how the world communicates to be more efficient, just as my goal in founding Ksplice was to make rebootless updates ubiquitous. So if Slack and all of its clones copy Zulip's model, I'd call that a success for us having changed the way people work. That said, Zulip is 100% open source under the Apache license (very rare these days), and that will remain a differentiator, as you can't self-host Slack, nor can you audit its source code or fork it to solve a problem specific to your use case. (We also have a lot of other innovative features, like native LaTeX support, customizable linkifers, etc.). That said, topics are not something one can just copy in an existing chat app -- there's a lot more to Zulip's topic-based threading model than "a feature". * Being able improve organization by renaming and splitting topics, move topics between streams, etc., is critical to the reading and conversation experience. This requires lot of thought about subtle technical and user experience details. (E.g. if someone renames a topic, and you were in the process of composing a reply, your compose box updates to the the new topic). * Tracking unread counts on a per-message basis, rather than a "pointer within a channel", which is required for splitting topics to do something sane. This, in turn, requires clever data structures so that the moment the browser loads, you can see where all 35000 unread messages are. (Folks routinely have that when they come back to a busy open community after months away). * All sort of clever performance and client-side caching things to make it feel like the browser has all your data so that clicking around feels instant. * Dozens more things along these lines. And those are just the engineering details. The bigger part of topics that it requires an overhaul of the whole UI. At least for us, a huge fraction of features are different than they would otherwise be because of topics (E.g. Zulip's compose box supporting sending to a different place than what you're looking at, and fading messages that weren't sent to that place to help users avoid mistakes). This sort of overhaul is hard to do, and even harder to do with a large existing userbase. As a result, if Zulip fails, I'd be very surprised if it's because other companies copied Zulip's model so well that there was no reason to prefer Zulip's topics implementation. Far more likely is some combination of our competition having infinite marketing dollars, inertia in organizations that don't realize how much better their working experience could be, and Microsoft's campaign to make everyone unwilling use anything other than Teams, because "we already bought Teams with our Office 365 subscription".

alberth 5y ago

>Giphy integration. Am I the only person who’d prefer their, potentially corporate, chat not be tracked by Facebook. Facebook owns Giphy [0] [0] https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/15/facebook-to-acquire-giphy-in-a-deal-reportedly-worth-400-million/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/15/facebook-to-acquire-giphy-...

jimkleiber 5y ago
Whoa FB bought Giphy? I guess I missed that in the heat of the pandemic. Goodness I wish there were fewer acquisitions.
halfmatthalfcat 5y ago
Is Tenor still independent?
- dustyharddrive 5y ago
  tenor was purchased by google in 2018 (https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/27/google-acquires-gif-platform-tenor/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/27/google-acquires-gif-platfo...) (edit to add info and link)
anderskaseorg 5y ago
Nope, you aren’t. Zulip proxies all external images in messages through the server, including those from Giphy, to stop them from being used to track you. (Also, Giphy integration can be disabled per-organization by an organization administrator.)
- ArmandGrillet 5y ago
  Side note: Signal does this as well, this is why privacy-oriented services still offer a Giphy integration.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

jimmyed 5y ago

Zulip has a notoriously bad db schema. For example, a single write in a 5000 member public group would result in 5000 writes to the user table.

tabbott 5y ago
> Zulip has a notoriously bad db schema. Interesting, I've never heard that rumor before. > a single write in a 5000 member public group would result in 5000 writes to the user table. This hasn't been true since we implemented soft deactivation in 2017. You can read about the feature in our documentation here; I think it's a pretty cool design: https://zulip.readthedocs.io/en/latest/subsystems/sending-messages.html#soft-deactivation https://zulip.readthedocs.io/en/latest/subsystems/sending-me... The optimization takes advantage of the fact that public groups with 10Ks of members tend to have a lot of totally inactive users, and so if you have a good way to know that only 600 of them have logged in during the last 2 weeks, your server can run like it only has 600 users. It is true that Zulip writes a tiny UserMessage table row with (user_id, message_id, flags) for every active recipient of a message, we need to do so in order to track the unread state for all of those recipients (as well as related details, like mobile push notifications state). We need to write to that row a second time when the user reads the message. With modern postgres and SSDs, writing 1000 rows is really cheap, and so part this is extremely fast when sending messages with 1000 online recipients, which isn't a thing real users do constantly anyway (since that's effectively an announcement, not a chat message). Folks who are curious can read https://chat.zulip.org/#narrow/stream/3-backend/topic/send_message.20slowness/near/1176710 https://chat.zulip.org/#narrow/stream/3-backend/topic/send_m..., which is related optimization work we did this week that made it into this release. (You could have a bad experience if you use remote storage that rate-limits "IOPS", though, because AWS at least used to count each row as an IOP and would use your full quota for 20s if you marked 20K messages as read with a 1000 UOP/s plan).
- darkwater 5y ago
  > It is true that Zulip writes a tiny UserMessage table row with (user_id, message_id, flags) for every active recipient of a message, we need to do so in order to track the unread state for all of those recipients (as well as related details, like mobile push notifications state). We need to write to that row a second time when the user reads the message. No software architect here so I might be completely off the target but, is not read/unread count something that squares perfectly with the "eventually consistent" model? You don't need to write it down to the persistent storage right now as long as the client UI has it, then some kind of cache has it (so mobile can be in sync when refreshed) and then you persist it to the DB.

josephcsible 5y ago

Zulip is my favorite modern chat program because it's actually 100% FOSS, unlike Mattermost and RocketChat, which are only "open core" because they put a bunch of important features in closed-source enterprise modules.

aidenn0 5y ago

Recently there was a an article about how everyone should just use e-mail. People would talk about slack/discord &ct. I find all of those to be strictly worse than e-mail for me. Zulip is the only chat I've used that is better than e-mail for some purposes. It's got great export functionality and it's the only tool I've used that has better threading than e-mail. Every message has a thread, and therefore a subject, and you can dynamically re-thread sub-conversations.

JaggerJo 5y ago

We recently switched to it for work. The electron app is okay - but a real mac app would be nice..

bdcravens 5y ago
Is there a chat app that is native anymore? I know Hipchat was back in the day, but the 2 I've used in recent years (Slack and Cliq) are both Electron as well. (As is Mattermost, but I haven't used it)
- pritambaral 5y ago
  As someone who always has a terminal open, I consider Zulip Terminal[1] a native app. 1: https://github.com/zulip/zulip-terminal https://github.com/zulip/zulip-terminal
usr1106 5y ago
Why would you need an app on the desktop? Honest question. I have used zulip in the browser for 3 years and I don't know what I would be missing.
- JaggerJo 5y ago
  Good question indeed, I'd say it comes down to: - apps fit my workflow better - even if its just a different icon in the dock. - having an actual non web tech based app would be great because web apps always behave slightly different than real native apps.. (It's really hundreds of small things that are just weird - always feels like you use a app in a portal..)

alberth 5y ago

I really love Discord light theme https://miro.medium.com/max/7168/1*iwfLW4rnn6U-mlUQpmBAfg.png https://miro.medium.com/max/7168/1*iwfLW4rnn6U-mlUQpmBAfg.pn... If Zulip had a similar theme, I really believe they’d covert way more non-tech individuals. Longer post on discord light theme https://blog.discord.com/light-theme-redeemed-c541b7ab13e9 https://blog.discord.com/light-theme-redeemed-c541b7ab13e9

tbarbugli 5y ago

How many users can you handle on a server and how does it scale horizontally in terms of connections?

Snuupy 5y ago

I love Zulip. I've been self-hosting since the 3.1 or 3.2 release for a group of friends and the threading model works great, especially when you log in after a break (whether that's 8 hours to go to sleep or 2 weeks after a vacation). When I was looking at setting up a chat server for me and my non-technical/mixed group of friends (so they couldn't use IRC and set up bouncers), I considered matrix, zulip, rocketchat, IRC, mattermost, and slack. When I had issues (I use the docker install), the team was very responsive on their zulip server (chat.zulip.org). For those of you already using Zulip, I prefer this dark theme over the standard (bright) blue one: https://github.com/zulip/zulip/issues/11845#issuecomment-544161023 https://github.com/zulip/zulip/issues/11845#issuecomment-544... Thank you Tim and the Zulip team for the great software.

switch007 5y ago

The Zulip Django source code (the "zerver" subdirectory) is a great read too. It's Python 3 with a lot of typing hinting (has no mypy errors). Unlike a lot of Django code bases it heavily uses function-based views. It also uses relatively few third-party django apps.

nolok 5y ago

I am not familiar with the github sponsors, patreon and all ... I would like to sponsor them in the name of a company I run, do any of those options give me an actual invoice ? Zulip is such a joy to use after other solutions. Threads are something that's hard to bend your team around at first (mainly non tech users), but they seem so obivous afterwards and it's hard to use another team chat without them. One of the few things I wish it had was better admin and audit tools, because in my industry that is mandatory and while you can do it by poking the database yourself a reliable, featured tool would be great. As-is I use Zulip for internal chat and another solution for external (with customers). In general, in its control panels and settings and options Zulip maybe feels a bit too "power user, then we restrict" than the other way around, eg when having an external user on my network it's a bit overwelming that their settings screen includes the entire org settings (but they can't change them). Pushing to your team is one thing, but when pushing something to customers or 3rd party any unwanted complexity is a major pain point. Frankly in general Zulip doesn't LOOK like something you want to show to the people you ask money from (your customers), just like your car dealer doesn't want you looking at the inside of the car's engine. I know it's a difficult complaint to tackle because it's not about functionnality but purely perception. Hope the team does well and looking forward to the future

tabbott 5y ago
Thanks for being interested in sponsoring us! Contact us (https://zulip.com/help/contact-support); https://zulip.com/help/contact-support); there's a few options for how we might get you an invoice. The product feedback on external guests is very helpful! You're encouraged to stop by chat.zulip.org and start threads in #feedback about each item if you'd like to help design how we address it, but in any case I'll discuss them with the community. (For readers missing context, Zulip provides read-only access to many organization-level settings to normal users as a form of documentation on the organization's policies and what options exist that one might ask an administrators to adjust).

sam_goody 5y ago

I use Zulip all the time at work. It is ugly, sometimes will post to a different thread than you expect (not incorrectly, just the UI is very unclear where you are posting to), and has an infuriating tick that if you click off the the input box, it deletes everything you typed. Otherwise, it gets the job done with minimum fuss.

karlicoss 5y ago
Hmm, does it delete? I think it ends up in 'drafts'?
- sam_goody 5y ago
  Well, lookit that. There is this drafts button, and I had not even realized it. Thanks, you just made my day!
- szaliony 5y ago
  I have just registered to write the same thing :) I think that must be the problem. It's not a very easy to discover feature and I was also pretty pissed about losing my messages — until I discovered the drafts. I guess the idea was that once you exit the input box Zulip doesn't know which thread you are going to reply to — and in order to avoid sending messages to wrong threads it just clears the box (yet keeps your text). Makes sense in the threaded model, but could be highlighted a bit more. We have tried using Zulip at my company and the main complaint has been UX.
  - tabbott 5y ago
    Thanks for the feedback! We know this is a real UX problem, and we're working on it. Before Zulip 4.0, there was a "Saved as draft" notice that appeared on closing the compose box, but empirically, that was invisible to some users, who had the terrible experience of fearing their message was lost. The 4.0 release replaces the notification with a darker and better located notification, which will likely help some users. But we'll only know for sure whether it's still invisible to some users with time. In any case, we're planning several more changes to improve the drafts user experience that didn't make it into this release. https://github.com/zulip/zulip/issues/17396 https://github.com/zulip/zulip/issues/17396 is one current issue on the topic.

elric 5y ago

Does anyone have any experience with both Zulip and Mattermost? Currently on Mattermost and wondering if it would be worth the hassle to switch. The threading does seem nice...

mekster 5y ago
Mattermost isn't bad but not good either. I'd switch to anything else if it provides user friendlier interface but currently all the other open source alternatives provide even worse interface.
- it33 5y ago
  Mattermost CEO here, thanks for being a user! We'd love to improve, are there one or two things top of mind for us to change?
  - mekster 5y ago
    Hi. Here are my gripes. Minor but surely adds up when used everyday. 1. The reply button is too far away and small. It probably doesn't hurt to add text next to the icons like shown in the video in 4 to increase the click area. https://i.imgur.com/DozvaBu.png https://i.imgur.com/DozvaBu.png 2. The replying message doesn't look intuitive, as, a bar to the left of a message looks like a quote instead of a live message I just typed. https://i.imgur.com/lqefGBs.png https://i.imgur.com/lqefGBs.png 3. The quoted reply message's layout doesn't look right. I really want a bit more roomy implementation than put everything condensed in 1 line. You can see a roomy implementation in 4's video. https://i.imgur.com/voCziha.png https://i.imgur.com/voCziha.png 4. Quoting of messages In another chat app (Chatwork), I can quote a message explicitly and I can also select a part of another message to quote only that, which is very useful when just responding to a part of another message especially when that message was long. https://i.imgur.com/8dnqMZE.mp4 https://i.imgur.com/8dnqMZE.mp4 5. Not seen in the above video but if someone else quotes me, the whole message's background gets highlighted, so I can easily notice. 6. Mobile app needs to be able to access multiple servers but I'm sure you already have this request from many. 7. You said in another post that people get logged out automatically for security reasons but I think that puts a lot of inconvenience as I can only explain to those infrequent users it's some kind of bug because they wouldn't agree it's a "feature" when they lose further push notifications by not doing anything wrong themselves. This is the biggest reason I cannot recommend Mattermost when it can be seen as unreliable. 8. This is probably never going to be changed but I don't like that everyone has to join a global room when they join a team. I'd rather want people to only join specific channels. Kind of puts a wrong pressure to have everyone who don't even talk to usually in a same room and a possibility to type something wrong to everyone isn't a plus either. I can make many teams but that loses visibility to all the channels I belong to in a single view. 9. Ability to disable automatic formatting globally. It's always annoying when people just type symbols only to end up the message looking funny and I want to disable automatic formatting. In fact, I don't remember when I ever needed to format my message in a chat when I'm not composing a wiki page. Simply typing "text[new line]---[new line]text" would yield this. https://i.imgur.com/wcv8s7J.png https://i.imgur.com/wcv8s7J.png I still think it's the best self hosted chat solution but lack of much visible improvements for years (I know you're keep making constant updates on the server component) is making me lose much faith on where it's going.

ChrisRR 5y ago

It's nice to see a quick description of what the project is in the title There's too many projects (even on the front page right now "Scala 3.0.0") for which I have no idea what they are, and I completely skim over.

eis 5y ago

We gave Zulip (and Mattermost, Element/Matrix, Rocket Chat etc) a try when our company was looking for self hosted alternatives to Slack. Zulip seemed like technically the most polished product. Smooth and easy get-running experience (Element was the polar opposite). Lightweight UI that doesn't feel buggy. I'd have liked to see a bit bigger font but what ended up being the showstopper was that new users were very confused about how to write in a channel (or stream how they call it). Everything needs to be in a second level "topic". In pretty much every other chat app one can just select a channel on the left and get a text input field where you can write your message. In Zulip though you don't get the text input. You have to either create a completely new topic which new users really don't understand or click on any of the past messages in the stream to create a reply to that topic (but not that specific message). I suppose it works well after you understand the messaging model but it represents such a high initial point of friction that we had to give up on it. Non-technical users had a really hard time and the switch from Slack was not high enough on the priority list to push through with it. tabbot: if you happen to see this, please please consider some kind of easy-mode which: - by default always shows the text input no matter if you clicked on a stream or topic - doesn't put the cursor in the "topic" input but the actual message input - allows sending a message by pressing enter - scrolls the window down when sending a message - scrolls the window all the way down when clicking on a stream - has a slightly bigger font size - maybe also some simplification of the UI. You don't need the name of the stream above every message (see https://i.imgur.com/oeBY5yk.png ) I'm convinced with a bit of work to make it easier for new users you'll have a big boost in growth.

jdiez17 5y ago
I had a similar experience with Zulip when I tried to set up a chat tool for our research group. I liked the ideas of topics and such, but other people weren't so enthusiastic to learn about a whole new chat paradigm. In the end we switched to Mattermost and we are quite happy with it.
- mekster 5y ago
  Mattermost doesn't seem to be improving at all for years. I just don't get how it's difficult to reply or quote someone's message when it's such a basic chat feature. Instead they invent weird code like "shrug" thinking it's funny during business chat. Also I often get logged out of mobile app and notifications stop reaching which makes it very unreliable as a business tool. They need to fix where it matters.

volta83 5y ago

The Rust project uses Zulip and I love it. The onboarding cost is real, it takes ~5 min for someone to learn the tool which is far above the expectations of most users that expect it to just be "a chat".

pyaamb 5y ago

not seeing any mention of encryption

anderskaseorg 5y ago
Zulip uses standard HTTPS encryption for traffic and Argon2 for passwords. See https://zulip.readthedocs.io/en/latest/production/security-model.html#encryption-and-authentication https://zulip.readthedocs.io/en/latest/production/security-m....

orsenthil 5y ago

With Zulip, why do you need two namespaces for every chat content? I find it hard to understand it, and thus it hasn't clicked with me yet.

eigenspace 5y ago
One namespace (Stream) is a long-lived, durable category. The second namespace (Topic) is the specific conversation you're in and is more like an email subject line. Topics are lightweight and can be split, merged and moved around as needed.

dathinab 5y ago

I have some experience with Zulip through the rust zulip server and I have to say as far as I can tell Zulip is the best choice for this kind of communities. The threading model might not be the best choice for all use-cases, but for a open-source project related community its superb (IMHO).

roamerz 5y ago

Many thanks to the Zulip team and all who have contributed to this amazing project. We went live on 4.1 and appreciate the bug free installation and there being no ‘Enterprise Only’ features. Inclusion of Active Directory integration was a key must have feature for us. We use Zulip to communicate between 9 separate organizations that happen to share a common app that uses AD for authentication so having to not have an additional password was awesome. We have been anxiously waiting for some features in this update and will be installing it in a couple of weeks. This project imho is exactly what open source should be. Kudos!!!

hahamrfunnyguy 5y ago

I took a quick look at the website, but couldn't answer my question quickly. Is Zulip suitable for integrating into an existing application where everything happens within the app? I am working on an application that needs chat and user-to-user messaging and it needs to happen in the app. Options like Slack, Discord, Mattermost aren't suitable. This really isn't something I want to write from scratch. .NET Core based App FWIW.

jasonblais 5y ago
Mattermost PM here, thanks for the mention and the feedback! We have seen some users integrate Mattermost into an existing application. I'm not sure if these resources may be helpful? - docs.mattermost.com/integrations/embedding.html - https://forum.mattermost.org/t/recipe-embedding-mattermost-in-web-applications-using-an-iframe-unsupported-recipe/10233/2 https://forum.mattermost.org/t/recipe-embedding-mattermost-i... If you have any questions or feedback, would love to hear as well.

hifly 5y ago

is there anyone here old enough to remember Lotus Notes from the 90s? what does Zulip offer that I couldn't do then? (plus being able to then develop custome views, forms, etc)?

rkda 5y ago

Would love to use Zulip for work but right but forwarded emails end up being empty and our current office is still currently email-centric. Teammates and management won't use if it they can't interact with it via email.