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Is anyone using Zulip and has it made a difference to Slack for example?

mavelikara 5y ago
We use Zulip at work. I have used Slack in a previous job. Zulip's interface looks a little clunkier than Slack, but I like Zulip.
capableweb 5y ago
Clojurians-Zulip is much better interface to catch up and read through existing information than Clojurians-Slack ever was (Clojurians is basically bunch of Clojure(Script) people helping/getting help from each other), for whats it worth. Best would be if they both could be fully public, but for now the archives seems to do the job well at least.
- abhigyank 5y ago
  Zulip is working on having public view of streams without having an account. It's already being experimently deployed on the Zulip Dev's server.So that should make its way to other consumer servers soon!
temp 5y ago
We use it at work. We first switched over to Mattermost, then to Zulip. Mattermost seemed like a clone of Slack and we were initially "satisfied", but didn't see it get improved that much nor noticed any attempts of it trying to tackle other problems. Then they raised their prices to even higher than Slack's, which we took as a bit of dick move seeing as we were self-hosting it + it has nowhere near the experience of Slack. Push notifications in general didn't seem to be that good. Zulip has a nice spin on the way discussions work with their concept of "topics". It lends itself well to how we conceptualize the discussions across our development teams, without unnecessarily creating many ad-hoc temp channels (something we'd have done on Slack). We're liking it thus far. That being said I do need to check why it's using about 35 gigs of RAM on our server.
- DoItToMe81 5y ago
  35 gigabytes?! How many people are using that thing?
  - temp 5y ago
    Only about ~40 users, so it's definitely an issue. Haven't investigated yet but this reminded me that we should. (edit: actually it's now down to 17 gigs)
    - tabbott 5y ago
      Please report this in https://zulip.com/development-community/ https://zulip.com/development-community/; this certainly sounds like a memory leak. We aren't aware of any other reports of memory leaks in Zulip in the last couple years, so we'd be very happy to help track down what's happening on your server. https://zulip.readthedocs.io/en/latest/production/requirements.html#scalability https://zulip.readthedocs.io/en/latest/production/requiremen... is a useful reference for folks interested in memory requirements for a self-hosted Zulip server.
DoItToMe81 5y ago
I briefly used Zulip as part of a friend's community, rather than work. My experience with it was that it's great at first, but when you start to get masses of messages and users, the client becomes laggy and unresponsive. Scrolling through messages particularly sucked because of this. I'm not sure if it was just our setup, because when I checked the official Zulip web chat, I had the same problem.
luxurytent 5y ago
We use it at our small (15 person) startup. I like that topics are light weight, like git branches, but despite that we struggle to use them effectively (generally dumping thoughts in a select few topics) One major quirk of the interface is that can be difficult to, at a glance, identify what topic/dm you are actively on, which has lead to a handful of "Oops, what was supposed to be a DM" message deletes.
- Xylakant 5y ago
  We’ve struggled with that in the past as well, but it got better over time. One thing that helps is to aggressively start moving messages to new topics once things go beyond a few in a general topic.
dsr_ 5y ago
We use a self-hosted Zulip. It's the first chat system to make everyone reasonably happy -- devs, IT, customer service, and most of the execs.
asah 5y ago
Love Zulip. Very hackable. Terrific core team who really care.
jamesvl 5y ago
Personally, I like Zulip way better than Slack because of how it does message threads: _channels_ that have conversations in _topics_ "makes sense" to me. Pros: Server maintenance is blissfully minimal. Message threading that actually works. No server issues or downtime in the past 4 years. (Every time I see a HN "Slack is down" posting, I smile to myself and continue my work day...) It runs great for ~50 employees on an AWS t3a.large instance. Importing all the company's previous messages from Slack worked perfectly. Cons: If you have people used to Slack, there will be resistance / a learning curve. Knowing, "when do I create a topic?" takes practice. The mobile and desktop apps are not as polished as Slack's. Not as many integrations as Slack. You have to know enough to manage and secure a server yourself. The Zulip devs accept Github donations, btw, if anyone cares to support their work. (We do; no affiliation other than we're happy to have a private, self-hosted alternative.) edits: punctuation and adding that instance was a ".large"
sonofhans 5y ago
We used Zulip at $job[-1] and it was awfully painful. I’ve used nearly every chat client invented since the BBS days, and Zulip was one of my least favorite. We’re using Slack now at $job and I vastly prefer it (even though I still call it “IRC”). The biggest selling points of Zulip, from the POV of the people who put it in place and truly loved it, were that it’s free/OS software, it has explicit threads as a first class citizen, and that it’s very configurable. All those things are true. The day-to-day use was painful, though. It was riddled with UX problems, e.g., forgetting state between restarts, inconsistent hotkey support, multi-action use paths for common cases, frequent full reloads of its web view. I’d much rather use vanilla IRC than Zulip. Slack is just enough of a shim layer on IRC, and with good usability. It has threads, and in use it’s not a problem that you can’t name them like Zulip. The integrations are nice to have (e.g., type `/zoom` to start a Zoom meeting) but not a big deal. The UX is clear and predictable and (mostly) stays out of my way.
- tabbott 5y ago
  Hi! I lead the Zulip project. I'm sorry to hear you had a bad experience with Zulip. If you can share details on the UX problems you had, perhaps in https://zulip.com/development-community/ https://zulip.com/development-community/ where we can have an extended conversation, I'd be very appreciative. I personally review every issue reported in zulip, and some of the specific problems you cite are not unfamiliar and surprising to me. Specifically: * I'm not aware of a plausible explanation for Zulip frequently doing full reloads of the web view. Zulip's core design is to live-update everything [1] and there's only a handful of code paths that can trigger a full reload (the most common being when the server version was updated, and in that code path, the client has an algorithm where it waits up to 30 minutes for a moment when your window is idle and not focused to reload to get the updated version, to minimize the chance of disruption). * I'm also not sure what what state might be forgotten between web client restarts; almost all of our client UI updates happen via the client asking the server to change something, and the client updating via the same server-client push mechanism that updates other clients (the main exception to this is sending messages, where local echo is important for UX reasons). And at least the server-initiated reloads are designed to preserve your precise scroll position, compose box state, etc., and that's been true since ~2013. (Though we did fix a couple bugs where compose box state was not properly preserved in the last year). I know you're not using Zulip currently, so your memory may be imprecise, but any additional detail that could help us reproduce what you experienced would be awesome! [1] https://zulip.readthedocs.io/en/latest/subsystems/events-system.html https://zulip.readthedocs.io/en/latest/subsystems/events-sys...
aidenn0 5y ago
I liked it a lot, but I'm not an Apple user, and apparently the iOS app was (is?) not great. For me, it's like a vastly better version of NNTP, while slack is more of a slightly improved IRC.
kibwen 5y ago
Sort of a weird context to ask for Zulip recommendations, but sure. I find Slack to be a miserably unproductive experience that makes it impossible to keep up with a team (or teams) of any significant size. Slack is good for recreation, not productivity. If the primary purpose of your organization is to be a social group, then by all means use Slack. Meanwhile, Zulip does what I need and does it well. It scales excellently to large organizations discussing broad arrays of topics. It gets out of my way and I don't find myself thinking about it. In that way it's the perfect tool, because it lets me spend energy focusing on engaging with the conversations rather than wrestling with the interface. I guess I'd describe it as natural and unobtrusive, the sort of thing that does its job so well that you only notice that it's there when something goes wrong and you realize what you've been taking for granted. Note that my experience is almost exclusively with the web client. My small amount of experience with the mobile app is that it's much less polished.
stavros 5y ago
I used it at a previous job and it was fantastic. The first-class threads are the way chat should work, the UX with the message river is brilliant, the keyboard shortcuts make everything two keystrokes away and it's extremely fast. In comparison, I hate having to use Slack every day today. It's slow as shit, whenever I type a keystroke too fast (e.g. editing a previous message) it always gets into a weird state (usually edits the message before last and messes up the edits) and it encourages rapid-fire, thoughtless replies. Search also sucks and it's impossible to find anything. I fucking hate Slack.

We use Zulip at work. I have used Slack in a previous job. Zulip's interface looks a little clunkier than Slack, but I like Zulip.

capableweb 5y ago

Clojurians-Zulip is much better interface to catch up and read through existing information than Clojurians-Slack ever was (Clojurians is basically bunch of Clojure(Script) people helping/getting help from each other), for whats it worth. Best would be if they both could be fully public, but for now the archives seems to do the job well at least.

abhigyank 5y ago
Zulip is working on having public view of streams without having an account. It's already being experimently deployed on the Zulip Dev's server.So that should make its way to other consumer servers soon!

temp 5y ago

We use it at work. We first switched over to Mattermost, then to Zulip. Mattermost seemed like a clone of Slack and we were initially "satisfied", but didn't see it get improved that much nor noticed any attempts of it trying to tackle other problems. Then they raised their prices to even higher than Slack's, which we took as a bit of dick move seeing as we were self-hosting it + it has nowhere near the experience of Slack. Push notifications in general didn't seem to be that good. Zulip has a nice spin on the way discussions work with their concept of "topics". It lends itself well to how we conceptualize the discussions across our development teams, without unnecessarily creating many ad-hoc temp channels (something we'd have done on Slack). We're liking it thus far. That being said I do need to check why it's using about 35 gigs of RAM on our server.

DoItToMe81 5y ago
35 gigabytes?! How many people are using that thing?
- temp 5y ago
  Only about ~40 users, so it's definitely an issue. Haven't investigated yet but this reminded me that we should. (edit: actually it's now down to 17 gigs)
  - tabbott 5y ago
    Please report this in https://zulip.com/development-community/ https://zulip.com/development-community/; this certainly sounds like a memory leak. We aren't aware of any other reports of memory leaks in Zulip in the last couple years, so we'd be very happy to help track down what's happening on your server. https://zulip.readthedocs.io/en/latest/production/requirements.html#scalability https://zulip.readthedocs.io/en/latest/production/requiremen... is a useful reference for folks interested in memory requirements for a self-hosted Zulip server.

DoItToMe81 5y ago

I briefly used Zulip as part of a friend's community, rather than work. My experience with it was that it's great at first, but when you start to get masses of messages and users, the client becomes laggy and unresponsive. Scrolling through messages particularly sucked because of this. I'm not sure if it was just our setup, because when I checked the official Zulip web chat, I had the same problem.

luxurytent 5y ago

We use it at our small (15 person) startup. I like that topics are light weight, like git branches, but despite that we struggle to use them effectively (generally dumping thoughts in a select few topics) One major quirk of the interface is that can be difficult to, at a glance, identify what topic/dm you are actively on, which has lead to a handful of "Oops, what was supposed to be a DM" message deletes.

Xylakant 5y ago
We’ve struggled with that in the past as well, but it got better over time. One thing that helps is to aggressively start moving messages to new topics once things go beyond a few in a general topic.

dsr_ 5y ago

We use a self-hosted Zulip. It's the first chat system to make everyone reasonably happy -- devs, IT, customer service, and most of the execs.

asah 5y ago

Love Zulip. Very hackable. Terrific core team who really care.

jamesvl 5y ago

Personally, I like Zulip way better than Slack because of how it does message threads: _channels_ that have conversations in _topics_ "makes sense" to me. Pros: Server maintenance is blissfully minimal. Message threading that actually works. No server issues or downtime in the past 4 years. (Every time I see a HN "Slack is down" posting, I smile to myself and continue my work day...) It runs great for ~50 employees on an AWS t3a.large instance. Importing all the company's previous messages from Slack worked perfectly. Cons: If you have people used to Slack, there will be resistance / a learning curve. Knowing, "when do I create a topic?" takes practice. The mobile and desktop apps are not as polished as Slack's. Not as many integrations as Slack. You have to know enough to manage and secure a server yourself. The Zulip devs accept Github donations, btw, if anyone cares to support their work. (We do; no affiliation other than we're happy to have a private, self-hosted alternative.) edits: punctuation and adding that instance was a ".large"

sonofhans 5y ago

We used Zulip at $job[-1] and it was awfully painful. I’ve used nearly every chat client invented since the BBS days, and Zulip was one of my least favorite. We’re using Slack now at $job and I vastly prefer it (even though I still call it “IRC”). The biggest selling points of Zulip, from the POV of the people who put it in place and truly loved it, were that it’s free/OS software, it has explicit threads as a first class citizen, and that it’s very configurable. All those things are true. The day-to-day use was painful, though. It was riddled with UX problems, e.g., forgetting state between restarts, inconsistent hotkey support, multi-action use paths for common cases, frequent full reloads of its web view. I’d much rather use vanilla IRC than Zulip. Slack is just enough of a shim layer on IRC, and with good usability. It has threads, and in use it’s not a problem that you can’t name them like Zulip. The integrations are nice to have (e.g., type `/zoom` to start a Zoom meeting) but not a big deal. The UX is clear and predictable and (mostly) stays out of my way.

tabbott 5y ago
Hi! I lead the Zulip project. I'm sorry to hear you had a bad experience with Zulip. If you can share details on the UX problems you had, perhaps in https://zulip.com/development-community/ https://zulip.com/development-community/ where we can have an extended conversation, I'd be very appreciative. I personally review every issue reported in zulip, and some of the specific problems you cite are not unfamiliar and surprising to me. Specifically: * I'm not aware of a plausible explanation for Zulip frequently doing full reloads of the web view. Zulip's core design is to live-update everything [1] and there's only a handful of code paths that can trigger a full reload (the most common being when the server version was updated, and in that code path, the client has an algorithm where it waits up to 30 minutes for a moment when your window is idle and not focused to reload to get the updated version, to minimize the chance of disruption). * I'm also not sure what what state might be forgotten between web client restarts; almost all of our client UI updates happen via the client asking the server to change something, and the client updating via the same server-client push mechanism that updates other clients (the main exception to this is sending messages, where local echo is important for UX reasons). And at least the server-initiated reloads are designed to preserve your precise scroll position, compose box state, etc., and that's been true since ~2013. (Though we did fix a couple bugs where compose box state was not properly preserved in the last year). I know you're not using Zulip currently, so your memory may be imprecise, but any additional detail that could help us reproduce what you experienced would be awesome! [1] https://zulip.readthedocs.io/en/latest/subsystems/events-system.html https://zulip.readthedocs.io/en/latest/subsystems/events-sys...

aidenn0 5y ago

I liked it a lot, but I'm not an Apple user, and apparently the iOS app was (is?) not great. For me, it's like a vastly better version of NNTP, while slack is more of a slightly improved IRC.

kibwen 5y ago

Sort of a weird context to ask for Zulip recommendations, but sure. I find Slack to be a miserably unproductive experience that makes it impossible to keep up with a team (or teams) of any significant size. Slack is good for recreation, not productivity. If the primary purpose of your organization is to be a social group, then by all means use Slack. Meanwhile, Zulip does what I need and does it well. It scales excellently to large organizations discussing broad arrays of topics. It gets out of my way and I don't find myself thinking about it. In that way it's the perfect tool, because it lets me spend energy focusing on engaging with the conversations rather than wrestling with the interface. I guess I'd describe it as natural and unobtrusive, the sort of thing that does its job so well that you only notice that it's there when something goes wrong and you realize what you've been taking for granted. Note that my experience is almost exclusively with the web client. My small amount of experience with the mobile app is that it's much less polished.

stavros 5y ago

I used it at a previous job and it was fantastic. The first-class threads are the way chat should work, the UX with the message river is brilliant, the keyboard shortcuts make everything two keystrokes away and it's extremely fast. In comparison, I hate having to use Slack every day today. It's slow as shit, whenever I type a keystroke too fast (e.g. editing a previous message) it always gets into a weird state (usually edits the message before last and messes up the edits) and it encourages rapid-fire, thoughtless replies. Search also sucks and it's impossible to find anything. I fucking hate Slack.