Zulip

Zulip is an open-source team chat product made by Kandra Labs, Inc. and stewarded by the Zulip Foundation. It organizes conversations into channels and topics so distributed teams can follow many discussions asynchronously. It is available as a hosted cloud service or as software you self-host.

What It Is

Zulip is a team chat platform built around topic-based threading. Each message belongs to a channel and a brief topic, so users can focus on one conversation at a time, reply in context, and see unread conversations in an inbox view. Conversations can continue over time, and messages or topics can be moved between channels and topics.

The feature matrix lists collaboration tools such as search, file sharing, polls, to-do lists, resolved topics, scheduled messages, reminders, custom emoji, and read receipts.

Apps, Integrations and API

Zulip runs in the browser and has desktop apps for Windows, Mac and Linux, mobile apps for iOS and Android, and a terminal app. It lists more than 130 native integrations, plus Zapier and IFTTT, custom webhooks, a REST API, and chat bridges to products such as Slack, Microsoft Teams and Matrix. Call providers such as Zoom, Jitsi and BigBlueButton can be configured, and an AI/LLM integration is listed in the feature matrix.

Administration, Security and Deployment

Administrators can manage permissions by role, user group or channel, and use guest users, custom profile fields, and data retention policies. Authentication options include SAML, OpenID Connect, LDAP, SCIM and OAuth social logins. Self-hosting supports Docker, Kubernetes with Helm, off-server attachment storage, backups, and multiple organizations on one server. Zulip says that self-hosting provides all the features of its cloud offering. Import tools exist for Slack, Teams, Mattermost and Rocket.Chat.

Open-Source Stewardship

The project values page states that Zulip is 100% open source and that the Zulip Foundation, announced in May 2026, fully owns Kandra Labs. Zulip says it sponsors cloud hosting for open-source projects, research groups, education, and non-profits.