Zulip

Topic-based team chat designed for both live and async conversations

Open Source

Free self-hosted, Cloud free for small teams, $8/user/mo Standard

open-source self-hosted chat async

About Zulip

Zulip is an open-source team chat app with a unique topic-based threading model. Every message belongs to a topic within a stream, so conversations never get tangled. Ideal for remote and async teams. Self-host for free or use Zulip Cloud.

Highlights

  • Topic-based threading keeps conversations organized
  • Designed for asynchronous communication
  • 100+ native integrations and webhooks
  • Full-text search across entire message history

Limitations

  • Topic-threading model has a learning curve
  • Smaller ecosystem than Slack
  • UI feels more utilitarian than modern competitors

Free

Free self-hosted, Cloud free for small teams, $8/user/mo Standard

Visit Zulip →

Last updated: 2026-03-01