Zulip - Powerful open source group chat

[A Former User]

@marcusquinn Yeah I find the experience with element a bit... odd. UI stutters often. Issues joining rooms causing me to re-start the app

[robi]

@marcusquinn Mattermost feels closest to Slack, but it has huge security issues in a open/public/untrusted setting.

For example, anyone can remove & modify channels they're in and thoroughly mess with the intent and integrity of the setup. Only through obscurity do most people not find this.

[A Former User]

@robi Yes, mattermost is more useful for private groups or teams.

[marcusquinn]

"One of the many benefits of using @zulip

Not having to wake up to your work collaboration tool being owned by Salesforce [dot] com inc

#opensource Raising hands"

https://twitter.com/mojeek/status/1333542034846740480?s=20

[seeker]

Interesting... Labeling substreams with topics seems interesting to me. Tags can get confusing. Having used email, I think people would be able to use topics as they are closer to email subject headings.

A couple of videos about Zulip:

Introduction from a teacher using it with students

CEO of Zulip – Tim Abbott (INTERVIEWED)

[robi]

And it has a dark mode!

[marcusquinn]

My brief assessment:

• Zulip looks like a more polished UI & Mobile than Mattermost & Element.
• Zulip threads aren't that clever, you can recreate that with sub-channels in any other chat platform, eg:
  • #accounts
  • #accounts-receivable
  • #accounts-payable
  • #accounts-etc
• Zulip doesn't offer the Omnichannel features Rocket.chat is strongest at.
• Zulip doesn't have as many integrations as Mattermost.

So, for me, the main reasons for this would be a better Desktop & Mobile UX for private and remote groups.

I don't see it as better than Slack or Discord, other than being FOSS.

I don't see it as better than Rocket.chat, that already has a strong UX on all platforms and Omnichannel.

So, nice option to have, proof is in the daily usage but, like most, I won't get to test much more than that unless it's packaged and in the App Store, so that's one for those choosing what's the best bang for their time on that.

[avatar1024]

@marcusquinn said in Zulip - Powerful open source group chat:

Zulip threads aren't that clever, you can recreate that with sub-channels in any other chat platform,

Except that you cannot create sub-channels in Rocket.chat. You could see "Discussions" as sub-channels but they're not in terms of ux, there is no hierarchy displayed. Plus the idea is that Zulip forces to sort each message someone within a topic or as a new topic (like on email) which greatly helps with keeping the whole instance organised.
Channels in Zulip are more like placeholders within which you have topics and not somewhere you type messages, which is a level hierarchy to organise discussion that rocket.chat does not have (you could say that "Teams" in Mattermost are kinda similar in that respect - though the intended purpose is different).

[marcusquinn]

@avatar1024 My suggestion is that you can create sub-channels by naming convention. I already do this with a 100+ channel Discord server I manage, and it works very well with 50+ team members.

I know some people that like threads in Slack, personally I don't, and find it another data-dimension that gets used inconsistently in practice.

Yeah, I like the Teams concept in Mattermost, shame their mobile apps are single-server and somewhat clumsy to finger.

TBH, the most valuable concept I've found in any chat app is the Role-based user permissions in Discord, that make scaling so much easier and faster than individual permissions management.

I get Zulip's sales pitch, I just don't think it's the only way to solve organisation, and I find the variability or user-designed structures can become worse than admin-designed, just the same as forums, where there can be multi-threads and repeat threads if the user doesn't have a priority for organisation.

Either way, be nice to see Zulip on Cloudron, it has my upvote and I'll give it a deeper look if it makes the grade. In the meantime, there's some ideas for organisation with other chat apps for organisation that might help with some of the message burying probs they claim to have the only solution to.

[robi]

I used to use RC and met their executive team, but grew to dislike it's setup rigidity and lack of dark mode.

It's nice to see all the improvements, and new omni-marketing, but that just seems like a webhook away from any chat app.

Zulip has an abstraction layer similar to GMail, which is much more flexible, but actually reminds me of Google>Apache Wave (now defunct).

I just don't like the mobile notifications being held hostage.

The decentralized Kune had nice innovations, but seems to be unmaintained for the last 3 years.

Rizzoma is in a similar state.

Okuna looks promising though. (beta)

[becaf]

One good thing to note about Zulip over Rocket.Chat is that Rocket has a 10,000 push notification limit... If you have 10 users sending 50 messages over one month, you're already over the limit!

There are some github support packages you can pay for ($5/$10) to increase your push notifications to 15k or 20k, but after that you have to pay. In this day and age. Push notifications are a must!

I understand they get millions so need to pay, but not being able to buy more than 20k makes this a bit problem as switching to Rocket cloud is very expensive

I'd love to see Zulip on here and even though it's not as easy to use, I've tried Mattermost, Rocket and Matrix/ Element and so far the other issues include; Mattermost CE has no user role/ permission management and Matrix is encrypted (albeit optionally) which I don't want for internal comms as we need to be able to audit it (like you would company emails).

Zulip is ideal, but I would love to see it on Cloudron so it can be managed with other Cloudron apps.

At the moment I have two Zulip setups and two devices with accounts on each, neither of which are getting push notifications (yes I've set it up properly). So once that is solved having Zulip on Cloudron would make life much easier.

[b1nar10]

Hi I wish I could install Zulip on Cloudron is it possible?

[girish]

@b1nar10 Currently, it's not available. You can upvote in the first post.

[jdaviescoates]

@robi said in Zulip - Powerful open source group chat:

https://github.com/zulip/docker-zulip

Just came here to share that too

[alex-a-soto]

Zulip is one of the applications I use daily and is essential to me. I'm using it for an open-source project, self-hosted. I would be thrilled if it could be an application I could install on Cloudron and use with n8n, Baserow, Jitsi, and other applications available in Cloudron.

Some of the best examples/use cases of using Zulip and its advantages are below:

• How RC uses Zulip
• How to make remote work: Zulip

In addition, they recently have added a public access option, where anyone can view a topic without signing up simply by sharing a link.

One of the largest reasons I use Zulip is to have chats and our information organized as a knowledge base, it's our community's source of truth.

I hope the team considers making Zulip available on Cloudron.

Thank you for all of your hard work and support.

Regards,
Alex

[timconsidine]

@alex-a-soto I liked this graphic from the 2nd link

2 tier channel / topic is cool

[LoudLemur]

@nebulon
I have used Zulip. It has integrated support for video conferencing using Jitsi. I liked it. The developers seemed like good people too. At the time, a few years ago, it seemed like RocketChat was on a more proprietary trajectory than Zulip.

Odoo has some chat support too.

[turian]

This has over 30 votes, and is one of the top voted apps that is not yet integrated.

On hackernews, when slack pricing changed, zulip seemed to get the highest marks as product-wise as an alternative. Better still than mattermost.

[avatar1024]

I agree that Zulip would be quite handy as Rocket.chat seem to be going a strange way. I wonder:

Is there anyone currently working on packaging it?
Is there any particular technically difficulty when it comes to integrating it Cloudron?

[spacetime]

I add my request for Zulip!