Zulip
CommunicationA self-hostable team chat app that organizes every conversation into topics inside channels.
Open-source alternative to:
Slack
What the free edition leaves out
Scroll sideways to view all columns →The official pages do not say enough about the free edition to give a verdict. “Not confirmed” means the official pages we read did not say, so we do not guess.
| Feature | Free edition | Details | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| SSO / SAML | Free | The plans page lists SSO with SAML for the free self-hosted plan, marked as self-managed (you set it up and maintain it). | Source ↗ |
| Role-based access control | Free | The plans page lists managing permissions by user role for the free self-hosted plan, marked as self-managed. | Source ↗ |
| Audit logs | Free | The plans page lists the audit log of administrative actions for the free self-hosted plan, marked as self-managed. | Source ↗ |
| Multi-user / teams | Free | Self-hosting is free. Mobile push notifications through Zulip's service are limited to 10 users for most organizations on the free plan; eligible communities get unlimited. | Source ↗ |
| Backups and restore | Free | The server has a built-in backup tool, daily database snapshots, optional wal-g archiving, and a logical export/import command. | Source ↗ |
| API access | Free | The plans page lists REST API custom integrations for the free self-hosted plan, marked as self-managed. | Source ↗ |
| Support SLA | Paid | Priority commercial support is listed on paid plans, and the Enterprise self-hosted plan lists email, chat and phone support. The page mentions no SLA. | Source ↗ |
Best for
Teams and communities that follow many parallel conversations and want a chat tool they can host themselves.
Why choose it over Slack
Every message belongs to a topic inside a channel, so busy channels stay readable and you can catch up on a topic later instead of scrolling a single stream. The server is Apache-2.0, self-hosting is free, and the self-hosting docs list OpenID Connect and LDAP sign-in, a built-in backup tool and a data export/import command.
Where it falls short
Self-hosting means running and upgrading a server (Ubuntu or Debian script install, or Docker). The topic-per-message habit takes some getting used to for people coming from Slack. Mobile push notifications on the free self-hosted plan are capped at 10 users for most organizations unless you qualify for an exemption or pay. Commercial support is a paid plan.
Open-source alternative to
- Slack — Zulip is an open-source team chat you can run on your own server, with topic-based threading in place of Slack's channel-and-thread model.
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