# Zulip 143 Hacker News commenters recommended Zulip and 58 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 11 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 5 years (10 owners). It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule. **Verdict:** An open-source, self-hostable team chat whose topic-based threads make big, complex conversations easy to follow and catch up on, though self-hosted mobile notifications need a paid subscription. ## Why people recommend it - Topic threads organize complex conversations (8 comments): "They really get open source, allow you to own your data, and their UI despite being a bit quirky is IMO the best out there for handling complex conversations" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46862314)) "the topics-based organization and ability for moderators to move/split conversations means one can read and participate in a community much more fully" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46954515)) "700K line of high quality code is something to br proud of. It's backward compatible and have very powerful threading system" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47118587)) - Open source, own your data (5 comments): "They really get open source, allow you to own your data, and their UI despite being a bit quirky is IMO the best out there for handling complex conversations" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46862314)) "One of the nice things about Zulip's model is that communities that we do not want to host can just migrate to self-hosting." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46955171)) "Zulip self hosted has all features with no restrictions, except for mobile notifications which require a subscription" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46384752)) - Built for getting work done (3 comments): "Zulip is a collaboration platform for groups who want to get shit done. I wouldn't recommend it for a "place to hang out"." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46952266)) "I consider Zulip to be mainly for people who want to achieve things together, not just hang out." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46953485)) "every message belongs to a topic and the async communication focus makes so much sense to me" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46951099)) - Simple to use (2 comments): "Most of our agents are in their 60s or 70s, so the software must be as simple as possible. That's why we love Zulip" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46951580)) "none were close in simplicity and features of Zulip. It's one of the best, underrated projects" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47960148)) ## What people warn about - Mobile notifications require paid subscription (4 comments): "They did remove mobile notifications without a subscription recently and the price is quite high ONLY for notifications." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46958021)) "Zulip self hosted has all features with no restrictions, except for mobile notifications which require a subscription" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46384752)) "which has already "broken the seal" of restricting features behind a monthly fee even for self-hosted users" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46952463)) - No end-to-end encryption (3 comments): "It’s a bit odd that encrypted notifications still don’t work, and I’d argue it’s a very big caveat with regard to privacy and security." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46952693)) "It’s a bit odd though that Zulip charge $ for mobile notifications but still don’t have basic end-to-end encryption for those push notifications" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46384941)) "avoid Zulip for a properly secure Discord replacement, givin its lack of (and roadmap refusal for) e2e" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49878236)) - Threading model feels confusing (3 comments): "The issue is messages show up in multiple places which is unintuitive for someone with a spacial brain like me." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46005291)) "Zulip is pretty weird compared to the rest, it's always hard to tell what's even going on with threads within threads within threads." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47022427)) "Zulip defaults to assuming that all chat is valuable and taxes every interaction with a little bit of up front effort." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46960569)) - Janky, unpolished interface (4 comments): "The mobile app is worse as it only allows writing in a few views that are not easy to access" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46957658)) "every time i have to use it for a community i effectively stop interacting with them after a short while just because everything is janky, ugly and feels like a drag to interact with" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46956777)) "its just apparent no designer or usability person ever used it or was involved in anything for this project" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46958515)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Slack](https://hackerapproved.com/p/slack.md): 248 recommend - [Microsoft Teams](https://hackerapproved.com/p/microsoft-teams.md): 228 recommend - [Chatto](https://hackerapproved.com/p/chatto.md): 55 recommend - [Mattermost](https://hackerapproved.com/p/mattermost.md): 40 recommend - [Fluxer](https://hackerapproved.com/p/fluxer.md): 22 recommend ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Zulip", https://hackerapproved.com/p/zulip/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).