zulip/templates/zerver/why-zulip.md

![why zulip cartoon by Jessica Evans](/static/images/why-zulip/cartoon.png)

<center id="cartoon-caption">Explanation of Zulip by [Julia Evans](https://twitter.com/b0rk)</center>

Zulip is not just a “better Slack”, in the same way that iPods were not just
“better CD players”. Zulip’s topic-based threading changes what is possible
in chat. If you haven’t seen Zulip in action, log on to our developers’
server at [chat.zulip.org](https://chat.zulip.org),
or check out our short screencast (coming soon) on topics and threading.

## Zulip vs. Slack

Zulip’s threading model allows for long-running conversations to co-exist
with real time chat. This allows senior staff, remote team members,
part-time contractors, internal clients, and others who aren’t going to be
on your chat full-time to participate effectively.

In Slack (or Hipchat, Mattermost, or many others), if Bob starts a
conversation in a busy channel at 10am, and Ada swings by sometime in
the evening, there is no way for Ada to effectively participate in
that conversation. If Ada is a manager who spends most of her days in
meetings, or is a remote engineer living 8 time zones away, she won’t
be able to participate in most conversations at all.

This means that
in an organization that has adopted Slack, the vast majority of Ada’s
conversations will still be over email, during meetings, or over Slack
direct messages.

By contrast, Zulip’s lightweight threading model allows busy team
members and remote workers to fully participate, even if they are
reading messages hours after they are sent (or the next day!).

This
enables conversation that would otherwise happen over meetings or
email to happen in Zulip itself. It also enables easy participation
and information spread to those that have the least time to attend
meetings which have only a nugget of information that is relevant to
them.

## Zulip vs. Email

Email is clunky for real-time communication. A thread with even 50
messages feels cluttered and slow, whereas real-time chat
conversations (on any platform) regularly exceed that. Typing
notifications, emoji reactions, keyboard shortcuts, and blazingly fast
clients make Zulip a daily pleasure.

Usability matters; in an
organization that relies on email for communication, things that could
have been resolved over chat end up being pushed to meetings instead.

## Zulip changes the way you operate

The Zulip project has over 30 core team members, working from over 10
different time zones and 25 different locations. Outside of one-on-one
conversations, Zulip doesn’t have a single phone or video-based
meeting. Zulip also has zero internal mailing lists, and zero internal email
discussions. By contrast, even Slack doesn’t rely on Slack for remote
work; their
[careers page](https://slack.com/careers/location/all-locations/dept/all-departments)
doesn’t list a single position where you could work from anywhere.

Threaded conversations mean that all stakeholders can see and respond to
every message, just like in meetings and email.

But unlike meetings, Zulip
conversations don’t require coordinating busy schedules, or hour long
commitments from folks that just need a 5 minute update. And unlike email, a
lively discussion of 300 Zulip messages is just as easy to digest and
respond to as an in-person conversation.