Zulip was started in 2012 by four SIPB alums. We think it’s the best team
chat tool for mystery hunt teams.

**How is this different from Slack?**

In Slack, IRC, and nearly every other team chat application, users subscribe
to chat rooms (“channels”), and get all the messages sent to each channel in
a chronological dump. The model is largely designed to support real-time
conversation, where it’s easy to participate if you’re online, but not easy
to come back a few hours later and reply to a conversation that started
while you were gone.

In Zulip, there is an additional layer of organization in each channel:
messages have topics (like “puzzle: duck konundrum”), so it is easy to
follow conversational threads. It also makes it easy for someone to come
back after 8 hours (okay, 4 hours) of sleep, catch up on the state of
various puzzles, and answer questions even if a question was asked many
hours ago.

**You have to write a topic for every message you send? Sounds like a bit much…**

Nope! Just the first person writing a message to a given topic has to write
it out. Replies to that message are automatically grouped in the way you’d
expect. Sending a message in Zulip feels just as lightweight as sending a
message in SMS, Google Hangouts, or Slack.

**Is it free?**

Yes! We provide free hosting for all MIT mystery hunt teams, student groups,
and research groups.

Besides being easy on the wallet, Zulip is also free (open source)
software. We make it easy to export your data from a
[zulipchat.com](https://zulipchat.com) hosted Zulip and import it into a
self-hosted installation.

**Can I integrate Zulip with my current puzzlehunting software?**

Yup. Zulip has a well thought out [API](https://zulipchat.com/api/), and
it’s easy to write bots that send things into or out of Zulip.

**Where can I test it out?**

[Click here](https://zulipchat.com/new) to create an organization; it
only takes only about 30 seconds. If you decide to continue using it, just email
support@zulip.com to tell us you’re a mystery hunt team.

**Where do I go for further information?**

Come find us on the [Zulip community chat](https://chat.zulip.org). Feel
free to post in
[#mystery hunt](https://chat.zulip.org/#narrow/stream/mystery.20hunt) or
anywhere else that seems appropriate.

**Help! I’m trapped in a mystery hunt puzzle.**

This is not a puzzle! But feel free take a look at
[Zulip for companies](/for/companies),
[Zulip for working groups](/for/working-groups-and-communities), or
[Zulip for open source projects](/for/open-source).