Zulip’s threading allows asynchronous discussion to happen over chat, which
completely changes what chat can be used for in a company. Zulip’s threading
allows managers to weigh in on discussions even when they can only check in
once a day, it allows workers to participate in discussions even when they
live in different time zones, and it allows neighboring teams to keep tabs
on conversations that might affect them.

Communication is at the core of the operation of every large business. Many
senior personnel spend most of their days in meetings, and many decisions
have to bubble up a management chain because employees on the ground don’t
have enough context. Employers also lose out on remote talent because
communication with remote team members is too burdensome with their existing
tools.

No chat product comes even close to Zulip in terms of enabling serious
discussion, engaging remote participants, spreading knowledge to neighboring
teams, and making efficient use of managers’ time.

If you haven’t read [why Zulip](/why-zulip), read that first. We’ve also
collected a list of features we think will be of particular interest for
companies using Zulip.

### On-premises and in the cloud.

High quality export and import tools make it easy to start with Zulip in the
cloud, knowing that you can move to a on-premises deployment (or back) if
your budget or security needs change.

### No vendor lock-in.

Zulip’s license (Apache 2) and
[published code base](https://github.com/zulip/zulip) means you will
always be able to run Zulip on your own servers, for free, forever.

### Highly customizable.

In addition to Zulip’s well-designed API and extensive integration library,
Zulip’s codebase is easy to get into. With over 100K words of developer
documentation, 93% test coverage, full static typing of our python codebase,
and world-class tooling, Zulip’s codebase is a pleasure to work with. Just
ask any of the hundreds of developers, including high school students, who
have contributed significant code to Zulip!

Previous corporate users have added LaTeX support for discussing academic
papers, authentication protocols for integrating with a custom SSO, and an
artificial message delay feature for emergency training. Think of a product
you use every day at work. What would you change about it if your dev ops
team could have a go at it for a week?

### Scale to thousands of users.

Zulip teams are still snappy at thousands of users.

### Hundreds of integrations.

Get events from GitHub, Stripe, Travis CI, Jira, and
[hundreds of other tools](/integrations) right in Zulip. Use topics to give
each issue or decision its own place for discussion. Link to tickets in
external sites with
[custom linkification filters](/help/add-a-custom-linkifier) like
`Z1234` for Zendesk ticket #1234.

### Rich message formatting.

Zulip’s [chat-optimized Markdown](/help/format-your-message-using-markdown)
helps you express your ideas clearly with bulleted lists, code blocks,
pasted screenshots, uploaded files, and more.

### Easy authentication.

Restrict sign-up by email domain, use a single sign-on solution, or send
invitations by email.