## Great for developers

* **Format code as code:** Messages take Markdown formatting,
  [including code
  blocks](/help/format-your-message-using-markdown#code), making it
  super easy to discuss some code or paste an error message.

* **Clear permalinks:** Have a design discussion in chat and want to
  link to it in your bug tracker or a commit message?  [Two
  clicks](/help/share-a-message-or-conversation) makes a permanent
  link.  The URL transparently shows where the discussion happened,
  and for everyone who clicks through, Zulip's topic threading
  provides a focused view on that conversation.

* **Easy custom linkification:** Want to refer to issues or code
  reviews with short notation like `#1234`, `T1234` — or any other
  style of your own?  Set up any regex as a [custom linkification
  filter](/help/add-a-custom-linkification-filter) for your
  organization.

* **Plays well with others:** With [60+ integrations](/integrations)
  including GitHub, Travis CI, JIRA, and Stripe, chances are Zulip
  already integrates with the tools you use every day; and our API
  makes it easy to add more.

* **Everything in its place:** Troubleshooting in chat for users or
  new developers becomes much more manageable with Zulip's topic
  threading: each issue in a channel can be discussed in its own
  thread.

## Great for productivity

* **Clearer conversations:** With Zulip's unique model of threading by
  topic, your community can have more than one conversation in a
  channel at the same time, without the confusion and talking-over
  caused by traditional models like IRC and Slack.

* **Full service:** No need to settle for a limited "try it out" tier.
  You're welcome to [host Zulip
  yourself](https://zulip.readthedocs.io/en/latest/prod-install.html),
  or [sign up at zulipchat.com](https://zulipchat.com/beta/) for
  commercially-supported hosting — free for open source projects.

* **Fast full-text search:** Feeling dejà vu about an issue someone's
  reporting? Searching your full message history is a snap.

* **Proven model:** [Stop by
  chat.zulip.org](https://zulip.readthedocs.io/en/latest/chat-zulip-org.html),
  Zulip's own development community, to see it in action for a large
  project with ~5000 messages/week, essentially all of it productive
  developer discussion.

## Great for open communities

* **Web, mobile, desktop:** Sleek, modern [apps for every
  platform](/apps/) make Zulip an inclusive choice for everyone in
  your community.

* **Walls optional:** Take down the barrier to participation created
  by making people interested in your community ask for an invitation
  before they can enter — use [one
  checkbox](/help/allow-anyone-to-join-without-an-invitation) to open
  your Zulip organization for anyone to join.

* **Badges:** Want to link to your Zulip organization with a nice
  badge in your README?  [Done.](/help/join-zulip-chat-badge)

<!--- This needs better documentation. -->
* **GitHub auth?** [We've got that.][github-auth]

[github-auth]: https://github.com/zulip/zulip/blob/7e9926233/zproject/prod_settings_template.py#L112

* **Scale:** Zulip scales well to large communities — it's loved by
  communities as large as 1000 users and beyond.

## Zulip ❤​ open source

* **Free and open source software:** Zulip itself is open source,
  [under the Apache License 2.0](https://github.com/zulip/zulip/blob/master/LICENSE).

* **Free for open source:** Full, commercially-supported hosting at
  zulipchat.com is free for open source communities.  [Sign up
  today!](https://zulipchat.com/beta/))

<!--- This needs better — any! — documentation. -->
* **Your data is yours:** Zulip's high-quality export and import tools
  enable migrating a community smoothly from one host to another.
  So if you start out running on zulipchat.com, you can always choose
  later to move to your own servers, and vice versa.

* **The open source leader:** Zulip is the leading open source group
  chat option, with far more contributor momentum than any other.
  Some numbers:

    * Over 300 contributors in the Zulip server project alone — a
      figure reached in only 18 months.

    * 75 people working on Zulip at the PyCon sprints in Portland in
      May 2017.

    * In the [Zulip Server 1.6
      release](https://blog.zulip.org/2017/06/06/zulip-server-1-6-released/)
      in June 2017, over 3100 new commits since 1.5, by over 150
      different people.