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  5. Mattermost vs Zulip

Mattermost vs Zulip

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Mattermost
Mattermost
Stacks480
Followers582
Votes302
Zulip
Zulip
Stacks223
Followers344
Votes366
GitHub Stars23.7K
Forks8.9K

Mattermost vs Zulip: What are the differences?

Introduction:

Mattermost and Zulip are both team communication platforms with various features designed to improve collaboration within organizations. Despite having some similarities, there are several key differences between the two platforms.

  1. Deployment Options: Mattermost offers flexible deployment options, allowing users to choose between using Mattermost's cloud hosting service or hosting it on their own infrastructure. On the other hand, Zulip primarily focuses on self-hosted deployments, providing less emphasis on cloud hosting.

  2. Conversation Structure: Mattermost uses a channel-based conversation structure similar to popular platforms like Slack, where users communicate in channels dedicated to specific topics or teams. In contrast, Zulip has a unique topic-based conversation structure, organizing conversations around specific topics and providing a more organized and streamlined communication flow.

  3. Threaded Conversations: Zulip offers robust threaded conversations, allowing users to reply to a specific message within a conversation, keeping discussions focused and reducing noise. Mattermost, in comparison, provides basic threading capabilities, where replies are not as easily distinguishable from the main conversation.

  4. Wide Range of Integrations: Mattermost boasts a vast array of integrations with popular third-party tools and services, allowing users to connect and automate processes seamlessly. Zulip supports integrations as well, but its selection is relatively smaller compared to Mattermost.

  5. Pricing Model: Mattermost adopts a freemium pricing model, where users can utilize a limited set of features for free with the option to upgrade for additional functionality and advanced features. Conversely, Zulip follows an open-source model, providing its complete set of features for free without any subscription charges.

  6. User Interface: Mattermost offers a more familiar and visually appealing user interface, resembling other popular team communication platforms. Zulip, on the other hand, has a distinct look and feel, with a multi-column layout that may require some adaptation for users accustomed to more traditional interfaces.

In Summary, Mattermost provides flexible deployment options, a channel-based conversation structure, basic threading, extensive integrations, follows a freemium pricing model, and has a more familiar user interface. Zulip primarily focuses on self-hosted deployments, utilizes a topic-based conversation structure, offers robust threaded conversations, has a smaller range of integrations, follows an open-source pricing model, and has a distinct user interface.

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Advice on Mattermost, Zulip

Christopher
Christopher

CEO at TheBig3

Feb 8, 2021

Decided

Mattermost sports higher performance, uses Postgres, is a pure server side application not using up too much of system resources on the client side, and gives an overall enterprise grade impression in general.

Updates go smooth without a hassle, everything is organised logically, and the integration with the OS is absolutely stable. Apart from that, the underlying runtimes and code are mature, proven and stable.

The developers are maybe a bit more cautious in regard to introducing new features, but they maintain a stable experience, not breaking the codebase in order to hastily implement bells and whistles, which are not yet ready for production. Documentation and debugging are fantastic, so running this in enterprise production environment is absolutely approved of.

48.2k views48.2k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Mattermost
Mattermost
Zulip
Zulip

Mattermost is modern communication from behind your firewall.

Zulip is powerful, open source team chat that combines the immediacy of real-time chat with the productivity benefits of threaded conversations. Zulip allows busy managers and others in meetings all day to participate in their teams chats.

All your team communication in one place, searchable and accessible anywhere; Slack-compatible, not Slack-limited. Imports Slack channels, users and themes. Offers Slack-compatible webhooks and integrations including Hubot, Jenkins, GitLab and others; Self-host ready with System Console and IT admin tools for managing dozens of team sites. Installs with Linux binary, plus Docker, Heroku, AWS, Azure and Cloud Foundry options
Apps for every platform; Open source; Seamless integrations with everything you use
Statistics
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Stars
23.7K
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
8.9K
Stacks
480
Stacks
223
Followers
582
Followers
344
Votes
302
Votes
366
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 60
    Open source
  • 41
    On-premise deployment
  • 26
    Free
  • 22
    Built using golang
  • 21
    Fast and easy to use
Cons
  • 2
    Less integrations and plugins than slack
  • 2
    Custom sidewide themes only in enterprise
  • 2
    Many basic features are enterprise only
  • 1
    Not compatible with Telegram keys, which used by FSB
  • 1
    Basic permissions only in enterprise edition
Pros
  • 65
    Open source
  • 48
    Great Community
  • 40
    Extensive developer documentation
  • 38
    Powered by Python
  • 34
    Clean & Smooth UI
Cons
  • 1
    Integration with most of well known services
  • 0
    The interface require a lot of overhaul
Integrations
AWS Elastic Beanstalk
AWS Elastic Beanstalk
Amazon EC2
Amazon EC2
Segment
Segment
Jenkins
Jenkins
GitLab
GitLab
Microsoft Azure
Microsoft Azure
Google Compute Engine
Google Compute Engine
Hubot
Hubot
Cloud Foundry
Cloud Foundry
Amazon SES
Amazon SES
GitLab
GitLab
Heroku
Heroku
Git
Git
Bitbucket
Bitbucket
Sentry
Sentry
Trello
Trello
GitHub
GitHub
Librato
Librato
Slack
Slack
Jira
Jira

What are some alternatives to Mattermost, Zulip?

Slack

Slack

Imagine all your team communication in one place, instantly searchable, available wherever you go. That’s Slack. All your messages. All your files. And everything from Twitter, Dropbox, Google Docs, Asana, Trello, GitHub and dozens of other services. All together.

HipChat

HipChat

HipChat is a hosted private chat service for your company or team. Invite colleagues to share ideas and files in persistent group chat rooms. Get your team off AIM, Google Talk, and Skype — HipChat was built for business.

RocketChat

RocketChat

Rocket.Chat is a Web Chat Server, developed in JavaScript, using the Meteor fullstack framework. It is a great solution for communities and companies wanting to privately host their own chat service or for developers looking forward to build and evolve their own chat platforms.

Gitter

Gitter

Free chat rooms for your public repositories. A bit like IRC only smarter. Chats for private repositories as well as organisations.

Flowdock

Flowdock

Flowdock is a web-based team chat service that integrates with your tools to provide a window into your team's activities. With the team inbox, everyone on your team can stay up to date. Stay connected with Flowdock's iOS and Android apps.

Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams

See content and chat history anytime, including team chats with Skype that are visible to the whole team. Private group chats are available for smaller group conversations.

Telegram

Telegram

Users can send messages and exchange photos, videos, stickers, audio and files of any type. It provides instant messaging, simple, fast, secure and synced across all your devices.

Keybase Teams

Keybase Teams

Keybase is for anyone. Imagine a Slack for the whole world, except end-to-end encrypted across all your devices. Or a Team Dropbox where the server can't leak your files or be hacked.

Fleep

Fleep

Leave email behind and manage all conversations with your team, partners and clients in Fleep. If some of them are not Fleep users yet, they will receive all messages as normal emails.

Let's Chat

Let's Chat

Let's Chat is a persistent messaging application that runs on Node.js and MongoDB. It's designed to be easily deployable and fits well with small, intimate teams. It's free (MIT licensed) and ships with killer features such as LDAP/Kerberos authentication, a REST-like API and XMPP support.

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