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  5. Microsoft Teams vs Zulip

Microsoft Teams vs Zulip

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Zulip
Zulip
Stacks223
Followers344
Votes366
GitHub Stars23.7K
Forks8.9K
Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams
Stacks2.4K
Followers1.7K
Votes144

Microsoft Teams vs Zulip: What are the differences?

Introduction: Microsoft Teams and Zulip are both popular project management and communication tools used by teams and organizations worldwide. While they share some similarities, there are key differences that set them apart.

  1. Interface and Organization: Microsoft Teams provides a more traditional chat-based interface where conversations are organized into channels, making it easy to follow discussions and collaborate with team members. On the other hand, Zulip offers a unique threaded conversation model, organizing discussions into topics and subtopics, which allows for better context and reduces noise in large teams.

  2. Integration with External Tools: Microsoft Teams offers seamless integration with other Microsoft applications such as Office 365, SharePoint, and Outlook. This enables users to access files, calendar appointments, and emails all within the Teams platform. In contrast, Zulip provides a wide range of integrations with popular third-party applications like GitHub, JIRA, and Trello, allowing teams to centralize their workflows and access various tools from a single workspace.

  3. Message Visibility and Notifications: In Microsoft Teams, by default, all messages sent to a channel are visible to all members, and users receive notifications for every message, resulting in a constant stream of communication. However, Zulip allows users to choose the level of visibility for their messages, making it possible to have private conversations within public topics. Users can also control their level of notification, reducing interruptions and improving focus.

  4. Topic-Based Streams: While both platforms allow users to create channels or streams for discussions, the difference lies in how these channels are organized. Microsoft Teams primarily uses channels based on projects, departments, or topics. In contrast, Zulip has topic-based streams, making it easier to participate in multiple conversations on various topics simultaneously. This helps teams with diverse interests and responsibilities collaborate more effectively.

  5. Search and Filtering Capabilities: Microsoft Teams provides a basic search functionality, allowing users to search for messages, files, and people within the platform. However, Zulip offers advanced search and filtering capabilities, allowing users to search through messages, files, and topics with specific criteria such as sender, time range, and stream. This helps users locate information quickly and efficiently.

  6. Open Source and Customization: Zulip is an open-source platform that allows users to customize and extend its functionality according to their specific requirements. This makes it highly customizable, providing flexibility for organizations with unique needs. In comparison, Microsoft Teams does not offer the same level of customization or open-source capabilities.

In Summary, Microsoft Teams provides a channel-based interface with seamless integration to Microsoft applications, while Zulip offers a topic-based threaded conversation model, advanced search capabilities, an open-source platform, and a wide range of integrations with popular third-party tools.

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Advice on Zulip, Microsoft Teams

carlche0616
carlche0616

Oct 11, 2020

Decided

As it is the communication tool chosen for the course, our team will be using Slack to monitor the course announcements from our instructor as well as to communicate with the instructor and industry partners. The tool for communicating within the team will be Microsoft Teams. Microsoft Teams enables the team to share documents and edit them synchronously(Google Drive is not an option due to one team member's location). Since it also provides a group chat feature, we chose to use it as our communication tool to avoid using too many softwares.

197k views197k
Comments
Mohammad Hossein
Mohammad Hossein

Chief Technology Officer at Planallay Sdn Bhd

Jan 17, 2020

Decided

we were using slack and at the same time we had a subscription with office 365. after a while we hit the slack free limitation quota. and it got annoying. the search ability was useless in free tier. and more annoying whenever you search, it opens a webpage and doesn't do it in the app.

on mobile there were many cases that I didn't get notification of important discussions. rooms was the way to separate a talk. but it become tedious. each time for a new subject that you wanted to discuss, you needed to add all the team members into a new room. and after a while the room goes silent. you will end up with a tons of not-in-use rooms that you don't want to clean up them for history purposes. also the slack UI for sub discussion is very stupid. if someone forget to check the checkbox to post the subdiscussion in the main discussion thread, other team members even won't notice such discussion is in progress.

we was paying for office 365 and thought why not give the teams a shot. we won't be in worth situation than we are. we moved to teams and we loved it instantly, we had a separate tab aggregated all the files upload. we could reply on other talk. no need of creating a new room. this way room belongs to a team and not a certain topic. our sub discussion was visible to the whole team. enjoyed integration with azure and unlimited history. the best part was integration with outlook. it was a full suit solution. our stats become busy on outlook meeting events. we get weekly analyse. we didn't need to host our wiki seperated. we've created wiki per team. the communication was much more fun.

266k views266k
Comments
Hirotaka
Hirotaka

Undergrad at DCSIL

Oct 7, 2020

Decided

Communication We have chosen two tools for our team communication.

  • Slack

We choose Slack since all of us are familiar with this communication tool. We have a private channel for our team Sphinx for text messages. We added Github apps inside our private channel for repo update notifications. Furthermore, we could contact the subject matter experts within the workspace DCSIL directly for the issues we meet.

  • Microsoft Teams

We use Microsoft Teams for virtual meetings for its fast connection speed. In addition, the call feature in Slack is a paid feature, and we could have virtual meetings and share screens for free in Microsoft Teams.

192k views192k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Zulip
Zulip
Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams

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.

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.

Apps for every platform; Open source; Seamless integrations with everything you use
All your content, tools, people, and conversations are available in the team workspace;Enjoy built-in access to SharePoint, OneNote, and Skype for Business;Work on documents right in the app
Statistics
GitHub Stars
23.7K
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Forks
8.9K
GitHub Forks
-
Stacks
223
Stacks
2.4K
Followers
344
Followers
1.7K
Votes
366
Votes
144
Pros & Cons
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
Pros
  • 29
    Work well with the rest of Office 365 work flow
  • 24
    Mobile friendly
  • 19
    Free
  • 12
    Well-thought Design
  • 12
    Great integrations
Cons
  • 17
    Confusing UI
  • 12
    Bad performance on init and after quite a use
  • 10
    Bad Usermanagement
  • 6
    No desktop client (only fat and slow electron app)
  • 6
    Can't see all members in a video meeting
Integrations
GitLab
GitLab
Heroku
Heroku
Git
Git
Bitbucket
Bitbucket
Sentry
Sentry
Trello
Trello
GitHub
GitHub
Librato
Librato
Slack
Slack
Jira
Jira
Skype
Skype

What are some alternatives to Zulip, Microsoft Teams?

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.

Mattermost

Mattermost

Mattermost is modern communication from behind your firewall.

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.

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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