Flock vs Zulip

Slack

Microsoft Teams

Google Workspace

Slack is a single workspace that connects users with the people and tools they work with everyday, no matter where they are or what they do

Microsoft Teams is a chat-based workspace in Microsoft 365 which lets users collaborate on documents, make voice & video conference calls, view chat logs, and more. Teams has replaced Skype for Business as Microsoft's online meeting solution.

Google Workspace is a suite of applications from Google which offers a number of tools to communicate and collaborate with colleagues, store files, and manage data from all devices.

Flock is a collaborative messaging app for teams which enables users to discuss projects and find and share information and ideas effectively and efficiently

Mobile Access

Calendar Management

Collaboration Tools

Discussions/Forums

Video Conferencing

Third-Party Integrations

Most reviewers indicate Flock provides strong value for money, with affordable pricing and a generous free trial. Some users report the free plan suits startups, but some reviewers feel its administrative limits can be restrictive.

Value for money

Reviews for Flock come from a wide variety of industries, including Information Technology and Services (10% of reviewers), Marketing and Advertising (5%), and Internet (4%). The most frequent use case for Flock cited by reviewers is team communication (75% of reviewers).

Flock

Web-based

iPhone

Windows

iPad

Android

Starter

Enterprise

Tech Lead

It has some good features such as reminders, pins, saving documents etc.

Co-Founder and CEO

Everything from instant messaging, team collab to live chat are the most iconic aspects.

Has lack of flexibility for the integration with various systems compared to similar tools

Accounts Payable Assistant 

Flock offers an extensive range of features from team collaboration, file sharing, business instant messaging to live chat in one place.

it support specialist

The channels created to have a more compact communication is the best so that our work has faster results and leading a more synchronized organization of each project.

Marketing Team Lead

How it combines online project management and BIM tools in one place.

Member

No serious troubles but the vendor should incorporate robust video conferencing tools.

Human Resources Officer

Due to lack of video conferencing tools I am forced to integrate with external apps such as BlueJeans Meetings and VR.

Mechanical Engineer

Flock alone do support video conferencing.

Hospital Psychologist

Flock mobile application allows me to send and receive instant DMs over the internet.

Project Assistant

I use Flock on a daily basis and only dislike how I integrate with external apps to enhance video conferencing.

Civi Engineer

Flock is easy-to-use interface and features that facilitate team communication and collaboration, It offers team messaging, file sharing, task management, and integration with other popular collaboration tools.

I feel that the app lacks certain advanced features and customization options compared to other messaging apps.

Digital Marketing Analyst

Unfortunately, Flock demand a lot of integration to accomplish some tasks such as video conferencing.

Marketing Manager

It has features like group chat, video conferencing, task management, file sharing, document collaboration, and more.

Head of Marketing

Flock simplify marketing projects by creating unlimited communication channels in one place.

Agribusiness Manager

File sharing, team collaboration, project management and instant messaging.

It always require to be integrated with external apps to boost web conferencing.

Senior Recruitment Consultant

Best time management software which empowers service delivery and efficiency.

Human Resources Manager

The platform is also quite adaptable, and a variety of integrations are offered to teams to assist in streamlining workflow and automating operations.

Founder 

Additionally, there was no voice message feature available in most chats which limited our ability to respond timely to queries that may require an explanation.

Manager

It helps you create groups for your team. Since they have also created android app for the platform it becomes seamless to use across devices.

Executive Technical Director

Team collaboration is made easy by Flock.

Owner

Not able to customize more uniquely, but thats a minor point.

Provides secure communication between two users- Can do task management, file sharing, and document collaboration-

I replaced Swit with Flock since it has robust features.

Research Coordinator

Business instant messaging and live chat.

Flock saves time and gets work done in the simplest way.

Flock is a comprehensive collaboration platform that offers a variety of features to help teams stay connected and productive.

Director of Operations

Again, integration in this software is quite effective.

Director of Brand Experience

Flock is easy to use and it's application is based on the field.

I don't have something to write that I don't like, I think about it and they have never failed me with their service

For MAC users that primarily use Safari as their main browser, Flock didn’t work as well.

At times, the app fails to show notifications for the message received

Business Development Manager

Lack of search and filters in the groups and personal chats

Website Developer

I love that you can add notes and draw directly on images right inside the App - as a designer this is a wonderful tool for sharing visual ideas quickly.

Researcher

It is surprisingly good to be able to add emails of the teammates who are not in the flock.

Web Developer

Wish there was more admin controls like being able to see private groups

I do not have anything that I can really mention as a flaw.

Ing.

For just 4,50 a month, you have 3 apps in one: online communication, cloud storage, task managment.

data analyst

the interface is very simple and it adapts to the mobile.

Customer Success Manager 

Clean UI similar to other chatting softwares

For the planning and management of flows, I chose Flock.

Flock is still being used daily on our team.

It's good and if we miss any alerts also we get a mail every morning and this helps a lot to check for any missed ones

Contract Adminstrator

Overall experience is fairly neutral as I only used it for 1 year to communicate between a large amount of stake holders working in a live shopping centre environment.

Sales And Marketing Specialist

I love how you can make comments and doodle directly on photographs within the application.

File and Team Collaboration

Team Collaboration

Chat and Messaging

Project Management

Integrations

Channel Creation

Features

Team Communication

Task Management

Small Business

Large Enterprises

Mid-size Business

Most reviewers indicate Flock offers strong value for money, highlighting its affordable pricing compared to competitors like Slack and its robust feature set, even in the free plan. They appreciate the generous free trial, the ability to add guests without extra cost, and the clear breakdown of pricing and features. Some users report that the free version includes many useful functionalities, making it suitable for startups and small businesses. However, some reviewers feel the free plan has restrictive limits on administration and certain features, which can be a drawback for those needing more advanced controls.

WhatsApp

WhatsApp is a customer communications management software that helps businesses of all sizes create product catalogs and respond to customers’ messages or queries in real-time. The software provides end-to-end encryption to secure chats, voice messages, images, audio/video calls, and more.

Enterprise open-source team chat, on-prem and in the cloud. Zulip is the only modern team chat app that is designed for both live and asynchronous conversations.


Search/Filter

Audio Calls

By industry, Zulip reviewers are most commonly professionals in research (28%). The most frequent use case for Zulip cited by reviewers is team communication (85% of reviewers).

Users and use cases

The Zulip integration most frequently cited by reviewers is GitHub, an application development product rated 4.7 out of 5 for its integration with Zulip.

Zulip is a team communication tool offering key features such as alerts/notifications, real-time chat, discussion forums, and mobile access, among others.

Open Source

Zulip

Linux

Basic

Chief of Staff

if you have a lot of channels & topics it can take a while to scroll through relevant ones or sometimes it's hard to find what I'm looking for, especially when it auto-collapses between DM and channels

Parts Manager

Teams crashed, wouldn't open properly and had to manually boot up the "old" version for it to work, it would randomly close in the middle of the work day or fail to show a notification so messages were missed.

Maintainer

There's a wealth of options for private and public channels, types of notifications and their behavior, and robust permissions.

Associate Professor of Pediatrics

The integration and automation options (bots/webhooks, GitHub/Zoom integrations) have streamlined our workflow.

Assistant professor

I have used it in small research groups around five people to coordinate joint writing and programming projects, in university courses I teach with a larger number of students, and in a large research community with thousands of members.

Operations Manager

We also wanted something that would allow for voice and video calling and file sharing, and the ability to post your status so that each user can see at a glance who is available.

The learning curve can be a bit steep for new users unfamiliar with streams and topics, but this is rare in the real-world.  

Ability to create additional folders and topics under a channel.

Scientific Researcher

I find very useful to group all possible topics that currently I'm working on with my team and mark as resolved the ones which seem to be done.

Board Member

We use the tool for communications between members of the management board and it allows us to avoid the well known "Respond to all" trap with conventional e-mail

Professor

Over the years I have seen software communities (mainly scala earlier) move between various discussion forums, always trying to tradeoff. With Zulip everything is essentially as it should be, allowing asynchronous coordination of workflows involving code and mathematics in an intuitive and clean fashion. Except for the phase when Gitter was well maintained, Zulip is the first forum which just works.

Likewise, typing of equations using LaTex commands works pretty well!

The biggest negative feedback we receive using the product is that it is up to the user to manually update a custom status, and custom statuses cannot be saved as a preset.

Inspector

Thanks to the threads and discussions, we can also use Zulip for some fun small talk on some subjects like we did on WhatsApp (gif and emojis) without cluttering the serious work space.

Because Zulip is a less common platform, most folks haven't used it before and have a bit of a learning curve to get fluent in it.

President

Channels with topics, custom emojis, email alerts, mobile app, push notifications

Sometimes takes time to load on mac after inactivity.

Search actually works, and there are many notification settings.

It's a great alternative to Slack, but cheaper and more stable, and it scale with you if you are a startup

It’s well-structured for multi-directional conversations.

Zulip is our main communication channel - we barely use e-mail any longer.

Founder

It's such high-quality software for it to be an open-source tool. Despite some advanced features requiring payment, you can get most of the fundamentals along with some really cool tools on the completely free plan.

I would love for it to be easier to organise larger teams, e.g. with documents and/or a clearer and more concise overview of chats and channel data.

The short list of presets do not include a "lunch" status, for example. And, it's difficult to see who is on or off duty unless they remember to specifically post that.

Director of Learning and Administration

Zulip is safe and secure for all users - especially for minors who need to contact each other in a safe environment, without the worry of external influences Zulip has been invaluable.

It has a very convenient streams and threads model, allowing for focussed discussions over time.

It is an open (free) platform that allows users to store their content for unlimited time.

The final thing I am missing is a better setup for customizing the UI, and integrating addons.

Loved self-hosting it on my own server in Azure, but after we moved to zulip.com we are always running with the latest release which is fantastic

We are a company of 30 and have around 70 users including guests.

Super easy to move messages from one channel/place to another, so if you're re-organizing you both don't lose things and also can better consolidate knowledge that accidentally got spread around in different areas.

Loads of UI config options, has a native mobile app that pairs with it.

During Covid we were suddenly forced into a situation where teens who had been seeing each other on a regular basis were isolated and we needed a safe reliable way for them to communicate.

Developer

It is a stable chat with all the features I currently expect. And I prefer Zulip over other systems because of its nicely working topic-based chat.

Also the zulip icon on the Android launcher screen sometimes fails to show an remindera new message has arrived.

People familiar with Slack do not have problem with switching to Zulip.

I'd like to have a place with folders and enough space to save files on Zulip instead of using a cloud.

University Professor

Compared to Slack or MS Teams, Zulip is much easier to keep organized using the topics (filters for topic within a channel).

Senior Manager

We don't have it integrated with video calls, but I know that's something we can do easily with a plug-in.

There are minor bugs sometimes, my favorite one is that the go-back mouse button in the desktop app is broken.

Director, Indigenous Guardianship Program

Intuitive UI to have threaded conversations.

I'm also not sure about the state of the video conferencing for zulip (I think they offered it via jitsi?), but I do not expect this from a chat system at the moment.

Don’t have any complaints other than sometimes the iOS app gets a little slow or out of sync with incoming push notifications

I use it for quick communication with my research group of 15-20 students.

Community member

The chat functionality in the web client is awesome for distributed teams - well, for any team, actually.

Assistant Professor

The organization and storage of messages has enhanced the productivity of myself and colleagues for years.

Flock vs Zulip Comparison (2026)

Flock

Zulip

Overview

Video & Screenshots

Pricing

User reviews

Key features

Integrations

Alternatives