Setting up your organization
Welcome to Zulip! This page will guide you through trying out Zulip,
migrating your organization from other team chat tools (if needed),
getting everything set up, and inviting others to join.
If you are joining an existing organization, we recommend checking out
our guide to Getting started with Zulip.
If you encounter any problems as you're getting started, please drop
by our friendly development community and let
us know!
Trying out Zulip
You can start by reading about how Zulip’s unique
topic-based threading combines the best of email and
chat to make remote work productive
and delightful.
It's also easy to try out Zulip for yourself.
- Instructions for all platforms
-
Check out the Zulip app. You can:
-
Create a Zulip Cloud organization for free in just
a few minutes. This is a great way to explore Zulip even if you plan to
self-host.
-
Invite your teammates to explore Zulip with you.
They will have a variety of perspectives on what's important in a chat app.
-
Run a week-long Zulip trial with your team, without using any other chat tools. This
is the only way to truly experience how a new chat app will help your team
communicate. You can:
Choosing between Zulip Cloud and self-hosting
Whether signing up for Zulip Cloud or self-hosting
Zulip is the right choice for you depends on
the needs of your organization.
If you aren’t sure what you need, our high quality export and import tools
(cloud, self-hosted) ensure you can always
move from our hosting to yours (and back). No matter which option you go with,
free or heavily discounted pricing is available for most non-business uses.
Advantages of Zulip Cloud
- Simple managed solution, with no setup or maintenance
overhead. Sign up with just a few clicks.
- Always updated to the latest version of Zulip.
- Anyone can start with Zulip Cloud Free.
Advantages of self-hosting Zulip
-
All self-hosted plans offer the same
100% open-source software. Organizations that do not require
support with their installation can always use Zulip for free with no
limitations.
-
Retain full control over your data and simplify compliance by self-hosting
Zulip behind your firewall.
-
We work hard to make it easy to install, back
up, and maintain a self-hosted
Zulip server. Self-host Zulip directly on Ubuntu or Debian Linux, in
Docker, or with
prebuilt images for Digital
Ocean and Render.
-
Customize Zulip for all your needs. It's easy to develop and maintain custom
integrations and features.
Learn more about self-hosting Zulip.
If your organization is moving to Zulip from another chat tool, you can use
Zulip's tools to import your data, including users, channels, messages, and
more. Follow the detailed import guides:
You can only import a workspace as a new Zulip organization. Your imported
message history cannot be added into an existing Zulip organization.
Create your organization profile
The information in your organization profile is displayed on your organization's
registration and login pages, and (optionally) in the communities
directory. Your organization profile picture
is also used for switching between
organizations in the Desktop app.
Edit organization profile
Your organization profile picture should be a square image. It will be displayed at
100×100 pixels, or more on high-resolution displays.
- Instructions for all platforms
-
Click on the gear () icon in the upper
right corner of the web or desktop app.
-
Select Organization settings.
-
On the left, click Organization profile.
-
Edit your organization name, type, description, and
profile picture.
-
(optional) Click Preview organization profile to see a preview of your
organization's login page in a new browser tab.
-
Click Save changes.
Add a wide logo
This feature is only available to Zulip Cloud Standard and self-hosted organizations.
You can customize the logo users see in the top left corner
of the Zulip app. For best results:
-
The logo should be a wide rectangle image with an 8:1 width to height ratio.
It will be displayed at 200×25 pixels, or more on high-resolution displays.
-
Make sure your logo has a transparent background, and trim any bordering
whitespace.
To upload a logo:
- Instructions for all platforms
-
Click on the gear () icon in the upper
right corner of the web or desktop app.
-
Select Organization settings.
-
On the left, click Organization profile.
-
Under Organization logo, upload a new logo.
Make sure to test the logo in both light theme and dark theme.
Customize organization settings
Review the settings for your organization to set everything up how you
want it to be.
- Instructions for all platforms
-
Click on the gear () icon in
the upper right corner of the web or desktop app.
-
Select Organization settings.
-
Click on the Organization settings and Organization
permissions tabs, as well as any others that are of interest.
A few settings to highlight:
For many other settings, e.g., message and
topic editing permissions, you can experience how
Zulip works for your organization before deciding what settings are best for
you.
Create streams
In Zulip, streams determine who gets a message. They are similar to
channels in IRC/Slack/Discord, chat rooms, and email lists.
We recommend setting up some streams before inviting other users to
join Zulip, so that you can automatically subscribe
everyone to the right set of
streams.
If you later create additional streams, no worries! You can always add
a group of users or all the members of another stream to a new stream.
Add clear descriptions to your streams, especially public streams.
How to create a stream
- Instructions for all platforms
-
Click on the gear () icon in
the upper right corner of the web or desktop app.
-
Select Stream settings.
-
Click All streams in the upper left.
-
Click Create stream on the right.
-
Fill out the requested info, and click Create.
For more details about stream settings, see Create a
stream.
Tips for creating streams
-
It's often best to start with just a few streams, and add more as
needed. For small teams, you can start with the default streams and
go from there.
-
For large organizations, we recommend using a consistent naming
scheme, like #marketing/<name> or #mk/<name> for all streams
pertaining to the marketing team, #help/<team name> for
<team name>'s internal support stream, etc.
-
A #zulip help stream can be useful for providing internal Zulip
support and answering questions about Zulip.
-
For open source projects or other volunteer organizations, consider
adding default streams like #announce for announcements, #new
members for new members to introduce themselves and be welcomed,
and #help so that there's a clear place users stopping by with
just a single question can post.
Customize settings for new users
Customize settings for new users to get them off to a great start.
Invite users to join
How to invite users to join
- Require invitations
- Allow anyone to join
To get everyone off to a good start, you may wish to share the guide
to Getting started with Zulip.
You can link to your Zulip organization with a nice badge.
Create user groups
User groups allow you to mention multiple
users at once, notifying them about a message. For example, you may choose to create user groups for teams in your organization.
How to create a user group
-
Click on the gear () icon in
the upper right corner of the web or desktop app.
-
Select Group settings.
-
Click Create user group on the right, or click the plus
() icon in the upper right.
-
Fill out the requested info, and click Create in the bottom right corner
of the create user group panel.
Note: You will only see the Create user group button if you have
permission to create user groups.
Set up integrations
Zulip integrates directly with dozens of products, and with hundreds
more through Zapier and
IFTTT. Popular Zulip integrations include
GitHub, Jira,
PagerDuty,
Sentry and
Twitter.
Further reading