Moving from Google Groups to Zulip?

[Alex Cabal]

There is a current discussion on Hacker News about Discord's impending
ID requirements. In the comments someone suggested Zulip as an alternative.

One of the long-term roadmap items for SE is to move away from Google
Groups to some kind of self-hosted solution. Zulip sounds like a
promising possibility.

I haven't looked especially closely, but it does seem to meet these
requirements:

- Should be FOSS and self-hosted

- Should be able to manage individual ebook projects in a
discussion-thread style, like a classic forum or mailing list

- Should be able to interact entirely via email like a mailing list

- Should have a more modern interface than classic mailing list software
like GNU Mailman etc.

Does anyone have any experience with Zulip, pro or con, that they'd like
to share? Is there any consensus on whether it is or isn't suited for
our particular workflow?

[Cecil New]

I used it in a previous volunteer role. I was part of the IT team which moved to discord so that others outside our organization could interact with us. But the business itself stayed on Zulip. 

My knowledge is two years old, but it worked well, was easy to use and learn. 

I remain in contact with the IT team. I can pass your requirements on to them and get their take on how well it matches your needs.

Cecil

[Elizabeth Miller-Boldt]

It also seems like you can take a look at how Zulip uses their own product at https://chat.zulip.org/ if seeing the structure and format would be at all helpful

[David]

I make it just under three years ago since the last discussion of this question? Given Zulip had already been around for a decade at that point, I'm surprised it didn't get a mention then. I have no experience of it at all (never heard of it until now!), but it does look like it ticks all the boxes.

My hunch is that one of the main alternatives remains the Mailman 3.n suite, which definitely ticks all the boxes.

Zulip looks very promising, though, and reading through the docs, quite possibly (probably?) easier to set up and maintain than Mailman3?

David / FIfe, UK

On Wednesday, 11 February 2026 at 00:41:41 UTC Elizabeth wrote:

It also seems like you can take a look at how Zulip uses their own product at https://chat.zulip.org/ if seeing the structure and format would be at all helpful