SHSelfHostIndex

Conduit vs Zulip

A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted apps from related categories — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.

Not the right match-up?
CO Conduit Simple, fast and reliable Matrix homeserver in Rust VS ZU Zulip Threaded team chat that combines email and chat
FeatureConduitZulip
CategoryMatrix & XMPPTeam Chat
LicenseApache-2.0Apache-2.0
LanguageRustPython
Setup difficultyEasyMedium
Min. RAM128 MB2,048 MB
Deploymentdocker, binary, sourcedocker, bare-metal
GitHub stars★ 2,200★ 25,619
First released20202015
ReplacesSlack, DiscordSlack, Microsoft Teams

Why pick each one

Choose Conduit if…

  • Extremely easy to deploy
  • Runs on a Raspberry Pi
Conduit details

Choose Zulip if…

  • Excellent conversation organization
  • Strong async workflow
  • Fully open source
Zulip details

Frequently asked questions

Is Conduit or Zulip better?

Neither is universally better. Zulip has the larger community, while Conduit is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.

Are Conduit and Zulip free and open-source?

Yes. Conduit is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Zulip under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run Conduit and Zulip with Docker?

Conduit: yes. Zulip: yes.

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