“Yes — Zulip is actually a very good fit for research teams that live in threaded discussions.”
+ conversation search
“Its conversation search is particularly strong.”
+ file sharing
“File sharing is also solid, although there's one important limitation if your team works with lots of PDFs, papers, spreadsheets, and research documents.”
+ threaded discussions
“This is the real advantage of Zulip: discussions remain organized by subject rather than disappearing into one long chronological chat stream.”
− searching inside documents
“Search inside PDF contents | No native support”
− document management
“The limitation: Zulip isn't a document-management system.”