Glip (discontinued) vs. Zimbra by Synacor

Glip feels right at home with a marketing and creative team. You must first ask yourself, are you tired of emailing all the time? Would working in real-time save you time? Do you share files all the time with your colleagues? If you answered yes to any of these questions then Glip can definitely benefit you.

I consider Zimbra Email & Collaboration a viable alternative to the major American cloud email platforms. In a scenario where data protection and privacy are critical, especially in an on-premise environment, Zimbra is a very suitable solution. It is also capable of offering a comprehensive set of tools and additional features (tasks, calendars, contacts, briefcase) in an integrated manner.

Incentivized

• The chat functionality of Glip is fantastic, and even their mobile app is really good. The software is truly platform-agnostic. My team uses Mac, Windows and Chrome OS as well as iOS and Android.
• The task functionality is well-designed and intuitive. It's very helpful to have access to tasks regardless of device or location, and the ability to create tasks from messages is surprisingly handy.
• The notes functionality is a great way to store information that the whole team or just a few members need access to. We also use it for mark-up occasionally, since it has the ability to leave comments pinned to a location on the document or image.
• We have the option of inviting clients to join Glip. This isn't something my team uses at this point, but it's an option.

Incentivized

• The management of incremental mail backup. It is very simple, and the administrators of my company recover information quickly.
• The management of the distribution lists is structured. This allows easy distribution of mass information.
• The web application is very complete and intuitive.

Incentivized

• Allow the ability to move a conversation when a hyperlink is involved. Currently not able to do this. Glip is aware and hopefully working on it.
• Add a more robust search feature to find old conversations. Search query time could also be sped up.
• Add reminder notifications. When tasks are added, it is sometimes easy to overlook older tasks.

Incentivized

• User web interface could be more friendly, but it is enough for daily use. It could be renewed and has to consider some usability concerns. Improving usability would significantly improve users' satisfaction.
• Message backup recovery is not a simple activity.
• As an administrator, some of the features work better using the command-line interface.
• The webclient uses ajax requests in almost every event. Because of that you may need a fast internet connection to have a good experience. You can switch to HTML version but it will limit what you can do.

Incentivized

Glip has saved us so much time that my team could no longer live without it. I don't know what we would do. All of us used it constantly all day every day. It is one of the best tools in my arsenal!

Mobile UI is not as pleasant as others, it looks washed out and that makes it seem like it lacks some features.

Incentivized

The web usability of the solution is adequate, with all functions integrated into a single interface. However, it is important to note that in the desktop environment, it lacks its own application and relies on ActiveSync synchronization with reference solutions like Outlook or Thunderbird. Some features, such as the briefcase, will be excluded. The same happens on smartphones.It is also common for competing solutions to include integrated chat or video call tools, which Zimbra lacks. These shortcomings are among the most frequently requested by users.

Incentivized

We have a free account so I understand why we are not at the top of the list. But we have had issues before that took forever for them to get back to us. Once I had to make a Twitter account just to tweet at them about the issue and they finally got back to me. After several weeks. And the issue was something we just had to wait out for a few more days. Normally you have to submit a ticket through their support page and maybe they will get back to you and maybe not. We had one issue where the standard user on the iMac was getting popups every few minutes about installing a helper tool. The only way to fix this was to delete and reinstall Glip as an admin user. This was frustrating because it took time to do this for me as the IT person, and after reaching out to a few times, I was finally given an answer two years after I had asked about it! Finally some devs reach out to me on Glip and told me to just put the app in the user folder instead of the app folder which is managed by the admin account. They said it should be fixed now and I believe it is.

Incentivized

Overall, we were satisfied with the implementation. We perhaps should have spent more time consulting with Zimbra or others regarding best practices but as we got to know the system better we were able to make changes relatively easily after the fact.

Incentivized

The team tasked with selecting a collaboration tool shortlisted Glip along with Microsoft Teams, and Webex Teams because they performed well and were reliable in our demanding Enterprise footprint. Glip also has a global presence and many applications to integrate with and many of the features were on par with its competitors.

Incentivized

• We were originally a Groupwise shop before changing to Zimbra in 2008. Zimbra, from an end-user standpoint, pricing, system administration, and management is a far better system.
• We use Google Apps for our students. We did not find it to be suitable for faculty and staff due to its lack of shared accounts.
• We are moving from Zimbra to Office 365. Office 365 offers just about all that Zimbra had, though its web interface is inferior to that of Zimbra. It does offer us greatly reduced costs though, and high availability. If Zimbra were to have a fully HA environment, we may have stayed with them.

Incentivized

• Glip has made it immensely more practical to manage team meetings, coordinate tasks, and hold video conferences. While some other apps might have a simpler user interface, you pay the price in having to adopt multiple applications to get the job done.

Incentivized

• Improved internal communication and dissemination and distribution of messages and corporate objectives.
• The creation of an internal network of employees is something that gives us security and confidence.
• Having a private and exclusive messaging system differentiates us from the competition and from other companies.