Real-Time Team Chat — Private, Self-Hosted Messaging

Channels, DMs, threads, calls, and file sharing. Connected to your docs and tasks, running on your server.

Most team chat tools are standalone products. You pay per seat, your messages live on someone else's server, and when a conversation references a document or task, you copy-paste a link and hope for the best.

Zioan's chat is different because it shares a database with everything else in your workspace. When someone mentions a task in chat, you can see the task status without opening another tab. When a document is shared in a channel, it stays connected. Search finds messages alongside the docs and tasks they reference.

Your messages never leave your server. No third-party vendor stores your conversations, scans them for ads, or holds them hostage behind an export paywall. You own every message, every file, every thread.

What's included

Channels (space-scoped group conversations)
Direct messages (1:1 and group)
Threaded replies with cross-channel forwarding
Audio and video calls
Screen sharing
File uploads and sharing
Resource attachments (docs, snippets, calendar events)
Public and private message pins
Emoji reactions
Message reminders with notifications
Full-text message search
Online status indicators
@mention notifications
Mute channels and DMs
Floating chat widget (split-screen, PiP, popup, new tab)

How chat works in Zioan

Channels and direct messages

Channels are scoped to spaces, so your engineering team's channels stay separate from your marketing team's. Direct messages work across the entire workspace for private 1:1 or group conversations. Every channel and DM supports full formatting, file uploads, and resource attachments.

Threads that keep conversations organized

Reply to any message to start a thread. Threads can be forwarded between channels when a conversation becomes relevant to another team. This keeps your main channel feed clean while preserving context in the thread itself.

Audio and video calls with screen sharing

Start a call directly from any chat conversation. Zioan uses mediasoup for media processing, which means audio and video data stays on your infrastructure. No traffic routed through external servers. Screen sharing is built in for pair programming, demos, or quick walkthroughs.

File sharing and resource attachments

Drop files into any conversation. But more importantly, attach Zioan resources directly: share a document, a code snippet, or a calendar event as a structured attachment that recipients can open in context. This is something standalone chat tools cannot do.

Pins, reactions, and reminders

Pin messages for the whole channel (public pins) or just for yourself (private pins). React with emoji to acknowledge messages without adding noise. Set reminders on messages to get notified later, so nothing falls through the cracks during a busy thread.

Search across everything

Chat search in Zioan is part of the global search system. Press Cmd+K and find messages alongside documents, tasks, and snippets. No need to remember which app a conversation happened in.

Chat widget

A floating chat bubble stays accessible from any page in Zioan. Open it in split-screen, picture-in-picture, popup window, or a new tab. You can keep chatting while working on a document or managing tasks without switching contexts.

Why teams choose Zioan for chat

No per-seat chat bill

Slack charges $8.75 per user per month for its Pro plan. For a 10-person team, that's $1,050 per year just for messaging. Zioan's chat is included in the one-time license fee of EUR 999, alongside every other feature. Add more team members without watching the bill climb.

Messages stay on your server

Every message, file, and call is processed and stored on infrastructure you control. For teams handling client data, health records, financial information, or anything covered by GDPR, this removes the compliance headache of trusting a SaaS provider with your conversations.

Chat that knows about your work

When someone posts a task ID in chat, Zioan can link directly to it. When you search for a keyword, results come from chat, documents, and tasks at once. This integration is not a plugin or a third-party connector. It is built into the same application, sharing the same database.

No message history limits

Slack's free plan hides messages older than 90 days. Even paid plans have data retention policies. Zioan stores your full message history on your server with no artificial limits. Your team's institutional knowledge stays accessible as long as you want it.