How Zello works

Zello, founded in 2011, is “CB radio on your smartphone.”



Users on Zello can create channels, both private ones for communicating with people you already know or public ones organized around a common purpose or interest (eg. Uber drivers in a city sharing traffic info).



Once you follow a channel, users can communicate via a simple push-to-talk interface that broadcasts your audio snippet to everyone in a channel. Only one person can be talking on each channel at any one point in time and you are able to still listen (but not talk) on a channel even if the app is running in the background.



Because of Zello’s ability to provide users with ambient awareness of an evolving situation, it is helpful for groups that need to coordinate but can’t easily focus on a screen. This includes everyone form construction workers and taxi drivers to large scale protest mobs.



Zello monetizes by offering ZelloWorks, an enterprise SaaS version of their software which adds features such as encryption and user management that better fit the needs or more complex organizations.

Easy onboarding, and growing network effects

Amid the proliferation of communication and group messaging apps, Zello has managed to carve out an interesting design niche through an embrace of constraints.



Unlike multi-modal messaging apps like Slack or Whatsapp that support text/voice/images/video, Zello only allows you to communicate via voice, meaning that Zello can operate completely in the background, while your attention and focus is on other things.



Zello’s integration with hardware buttons on select bluetooth headsets means that, with the right hardware, you can both listen and speak while the phone remains in your pocket, making it useful for jobs that require both hands free.



Unlike teleconferencing apps like Skype or GoToMeeting which are always on, Zello only allows one person to be speaking at a time. But, this constraint means that Zello users can be following multiple channels, with Zello intelligently interleaving voice messages between them. Having each message be a discrete chunk of audio also allows users to go back through the history and replay past messages.



Compared to other Push-to-Talk apps like Voxer, Zello places a much greater emphasis on group communication vs one-on-one personal chat, with more robust moderation and group management features.



Zello’s optimization for low battery and bandwidth usage have made it especially popular for people in developing nations or who work in remote areas, as well as a natural fit for political organizing during protests or emergency response during natural disasters.



Additionally, the app has also benefitted from a large amount of organic press coverage from its central role during political uprisings or natural disasters, with a reported peak of over 7,000 new users registering per minute during Hurricane Harvey.



Zello's low friction to use, and its orientation towards groups, positions it to turn outstanding linear events into looping growth.