Introduced in ALZip version 8[citation needed], their own proprietary ALZ and EGG archive formats can be used, which supports Unicode, compression and other features.

ALZip was developed in 1999 as an internal application by the South Korean software company ESTsoft in response to employees' frustration using the English interface in WinZip.

[6] In just over a year, ALZip became the most popular archiver program in South Korea[7] and by December 2001, was the top downloaded software[8][9] in the country.

[10] The popularity of the software and the ALZ and EGG archive format played a large role in earning ESTsoft a place in the Digital Innovation Awards Top 100 Companies in South Korea[11] with the software taking special mention.

With the version 7 release, the license was changed from freeware to adware, displaying downloaded banner ads.

On the download page of ALZip is a serial number to copy and paste when you start the program, in order to have the license for the software free of charge.