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HipChat is now free for unlimited users

blog.hipchat.com

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Re: HipChat is now free for unlimited users

#191

Post by joeblau »

freerobby wrote: post #48
joeblau wrote: post #3

HipChat is probably under fire from Slack. That's why I think they are making this change, because I just made the transition a few weeks ago and Slack has been amazing. Once you go Slack, you never go back.

I disagree. We tried Slack on our 26-person team and left it after a week. It had a few fans, but most people found the interface to be more complex and noisy than HipChat. Lots of red icons and blue banners that could not be disabled. No ability to see at a glance who is in a room without clicking the list and scrolling through it. The integrations were nice and the search was amazing, but those things were less imp…

I think there is @everyone and @channel.

Re: HipChat is now free for unlimited users

#192

Post by RobAley »

mikeash wrote: post #188
djim wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if said service is provided by the employer, they own the data/communications and have every right to monitor the service. same goes for work email: employers have access to this. it isn't illegal for them to access these communications done on a work account.

That depends heavily on local laws and you really can't make a blanket statement like that.

And laws be damned, it's often employee moral that takes a hit when employers snoop without consent, and that can be just as costly (if not more so) than a court case in many companies.

Re: HipChat is now free for unlimited users

#193

Post by mikeash »

sgk284 wrote: post #146
IgorPartola wrote: post #118

Last I tried HipChat, it was a terrible experience simply because I wanted to not run yet another application and instead use Adium. They do support XMPP but to get it working you have to do magic. After I did the magic, I had chat up and running but lo and behold: file transfers did not work. Thankfully, this is when our team decided the experiment was over. We went back to using IRC. What fundamental problem do the…

HipChat is incredible compared to IRC. Out of the box you get: 1. 1-on-1 messaging 2. Private and public chat rooms 3. A client that works on mobile, desktop, and web. No matter where I am, I'm connected to my team. 4. Persistent and searchable history. 5. Real-time notifications if someone mentions you while offline. 6. You can copy and paste screenshots directly into the room. We use this all of the time for gui mo…

Some of those are legitimate points, but quite a few apply equally to IRC. Namely, 1, 2, 3, and 9.

Re: HipChat is now free for unlimited users

#194

Post by truncate »

Deestan wrote: post #182

Be aware that Hipchat are now rolling out a new "feature" in which the account admin can read all private 1-to-1 chat: http://help.hipchat.com/forums/138883-suggestions-ideas/sugg... This could be a significant issue for some, both morally and legally. If you are using / are going to use Hipchat with this enabled, at least make sure you are aware of any legalities you need to conform to because of this. E.g. gather c…

I mentioned earlier in this thread, privacy was already kind of broken. Given your account was registered with organization email, admin could reset your password and look at your private chats (like when you leave a company). Doing that would perhaps be violation of terms, but I don't think many would care particularly in developing countries where legalities of such things are joke.

Re: HipChat is now free for unlimited users

#195

Post by ltorresv »

Deestan wrote: post #182

Be aware that Hipchat are now rolling out a new "feature" in which the account admin can read all private 1-to-1 chat: http://help.hipchat.com/forums/138883-suggestions-ideas/sugg... This could be a significant issue for some, both morally and legally. If you are using / are going to use Hipchat with this enabled, at least make sure you are aware of any legalities you need to conform to because of this. E.g. gather c…

I don't see where it says it's already a feature. The note itself (not that post) says it might be available in the future but it's not there right now:

Messages and files shared in 1-1 chats are only browsable and searchable in HipChat by the two people involved.

"While admins do not have access to browse or search 1-1 chats through functionality within HipChat, this is an option we may provide in the future for organizations to opt-in to. If made available, it will not be retroactive, and we will be sure to address how affected users can be notified that their chats are subject to viewing by their admins" http://help.hipchat.com/knowledgebase/articles/358098

It does say the organization can email them and ask for that so while technically possible it's not so easy for the admin to snoop.

Re: HipChat is now free for unlimited users

#196

Post by 15thandwhatever »

mikeash wrote: post #188
djim wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if said service is provided by the employer, they own the data/communications and have every right to monitor the service. same goes for work email: employers have access to this. it isn't illegal for them to access these communications done on a work account.

That depends heavily on local laws and you really can't make a blanket statement like that.

largely depends on the industry you work in.

a lot of us work in small dev shops, where we really like our privacy.

a lot of us also work in regulated industries, where if your employer is NOT logging, then your company gets fined by $government or $regulatingbody.

Re: HipChat is now free for unlimited users

#197

Post by 15thandwhatever »

idle_processor wrote: post #126
brown9-2 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Persistence. It's nice to be able to see what conversations you missed while offline or overnight, especially if you have teammates distributed across the globe. Persistence also allows you to search through or link people to old conversations.

Overnight is covered by leaving a client running, with logging. Offline is covered by using a BNC[0]. These solutions are years old, but perhaps less user-friendly than hipchat. There are a plethora of IRC clients to choose from one various platforms, but there's only the one hipchat. IRC is also an open protocol. So, hipchat's only real chance is trying to be the Apple of IRC--they must nail UX and marketing to the…

irc is great for a company that consists solely of developers + devops who've been bearding it up for 10+ years.

however, for the rest of the world, if you work with a non-dev team (think sales, marketing, customer support), you will really frustrate them when you tell them: "the question you just asked was answered at 3am last night, if you just scrollback..."

...god forbid you lose power (like san francisco in a heat wave last week)

or you could just choose to really frustrate your IT person(s) by telling them they need to install and maintain irc clients + bncs across multiple operating systems for your users, that automatically start up and join the right channels when the user logs in.

or you could just frustrate all of your mobile users by draining their battery (and potentially their data plan) by telling them to stay connected to irc 24/7 from their phones via a mobile irc client, or hold a companywide training session on how to install an ssh client + screen-reattach + navigate irssi from a touchscreen phone.

or you could further frustrate your users by telling them irssi includes search as long as they learn the syntax of /lastlog.

i'm not even going to touch screenshots.

user-friendly > neckbeard.

pay the $X/mo per user for slack/hipchat

-versus-

paying $XX to $XXX/hour per user to provide them with the requisite knowledge foundation and ongoing support to use your arcane chat methodology that hates noobs.

Re: HipChat is now free for unlimited users

#198

Post by chermanowicz »

anthonys wrote: post #87
kolev wrote: post #21

My biggest issue with HipChat is the inability to run multiple organizations on the same client. The video and audio "premium" features are really a terrible idea as there's Skype, Google Hangouts, UberConference, and similar for that and they are free and core businesses and Atlassian cannot and should not attempt to compete with those!

I'd love to see multiple organisations also. I think the problem's only going to get worse now that HipChat is free- why wouldn't different work teams etc. adopt it?

See comments above... there are apps that let you have multiple organizations

Re: HipChat is now free for unlimited users

#199

Post by chadcf »

joeblau wrote: post #3

HipChat is probably under fire from Slack. That's why I think they are making this change, because I just made the transition a few weeks ago and Slack has been amazing. Once you go Slack, you never go back.

I really liked slack but in the end we went for hipchat for a two main reasons.

1. It's 25% of the cost (although that has now shifted). This may not be a big deal for small teams but if you want to have 100 users on either service, the difference is between $2,400 a year or $9,600 a year. That's a big difference. 2. Hipchat has a self hosted option in the works which should be available within a month or two (per them). This is essential for any company that deals with potential PHI on their IM systems. Slack says they plan to offer a self hosted option but it's a long way out.

Those are two things slack just couldn't overcome, beyond the fact that I generally liked slack better (it's prettier, much better message searching, better integrations, etc). The fact that hipchat also has voice chat is a big plus too though we've not found it reliable. Presumably at some point it will get better though and make it a more valuable feature.

Re: HipChat is now free for unlimited users

#200

Post by freerobby »

joeblau wrote: post #191
freerobby wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. We tried Slack on our 26-person team and left it after a week. It had a few fans, but most people found the interface to be more complex and noisy than HipChat. Lots of red icons and blue banners that could not be disabled. No ability to see at a glance who is in a room without clicking the list and scrolling through it. The integrations were nice and the search was amazing, but those things were less imp…

I think there is @everyone and @channel.

It's not the same. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7807003
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