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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

#141

Post by jacktoole1 »

JonoBB wrote: post #134
aspir wrote: post #52

People are making the valid comparison of Hipchat and Slack, which is to be expected. But, this is a deeper move by Atlassian. Atlassian's business model is still "All roads lead to JIRA/Confluence." It's why so many of their products are free. This isn't as much a Hipchat v. Slack/IRC/Google/Campfire move, as adding another road to JIRA.

What absolutely killed HipChat for our team was the fact that its not possible to use HipChat for multiple teams. Need to be logged into multiple accounts at the same time (i.e your own team and your client's team)? Not possible. Their suggested solution is to use multiple different clients (i.e. one native, one browser) at the same time, which is beyond ridiculous. I dont think that I have seen any uservoice votes a…

For anyone else running into the same problem, I just copied my HipChat.app in /Applications, and ran the second hipchat next to the first hipchat (you can also change the second hipchat's icon for easy distinguishment). It's not perfect (upon logout/restart it still remembers the preferences for the other instance), but it solved 90% of my hassle.

Re: HipChat is now free for unlimited users

#142

Post by matwood »

quasse wrote: post #82
aspir wrote: post #52

People are making the valid comparison of Hipchat and Slack, which is to be expected. But, this is a deeper move by Atlassian. Atlassian's business model is still "All roads lead to JIRA/Confluence." It's why so many of their products are free. This isn't as much a Hipchat v. Slack/IRC/Google/Campfire move, as adding another road to JIRA.

I just switched our team to JIRA for this exact reason. We were already on Bitbucket for repos and using Sourcetree for git access, so might as well get issue tracking from the same place. Honestly my feelings on it are mixed so far. Doing a "good" job of administering projects and issues seems to have a pretty steep learning curve if you want to use more than about 10% of JIRA's functionality.

Basic ticket management is easy to get going. Users of the system can also mostly get away dragging tickets between status and logging some work as long as the Greenhopper plugin is turned on.

JIRAs biggest win is integration with so many other tools. Bitbucket is an obvious one, but then 3rd party tools like bugsnag will auto-create tickets for any snags your app issues.

Re: HipChat is now free for unlimited users

#143

Post by Karunamon »

EC1 wrote: post #120
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…

The fundamental problem they "solve" is to be more hip and cool than the last, since no regular human being has heard of IRC, let alone many "hardcore programmers" that I know. I wish IRC was overhauled SOMEHOW and made more accessible to the common person.

I never understood how IRC was somehow not accessible. Connect to a server, join a room, (usually from a helpfully provided list), enter text and other people see it. Those are the basics, and my gran could understand them.

It's no more difficult than browsing the web.

Re: HipChat is now free for unlimited users

#144

Post by eddieroger »

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…

That's pseudo-persistence, and it's only as stable as the client or bouncer. HipChat and Slack provide actual, stateless history, so you can reboot, logout, sign in from a mobile device, whatever, and pick up where you left off, with notifications in the meanwhile.

Re: HipChat is now free for unlimited users

#145

Post by eddieroger »

izolate wrote: post #22
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.

We were diehard HipChat users at my company, then one day I discovered Slack.com. Within a week it was our dominant messaging platform, not least because we could invite the entire company to use it for free (instead of just the development team). From a product design standpoint, Slack is streets ahead of the conservative HipChat.

Similar for me and mine. We ran out of free users, hired a new guy and couldn't add him in. Someone else suggested Slack, and until this announcement, haven't looked back.

Re: HipChat is now free for unlimited users

#146

Post by sgk284 »

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
     mockup discussions.
  7. Integration with most online services like
     GitHub, etc...
  8. Easy file transfers.
  9. No servers to manage.
  10. Easy user management.
  11. Video calls.
  12. Voice calls.
  13. Screen sharing.
Most importantly, it all just works. We could get IRC to do much of the above, but it'd be a hodgepodge of a solution and require someone to spend time setting it all up and maintaining it. At $2/user/month HipChat is a no-brainer. Why waste engineering resources trying to solve problems that someone else already solved for us?

Edit: And custom emoticons. Can't forget those. That's the best part of HipChat.

Re: HipChat is now free for unlimited users

#147

Post by eddieroger »

lobster_johnson wrote: post #123
dserodio wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slack has nice native clients for OS X, Android and iOS too.

I wouldn't call the OS X client "native". Sure, it's an app, but it's just a wrapper around the web page.

True, but it has dock badges, native Notification Center notifications and keyboard shortcuts for navigating chat. That's close enough to native for me.

Re: HipChat is now free for unlimited users

#149

Post by disillusioned »

nirvdrum wrote: post #105
dserodio wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slack has nice native clients for OS X, Android and iOS too.

I'm still holding out to see if they add Linux and Windows client support. Until then, HipChat is the only option for us.

Why's that? I use Chrome Application Shortcuts for Slack and it essentially creates a task bar shortcut, and works with desktop notifications. It's currently missing background notifications, but aside from that, there's no appreciable differences between it and something truly "native client".

Re: HipChat is now free for unlimited users

#150

Post by eddieroger »

Fizzadar wrote: post #8

We use HipChat at work, and I use Slack for some other projects; both pale in comparison to the simplicity, flexibility and client-options of IRC. But for those less technical it's a fantastic and easy to setup alternative. Pointless in an all-dev company, but anywhere else, priceless.

I've set up an IRC server before and tried convincing a moderately technical team to install Colloquy and jump on. I will happily trade the features of Slack or HipChat for the simplicity of IRC. Persistent rooms alone (with zero config, no bouncers, etc) is worthwhile over vanilla IRC.
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