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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

#181

Post by shalmanese »

joshma wrote: post #34
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.

Any thoughts/justifications for pricing? The only thing holding us back is that Slack costs 4x as much ($8 instead of $2). While this isn't a big spend at the end of the day, we're sort of anchored at $2. There's nothing terribly wrong with hipchat, seems to address all our (simple) chat needs, and switching to slack doesn't seem to give us 4x as much value. So far the best reasoning I have is that we're a mostly-dev…

This is a horrible way to think about it, slack doesn't need to deliver 4x the value, it just needs to deliver $6 worth of extra value per month.

Even at the very cheapest end of the spectrum, a developer is going to cost at least $60 an hour, fully loaded. If slack can make them 6 minutes more productive a month (ie: 12 seconds a day), then slack is worth it. These are productivity differences that aren't even measurable in practice which means the rational thing to do is to just be price insensitive and adopt the tool that works best, regardless of cost.

Re: HipChat is now free for unlimited users

#182

Post by Deestan »

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 consent from employees.

Re: HipChat is now free for unlimited users

#184

Post by djim »

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…

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.

Re: HipChat is now free for unlimited users

#185

Post by hoopism »

I tried to sign up. I really did.

First I entered in my own details but neglected my lastname... didn't say I had to. It's a single name field. It rejected my submission and zero'd out the fields. Strike one.

Then it asked for my team members names and email addresses. It had a skip button, that was nice. I added their emails and used again their first names... let them add their last name or preferred name. Again it failed and removed all the data I entered. Strike two.

Then I attempted to download the client. It wouldn't let me till I verified my account. It will let me send solicitation emails to team members... but not download a client. Ok. Odd. I downloaded the client to my mac entered credentials and after about 4 minutes it failed to launch with a debug window displayed. Strike three.

I did try.

Re: HipChat is now free for unlimited users

#186

Post by hoopism »

I tried to sign up. I really did.

First I entered in my own details but neglected my lastname... didn't say I had to. It's a single name field. It rejected my submission and zero'd out the fields. Strike one.

Then it asked for my team members names and email addresses. It had a skip button, that was nice. I added their emails and used again their first names... let them add their last name or preferred name. Again it failed and removed all the data I entered. Strike two.

Then I attempted to download the client. It wouldn't let me till I verified my account. It will let me send solicitation emails to team members... but not download a client. Ok. Odd. I downloaded the client to my mac entered credentials and after about 4 minutes it failed to launch with a debug window displayed. Strike three.

I did try.

Re: HipChat is now free for unlimited users

#187

Post by AJ007 »

eli wrote: post #164
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…

Similar story. I really liked Slack and the integrations are fantastic, but the UI has way too much going on and the lack of a native Windos client meant even just deploying the app is a hassle. The mobile client has menus that slide from left, right, and top last I checked. I told them they'd have had my business easily if they had a one click windows install and an optional Dummy Mode I could turn on for users by d…

You can connect to Slack through any IRC client, check your settings.

Re: HipChat is now free for unlimited users

#188

Post by mikeash »

djim wrote: post #184
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…

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.

Re: HipChat is now free for unlimited users

#190

Post by gog »

jedisct1 wrote: post #28

I don't get the point of HipChat. It's a closed, proprietary Jabber server, with closed-source clients, intentionally no OTR support but the explicit ability to spy one-on-one conversations instead. And people used to pay for that?

I agree with you, but current open source alternatives (XMPP and it's clients) are lacking really good clients for the osx/ios/android/linux/windows/web which share some common functionality (embedding images, videos, keeping a tab of sent files, search, ...).

I would give money for somebody to work on this problem and open source it.

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