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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

#201

Post by chermanowicz »

jacktoole1 wrote: post #141
JonoBB wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's smart. But still, it's crazy that something like multiple organizations would require you to do this on your end. There are better options out there :)

Re: HipChat is now free for unlimited users

#202

Post by eli »

AJ007 wrote: post #187
eli wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My goal is to make make setup and support easy for my users, some of whom are remote and most of whom have never heard of IRC. I don't literally want to deploy a bunch of mIRC clients.

(That said, if I did it over again I might pick Slack over HipChat. The integrations with e.g. Github really are that much better.)

Re: HipChat is now free for unlimited users

#203

Post by liddybird »

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…

It really depends on what you want to get out of chat $2 is a good price to pay if your team chatting needs are minimal. But as your organization grows, especially if it starts to involve a larger team and projects with larger scope and interdependent pieces, your chat needs evolve into more of a communications need. In such cases it may be worth it to look into a more comprehensive chat tool since it gives you a much more powerful communications platform than your AIM or even email.

If a significant chunk of your company's discussion is taking place in chat rooms, it may be time to look into an upgrade.

You'd want something that gives you some standard next-gen functions: great global chat history search,video conferencing, screen sharing, markdown support, distributed team presence tracker, advanced noise management tools, dedicated integration efforts (integration to basic collaboration tools like asana, trello, etc should take minimal effort)

Keep in mind Slack is hardly the only other alternative in this game. Zapier gave a really good overview the other day, including Kato, who (full disclosure) I work for. https://zapier.com/blog/best-team-chat-app/

also @shalmanese makes a good point about justifying the cost.

Re: HipChat is now free for unlimited users

#204

Post by gabebw »

baddox wrote: post #159
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…

Slack's blue "unread messages" banner should be a deal-breaker. I feel like I spend 10% of my day clicking around on Slack trying to get all the channels to realize I have read all their messages. It's such an insane usability nightmare that I can't believe any person or team seriously building a chat app would implement it.

I asked Slack and they told me how to fix it:

Escape closes the blue banner for the current channel.

Shift-Escape closes that blue banner for all channels.

Re: HipChat is now free for unlimited users

#205

Post by baddox »

gabebw wrote: post #204
baddox wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slack's blue "unread messages" banner should be a deal-breaker. I feel like I spend 10% of my day clicking around on Slack trying to get all the channels to realize I have read all their messages. It's such an insane usability nightmare that I can't believe any person or team seriously building a chat app would implement it.

I asked Slack and they told me how to fix it: Escape closes the blue banner for the current channel. Shift-Escape closes that blue banner for all channels.

Yeah, that was their response to my ticket as well. Shift-Escape saves some time, but it's still a useless feature that provides nothing but annoyance.

Re: HipChat is now free for unlimited users

#206

Post by nirvdrum »

disillusioned wrote: post #149
nirvdrum wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Chrome on Linux is barely usable most of the time. But having something that is native lets you do all the fun things you can do with native apps: auto-start at login, minimize to systray, alt-tab with nice icon, and so on.

Maybe Slack is different, but most rich web apps I've used ends up eating gobs of memory after prolonged usage.

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