Atlassian HipChat - Review 2022

In the team messaging app space, 2 names dominate: Slack and Atlassian HipChat. Both of these online collaboration services facilitate advice past giving people ways to talk to one another that make sense in the modern world. They permit you instant message with individuals or groups in real time or asynchronously. When text alone doesn't cut it, you can jump on a video call or show your screen to your colleagues. If a teammate needs a file, you can send information technology by dragging it into your messaging infinite. Slack and HipChat share all these features, and more, merely HipChat's starting cost is a quarter of what Slack charges. Both are PCMag Editors' Choices, only HipChat is the better selection for teams on a upkeep.

Pricing and Plans

HipChat'southward upkeep friendliness starts with a free choice. Free HipChat accounts have no limits on the number of people y'all can invite to chat or the number of integrations you can create. At the free tier of service, you get group messaging, instant messaging, file sharing capabilities, and the ability to add guests who have restricted access to your squad'due south account. Search history is capped at 25,000 letters, and the storage ceiling is 5GB. With a gratuitous account, you miss out on video calls and screen sharing.

HipChat Plus is the side by side tier of service, and information technology includes everything in the complimentary version plus video calls and screen sharing. Information technology costs $2 per user per month. HipChat Plus besides includes unlimited storage and messages. You can try information technology for free for 30 days.

Atlassian also offers a self-hosted version of HipChat called HipChat Data Centre. This option is for enterprises that need added security for team messaging. The price depends on the number of users. For instance, for a team of simply 10 people (which would be unusual, seeing as HipChat Data Center is really for very large organizations), information technology costs just $x per yr. For a team of 500, Atlassian charges $16,000 per twelvemonth. For 5,000 people, y'all can expect to pay $120,000 per twelvemonth.

For its not-enterprise plans, Slack costs a lot more than HipChat; however, the two services' complimentary plans are roughly comparable, though HipChat has the edge. With Slack's free tier of service, you also get unlimited members and plenty of core features, just your account search history is limited to ten,000 messages, rather than 25,000. Storage gets capped at 5GB, which matches HipChat. With Slack Free, however, you can only integrate x services, compared with HipChat'south unlimited integrations. HipChat clearly has fewer limitations and offers more at the complimentary level.

Slack's first tier of paid service, called Slack Standard, costs $viii per person per calendar month, or the equivalent of $vi.67 per person per month, when paid annually. The two biggest benefits of Slack Standard over Slack Complimentary are unlimited search history and unlimited integrations. Viii bucks per person per month is a hefty price considering HipChat gives you i of those two things (unlimited integrations) for free. Slack as well has an option called Slack Plus, which adds priority support, single sign-on options, and a few other goodies for $15 per user per calendar month. That'due south the almost expensive per-person team messaging app price I've seen.

Several other team messaging apps toll less than Slack simply more than HipChat, driving habitation the betoken that HipChat offers excellent value. Glip by RingCentral, for instance, costs $5 per person per month for a Basic account and $ten per person per calendar month for Pro. Newcomer to the squad messaging space Twist costs just as much as Glip Bones for its Twist Unlimited account, $5 per user per month. Flock charges a picayune less, at $three per person per month for its Pro program. Zoho Cliq is the only other app that costs every bit fiddling as HipChat, meeting its $2 per person per month price.

Some organizations may observe that they don't take to pay anything at all for a team messaging app because information technology'southward already included in some other service they use. Microsoft Role 365 users, for example, already get Microsoft Teams for no extra charge.

Alternatively, a concern social network, such equally Workplace by Facebook, has text, sound, and video chat already built into information technology likewise. Pricing for Workplace starts at $three per active user per calendar month for the commencement 1,000 people. The per-person price decreases as the number of users increases, afterward that initial threshold.

Atlassian also offers a more comprehensive collaboration tool called Confluence. Confluence lets teams manage the creation, organization, and discussion of work, but information technology doesn't have full-blown project management tools. The price for Confluence varies greatly depending on the number of users. For instance, 15 users costs $50 per calendar month, while 50 users costs $200 per month.

Interface and Features

The basic setup of HipChat involves creating unlike Rooms in which people can have conversations about specific topics on an ongoing basis. Rooms can be for departments, projects, or other themes. You lot tin can practice simply about whatever you want with them. Every bit with any team messaging app or instant messaging app, y'all tin can meet when other people are signed in and online, and they in plough can set their statuses to signal their whereabouts.

Every bit a user, yous tin read discussions, add your 2 cents, upload files to discuss, use the @ symbol earlier some other user's name to flag that person, and more than.

The interface is simple, if a petty slow—it's not as slick equally Slack'south. On the left is a list of Rooms, or spaces to discuss specified topics. Rooms tin can be open for anyone to join or restricted to invite-but. You might have Rooms for different departments in a business, or for different projects, or both.

Below the Rooms, besides at left, are people on your team with colored dots indicating whether they are online and bachelor (green), idle (yellow), or busy (blood-red). Equally with almost conversation apps, you can gear up a custom status similar "out to lunch" or "in a coming together." That's all standard, but wouldn't information technology be nice to get the aforementioned at-a-glance information if a colleague is on vacation or taking parental leave? HipChat isn't and then sophisticated as that, but Twist is. When you marking yourself as on holiday, your Twist profile motion picture switches to a palm tree and beach scene.

The centre of a HipChat screen is where the chat itself takes identify. Along the right side are a few icons that, when clicked, show people online (a repeat of the right side, but more easily visible if you have a long list of Rooms), files uploaded to this particular Room, links added to the Room, and a listing of Room actions. From the Room actions, an admininstrator can change the Invitee Access list, and any Room member tin invite others to join.

HipChat besides offers screen sharing and video chat, but merely for paid accounts. Video conversation is a adequately standard feature in squad messaging apps, simply not all of them have screen sharing or whiteboarding. Flock, Twist, and Microsoft Teams don't.

When y'all invite people to join your HipChat account, yous have the option to designate them as administrators. Administrators have visibility into all Rooms, even if they aren't invited to participate in them, and they accept other typical admin-level controls, also.

Company Culture

HipChat, like Slack, includes emoji. A shortlist of them pops up when you click a smiley face next to the chat app's text field, and a whole page of them opens when you select More. On the new page with additional emoji, you can click on any one to copy it to your pasteboard, and below each 1 is a text command y'all tin can type to get it to appear without copy and paste. HipChat lets you upload custom emoji, too.

When used in practice, online team communication tools often capture the sense of humor and levity of your colleagues. And so even if emoji (or animated gifs for that affair) are non your matter, y'all may terminate up embracing them. Employees and teammates typically want a dedicated Room or infinite to blow off steam, talk nigh tv set, and joke around with ane another. HipChat starts off every business relationship with a Watercooler Room for just this reason. It'due south useful to know that, in do, these tools don't usually business firm exclusively professional and pragmatic conversations. Additionally, a communication tool needs to be part of the company culture to be successful. If employees and squad collaborators don't bask using information technology, they won't.

What's Missing?

As team chat apps mature, some are more proficient than others at solving specific problems. For instance, a mutual complaint for teams separated by many time zones is the chaos and confusion of a stream-style messaging system. If Person A posts a question at the first of her mean solar day and Person B doesn't see it until she wakes up ix hours afterwards, a whole lot of other talk may accept gotten in the way of the initial question, making it difficult for Person B to follow up, or for Person A to follow forth.

Twist solves the problem of teams separated past time by creating different threads within a discussion area. The solution looks a whole lot like email, which some people may non like, merely y'all can't deny it'southward more than orderly. Slack has attempted a similar solution. Slack'south threads are more like offshoots of primary conversations, however, and are less successful in their implementation than Twist'due south are. HipChat doesn't have whatsoever kind of threading.

Another feature missing from HipChat is the ability to prepare keyword notifications. To my knowledge, Slack is the merely chat app with this feature. When you create keyword notifications, you become an alert whenever someone uses those terms in whatever public Channel, fifty-fifty if y'all're not a member of it.

HipChat handles uploaded files with ease, but information technology's not so easy to express an idea virtually an uploaded visual when you tin can't draw on it. Glip by RingCentral includes tools to marking upward images and PDFs so that you tin meliorate explain your comments on files. HipChat doesn't take this kind of tool.

Apps and Extras

You can use HipChat entirely in your browser, or you can use its many apps instead. HipChat has native apps for Windows, Mac OS, Linux, iPhone, iPad, and Android. In a browser, it works with Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Internet Explorer 10 or later.

Atlassian makes APIs for HipChat available and then that if you have the resources, you can build any tools and integrations you need. If you are less savvy at programming, you tin can always turn to Zapier for other integrations; HipChat is in its network. Zapier is like IFTTT for business concern tools. IFTTT stands for "if this, and then that," and using that basic formula, you can connect whatever ii tools that are in its network. For example, with Zapier, you lot can create an integration that says: "If a job is created in Asana, so ship a re-create of it to HipChat." You create these commands with very simple tools—no coding experience needed.

A Stellar Value

For its budget-friendly pricing and wonderful ability to piece of work with other business tools, Atlassian HipChat is an Editors' Selection for squad communication. Information technology's much less expensive than Slack and offers a comparable experience, although Slack—which is also an Editors' Choice—looks slicker and offers a few features, such every bit keyword notifications and threads, that HipChat doesn't have.

Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/atlassian-hipchat/16857/atlassian-hipchat

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