HipChat is now free for teams of 5 users or fewer | Hacker News Reader

HipChat is now free for teams of 5 users or fewer

blog.hipchat.com

343 pointsjpadilla_117 comments

One critical thing I recently learned -- Hipchat is run exclusively out of Amazon's US-East region. If you're using Hipchat for anything operational, make sure you aren't also exclusively in US-East. Otherwise, if there is a region-wide issue in Us-East, you're gonna have a bad time.

Great point. But speaking from experience, if you're using Us-East exclusively, you're [eventually] gonna have a bad time anyways...

This is very true. :)

HipChat I hope your taking notes!

Read you loud and clear. We are split across all 4 US-East availability zones currently, but its true that we are not multi-region - yet.

Hey there. Didn't intend to call you out, just wanted to make sure other's didn't get bit. :) You don't have an email in your profile, but shoot me one and maybe we can chat a bit more.

Awesome. I am just looking into chat options for our small but growing team.

As an aside I think IRC is being sold short on this chart:

https://www.hipchat.com/compare

Nothing wrong against it since it is mosting a marketing comparison chart. IRC is fairly hard to use if you aren't familiar with it already so I get it.

We decided to try out an IRC channel because it was easy to get started, no cost really, and knowing how to connect to IRC is important if you ever want to get support inside #python or #django. Plus lots of other open source projects have IRC so it is good to know.

Do you mind sharing more details about your decision making process, the services/tools you are using as IRC hosts/clients, etc?

Shameless plug here, re: "IRC is fairly hard to use if you aren't familiar with it already"

I'm currently working on a web based IRC client called Relay.js (https://github.com/Fauntleroy/relay.js), which is my attempt at making IRC a little more approachable. It's pretty basic at the moment, but I hope to make it something really special in the coming months.

I've been on the lookout for good web IRC interfaces for years. This looks promising. Thanks!

You could also try subway[1] and kiwiirc[2].

[1]: https://github.com/thedjpetersen/subway

[2]: https://github.com/prawnsalad/KiwiIRC

Don't forget nirc! https://github.com/cjstewart88/nirc

Thanks for the plug ;)

Just so you know, the "Give it a go" link in the README gives:

    An error has occurred: {"code":"ECONNREFUSED","errno":"ECONNREFUSED","syscall":"connect"}

and https://github.com/leedo/alice

If HipMunk used an IRC backend that would be pretty sweet.

Hipchat, though hip Munk is also nice

Ooh, if you're open to suggestions, my number one frustration with IRC goes like this: I'm connected and happily chatting, but then my Wifi blips and I'm disconnected. There's no chat log, so I don't know what I missed. And on crappy connections, this can happen pretty frequently.

I know there are programs that'll keep you online and collect chat logs even if you disconnect, but it seems ridiculous to have to set up a server just so I can chat.

If you fix this problem, I'd happily fork over at least $10/month, maybe more.

I have plans for something like that in the future, but first I'd like to perfect the client itself (a persistent connection would require a server).

For now you can always try out https://www.irccloud.com or https://github.com/thedjpetersen/subway

https://github.com/leedo/alice is another one. Used to be hosted but they stopped running it.

There have been irc bots for as long as there has been IRC.

Eggdrop bot is a common one, open source, etc.

Shameless plug here as well, I'm developing something that will sort of solve that problem for channels you own: http://www.getinstabot.com

> I'm connected and happily chatting, but then my Wifi blips and I'm disconnected. There's no chat log, so I don't know what I missed. And on crappy connections, this can happen pretty frequently.

So a bouncer + web interface, huh? I'd better get to work..

During my time inside Trolltech/Nokia, everyone was on Freenode and our internal IRC server. A lot of people were connected through a client called Quassel [0] which is basically a distributed IRC client you can access from multiple machines (-> you'd host it on a server, it stores the backlog and everything else for you).

In my current startup we have the same (internal IRC server) and we also thought offering Quassel hosting [1] is a good idea.

[0] http://www.quassel-irc.org/

[1] http://quassel.woboq.com/

Why is it so hard to make IRC work decently for mortals?

FWIW, I set up a tutorial for my friends for IRC. If you explain it simply enough, it will work. I have 25+ of my friends on it now, most of whom not knowing what IRC was.

Because it was written by and for nerds.

IRC has no chat history or unauthenticated access, apparently.

My friend was working on a web client for IRC [1] that provides a persistent connection (and hence chat history). I'm not sure if he's gonna finish it though.

[1] https://github.com/pavben/WebIRC

We use http://partychapp.appspot.com (it was recommended on a previous HN posting). We already used Google Talk for one on one chats so this just adds a group chat into that, and works really well. It also doesn't require additional clients, doing group chats differently than one on one, yet more usernames and passwords etc.

Used to use this, then it was always down. Now use http://Jaconda.im. Always just works, has a convenient web interface as well for great room history.

We've never had a problem with the former - always works and always up!

We switched last night to Jaconda - thanks for the recommendation. While partychat never failed for us, it did prove limiting (eg no search) and seemed increasingly unmaintained (/commands not working). Jaconda also has Github integration which was nice.

Does (m)IRC have the ability to log everything? It's been a decade since I've used mIRC but I could have sworn I was able to save everything even back then.

It certainly does. I'm pretty sure that almost every IRC client can do this, as can IM clients like Pidgin. (That reminds me: does Hipchat work well with Pidgin?)

edit: I think the difference on that chart, though, is that mIRC is a __client__, whereas I suspect that Hipchat's server also does logging -- so that you can see the chat log even if you were previously not connected. That's not something that is normally suported with IRC. You could roll your own with a custom client and server, I expect, but at that point you'd be investing probably more effort than it's worth.

That's an excellent point, they're probably referring to server-side, always-on-even-if-you're-not logging.

Sure, you can log anything you see... but if you are offline, you miss out.

ejabberd and pidgen?

HipChat has surprisingly been the most effective productivity tool we've taken up in the past 5 years.

After only a month of use, virtually all communication and notification streams (GitHub, Jenkins, Zendesk, systems monitoring) in our company have converged in HipChat. It's hard to imagine we've ever done without.

This is great news. If you want to see why HipChat makes sense: take a look at our integration with HipChat

https://www.blossom.io/blog/2013/03/12/take-a-look-at-our-ne...

If you have a product that creates more value for your customers if you integrate with HipChat this is now a no-brainer :)

Revenue wise integrating was definitely worth it for us.

I like that the project you decided to use in your mockup on your homepage is "Duke Nukem Forever - release once it is perfect and not one second earlier".

We thought it would be funny :) But unfortunately some people don't get the joke so we might change it going forward. Glad you like it :)

Aside from the phone applications, what makes Hipchat better than say, Skype?

Group chat, GitHub Integration, persistent, searchable chat logs, Zapier integration to DropBox and Trello.

HipChat has an API and a lot of services proposes hooks to post to HipChat. Our "Saloon" usually looks along the line of :

GitHub - mickey commented on issue 104 of xxx/fronted: +1

GitHub - yoktan pushed to branch master of xxx/frontend - Txt (c7bd9a3)

Jenkins - backend-master - #481 FAILURE after 3 min 18 sec (Open)

Bugsnag - Exception in production from frontend in votes#index (details) RuntimeError: # app/controllers/votes_controller.rb:6 - index

It's essentially pretty IRC. What makes it better than IRC is a better question. The answer is that you don't have to setup and maintain an IRC server, and have the power of bots through APIs.

The other answer is that it's a lot easier to get less-technical people onto it.

HipChat's API's are severely lacking. There's no way to read messages from chat without using their halfway working XMPP implementation on a separate user account.

On the other hand, sending and receiving messages to IRC is pretty simple and straightforward. There are also tons of IRC libraries.

It's more like IRC, and the one thing that really makes it better is the chat history (which you could do with an IRC bot, but then you have to maintain that). The push notifications when someone messages you when you're offline are pretty nice too.

> which you could do with an IRC bot, but then you have to maintain that

That's exactly the use case for which I started building http://www.getinstabot.com/, but I haven't seen much interest, sadly.

Great idea. I signed up. Please keep developing the product!

Thanks, interest is what will motivate me enough to work on this. I saw your email, I'll email you soon to ask you some things, if that's okay!

Looks nice to me! You've got my email now. :)

Thanks, emailed :-)

Does anyone have IRC as a service? I used to run an IRC server for my company, but as mentioned, there is the maintenance part. There is already more work that needs to be done than hours to do it.

I would like to see more start ups utilize existing protocols such as RSS and IRC.

There was a company, but I think they shut down. I can't remember the name now, but it was, basically, hosted IRC.

Your are thinking of http://grove.io from Leah Culver of Pownce and Convor. Convor shut down and she started Grove, still there and running plus it has a sensible revenue model.

Oh yes, that's what I was thinking of, thank you.

They canceled my free student organization plan on me when they changed owners :(

The biggest difference is that HipChat is primarily about "rooms" and less about messaging individual people (although you can do that too). It makes for much better team workflow, because it enables a lot more passive information sharing. Most people in a room don't want to be actively involved in everything, but they would like to passively just see what's going on.

Secondly, it's centralized around a company, so you know that everyone has everyone else on HipChat, unlike Skype, where everyone needs to manage their contact list separately.

Finally, the notification features are really nice. I can just @mention someone's name, and it's like summoning them into the room to answer a question for me. It's way smoother than adding someone to a Skype conversation, since they'll be able to trace back the history of the conversation.

Good summary. HipChat is simply very tuned to the needs of a workgroup, not just simple IMing. I especially found that it was good at notifying via email about a missed chat you likely want to have a look at.

Rooms can be created on Skype, that's the way we use skype in our business, we create a group chat between all the relevant people and then favorite it and it's the same as a room.

The contact list issue is good I think for larger companies especially in the beginning.

I'm wondering about how the integrations could be used in our business, and I'm also wondering if we can integrate our software with HipChat

I think the difference is that rooms are a focus of HipChat, and an afterthought / hack in Skype. Similar to how individual, "not in a room" conversation is an afterthought in HipChat.

In both cases you can technically do it, but the app doesn't go out of it's way to make it easy or well-supported. If you find you're using your favorited lists to chat more than one-on-one conversations, I'd really recommend trying out HipChat.

For what it's worth, we regularly use Skype at our office as well as HipChat. They both excel at what they were designed to do, and we don't necessarily see a problem with using two tools if it means you don't have to shove a round peg into a square hole.

The thing that is nice about Hipchat, it pains me to say, is that messages actually get delivered the moment you send them. Skype is completely unpredictable.

Pros: search logs, other integrations Cons: no phone calls! which I use quite a bit. free for teams bigger than 5.

My company recently started using Skype as a free hipchat-like service. My complaints with it so far have been: -you have to explicitly enable history to have people entering a conversation see it. -When I send a message on my computer, I get a notification about my own message on my phone.

I trialled HipChat a little while ago, but there is no phone?

For me that was a deal breaker - if it had a skype-like talk option as well, it would serve the purpose. People like the all-in-one tool that Skype is, even if the chat side is weak.

IIRC they also support voice and video chat, but I have yet to use that part of the product.

Well, I couldn't find it anywhere in the product, and believe me I was looking.

Messages sent in a Skype chat room when you are offline are only sent to your client when other members of the room are online. So if you sign on before the rest of the participants in the morning, you don't see any messages sent overnight until someone else joins.

Does it work with multiple organizations? Can I have an account that is free for me and 4 friends, but also be part of an organization that someone else pays for?

Or as a contractor - could I be part of two different paying organizations?

Looks like that's not possible.

http://help.hipchat.com/knowledgebase/articles/64418-how-do-...

so I wonder how it works for billing - if my boss creates a room that has more than 5 people in it and I join too, is it who opens the room that pays?

One person creates the "organisation", and then creates users/accounts within that organisation (or invites people). The organisation pays the bills. I assume it's not "first 5 people free" if you have more but either "up to 5 people free' or $2/mo/user - so if you have 6 it's 6 x $2/mo. Similar to Atlassian's other products with their $10/10 user tier.

Looking at the Billing screen of our 45 user account it doesn't seem like anything has changed (will still be $90/mo)

Disappointing that this is still not supported. The need to be able to join multiple organizations is what prevented me from advocating for my company to switch to HipChat a year ago. Unfortunately it looks like http://help.hipchat.com/forums/138883-suggestions/suggestion... has not received much attention.

This is a perfect size team for using HipChat. We tried HipChat at Gilt with around 40 engineers and it was too cumbersome because of the number of groups.

I hope they finally allowed users to edit their comments. That was one notable issue I had. Also, there was no such thing as a "private" group because admins had access to all groups.

For <5 people, what does this give that a Skype Group conversation cant especially as people will need to instal/use another client ?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5416691

We tried using Skype with our remote team. Of the top of my head, the following problems made us switch: (a) Reliability (We were losing a lot of messages between people. Especially offline messages) (b) Duplicate messages (As all of us have multiple machines, we were getting a lot of duplicate messages, depending on which machines were on and logged-in, and when) (c) Poor search (Searching months old messages is a major hassle in Skype)

When my team and I started using HipChat, I wasn't really sure what to expect (since every chat application prior to it seemed pretty much the same).

I've found these benefits:

- Works on all of my devices. If someone @mentions me, it'll notify my phone just like a text message and/or email me (unless I disable that). And I can reply from my phone's hipchat client.

- Chat rooms and 1-on-1 work seemlessly. Chat rooms can also be public or private.

- History is persistent and searchable.

- Sharing files is as easy as a click. Sharing screenshots/mockups/images is as easy as copy/paste (we use this a lot)

- On the right-hand side of the chat room there is a list of all links & files shared in the room that you can easily search through.

- You can have guest access in chat rooms.

-It integrates with github and other services so that when we do certain things with our repository, it will notify one of our chat rooms.

And a million other little things. There is no single feature that made me think "I must use HipChat, this is awesome.", but rather a bunch of minor things that "just worked" and fit nicely together into a great experience.

It's worth every penny.

Not to mention that urls to images get posted in-line. Do you know how many funny animated GIFs can be posted on a chat room?

This sounds like me being facetious, but it's a great morale booster for teams.

Google+ hangouts rock for development teams. The multiple screenshares is great for looking over someone's shoulder and getting feedback from your peers. It's the first thing I turn on in the morning.

BTW, you don't have to share your entire screen just the app you want them to see.

I've paid for hipchat in the past for managing teams in multiple timezones across the globe. Flowdock's ability to set tags and easily search conversations is great when you need to find that one temporary server password mentioned by a previous ops shift makes it much more useful in this case. Flowdock take note re: pricing.

We were surprised to see our account go from paid to free this morning. Hipchat has been a great tool for our startup. We had initial pushback that IRC implementations could cover us and be free and better.

Hipchat was extremely easy and multiplatform. It just worked. (except animated gifs sometimes) Even our strongest holdout for IRC has at least stopped talking about IRC.

The company has been iterating on their new mac os x client with releases every week or two since it launched. I'm still impressed with this company's quality and am psyched that we now have one less bill to pay.

If you had 6 users, you were not converted to a free account (obviously).

I had an account that became unneeded today, so I removed it... and then I contacted support about getting the free plan.

Their message about contacting support to get switched over is basically a lie because they tell you to delete your account and sign up new.

Sure, I'm paying for it now and get value from it, but every dollar matters at this point and if they are gonna help me save $10/month then I'd be happy! But instead I feel jaded.

Hey - Garret from HipChat here. That support info is not correct, and I'll investigate. All you need to do is go to the billing admin area and select the option to cancel your paid subscription. The message there will tell you that you have 5 users and that it's OK to cancel.

I just don't get it how is that they don't understand that they really impair the growth by not having cross-account chatrooms... We switched from Skype to HipChat for our internal company communications, but we still use Skype for chats with all the clients. IF only I could tell them to create an account so we can chat... ugh. And no, I can't just give them access to our account, we have plenty of open rooms that should still be company-only.

For those asking "why is HipChat better than X", one of the big reasons lies with the number of integrations with other products.

Our product Bugsnag (https://bugsnag.com) has HipChat integration, so you can instantly see errors from your apps appear in your chat room. We've also set up curl scripts to post into chat whenever there is a deploy, or push to GitHub.

Genius move. Unless their infrastructure is really tuned for it, there is a cost of doing business under, say $10/mo (not to say that there aren't companies successfully doing micro payments and such). Premium support, CC processing, etc add up. However, using this lower rung as a hook to get people in the door is great, and it feels more honest than a trial window (although I'm certainly not hating on trials)

Hi there powdahound, what is the main benefit of hipchat versus using Skype? I see on the home page "persistant chat rooms" but I use that feature in skype (I create a chat with several people and then favourite it). I'm not understanding the potential benefit. We have a team of more than 40 people all working virtually.

Glad I saw this. We've got a team of three at SearchTempest and have been communicating almost entirely by email and gchat thus far. Have been meaning to try something a bit more feature rich for a while. Was planning to check out Google Hangouts, but HipChat sounds ideal. Will give it a look.

We've been using HipChat at Blimp since the very first day, we've even integrated it as our Support Chat. We are only three at the moment but have paid for up to 4 users. One less thing we have to pay for, and still be able to use such a great product.

This is awesome news. I use hipchat every day for two different organizations. Great product.

I think this is strategically a good move, as free and Open source alternatives like Kandan would be more attractive to teams of under 5 users than a paid (even though very affordable) solution like Hipchat.

Unfortunately, I missed the IRC era.

Can someone recommend good tutorials on:-

1. Using IRC [beginner] & [advanced]?

2. How to set-up own IRC server and which are the good ones?

Or just use Google chat and this: https://github.com/mattlong/hermes Of course, until Google pulls the plug.

Anyone use HipChat and Olark? I'm worried that switching off our regular chat will make me sign on more and our users won't be able to contact us on Olark.

I am still thinking since the files stored on Hipchat are public ( with a long and hard to guess URL ). What are HN's take on this?

I signed up specifically just so I could have the bitbucket integration. But hey, deadlink. Oh well.

Fixed now - sorry about that. :)

Lets see! Thanks!

Please release the self-hosted version, and we will start using it.

We're working hard on it. If you'd like to get on the list early, and help us by providing some info, please check here: https://www.hipchat.com/firewall

I already did, thanks!

Standard Atlassian MO for all of their products. They get you by having what would be a fairly small team in your company (usually 5 people) using their product and they are the trojan horse that then makes you end up purchasing a license.

That sounds like it's either an unclear arrangement ('trojan horse') or a bad thing ('makes you end up purchasing'). Atlassian makes great products and, if your team/company grows to the size where you need to pay, the cost is far less than the value of time saved. Sometimes, it's worth avoiding the hassle of free/open-source projects for critical tools.

I say this is a very happy paying Atlassian paying customer.

We pay for Atlassian products at my company as well. I just call their business model the "trojan horse". I personally don't prefer their products but that is not to say they are bad.

I'm a little unclear, can i connect via an IRC client to this?

I think this is the only way? http://jasongarber.com/blog/2012/05/18/connecting-to-hipchat...

We switched from hipchat to hall.com and haven't looked back

Six people are $12 a month. Five people are $0 a month.

If you hire a sixth person, I'm sure you can afford $12 a month.

But what if I'm an old customer with 6 people on the team? Now I see that they are giving away what I have been paying for. Not a very strategically sound decision.

You've been paying for 6 users. You're still paying for 6 users.

But what if he just hired that 6th person? Think of all the months he was paying $10!

I'm sure if you write a nice letter of complaint, you'll get your $100 back and have a pizza party.

does anyone know the legality of using/modifying a movie poster in that way?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_work

Reply on news.ycombinator.com