<story><title>HipChat is now free for unlimited users</title><url>https://blog.hipchat.com/2014/05/27/hipchat-is-now-free-for-unlimited-users/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>freerobby</author><text>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 important to us than the frictionless communication tools, which HipChat has nailed. Additionally, Slack lacks a distinction between @all and @here, which is frustrating when you want to announce something in a room without emailing everyone present.</text></item><item><author>joeblau</author><text>HipChat is probably under fire from Slack.  That&amp;#x27;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.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>baddox</author><text>Slack&amp;#x27;s blue &amp;quot;unread messages&amp;quot; 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&amp;#x27;s such an insane usability nightmare that I can&amp;#x27;t believe any person or team seriously building a chat app would implement it.</text></comment>
<story><title>HipChat is now free for unlimited users</title><url>https://blog.hipchat.com/2014/05/27/hipchat-is-now-free-for-unlimited-users/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>freerobby</author><text>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 important to us than the frictionless communication tools, which HipChat has nailed. Additionally, Slack lacks a distinction between @all and @here, which is frustrating when you want to announce something in a room without emailing everyone present.</text></item><item><author>joeblau</author><text>HipChat is probably under fire from Slack.  That&amp;#x27;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.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>eli</author><text>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&amp;#x27;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 default that makes it work like a simple irc client.&lt;p&gt;I went to HipChat instead but it&amp;#x27;s got its own problems. Weirdly you can choose to get notifications for all rooms you&amp;#x27;re in or none of them, but nothing in between. Very frustrating.</text></comment>