5 ms·

I moved my company off Slack to Hipchat as the latter has more useful integrations for us, and does not have the same limitations (you are not limited to ten in

I moved my company off Slack to Hipchat as the latter has more useful integrations for us, and does not have the same limitations (you are not limited to ten integrations on the free version of Hipchat) or the stupidly high price of Slack. There are parts we don’t like about Hipchat (the shortcuts for the emoticons are just weird), but we are using it company-wide where Slack was just used by developers (and Hangouts was used by everyone else).

Ayaz 11y ago
Would you mind giving some examples of what are more useful integrations for you that Slack does not support? I am curious because we--at work--have been using HipChat for around two years and have integrated HipChat into our processes, yet now that we are exploring and using Slack (for another project), we find the integrations and APIs so much better to work with.
- halostatue 11y ago
  The issue that I’ve had with Slack is more related to text like this from the New Relic integration: This integration will allow you to receive updates in a Slack channel when an alert is triggered in New Relic. If you would like web, transaction, server, and mobile alerts to be posted in separate channels, you will need to set up separate integrations. You can quickly hit the limit of ten integrations on the free service by having to set up a separate integration for each channel you want things to appear in. So…between GitHub, Bitbucket, Semaphore, a custom API integration, and a couple of others we ended up hitting the limit of 5 integrations (which is what the limit was as of May or June when we made the switch to HipChat; it’s double that now, but we’re starting to use even more tools, so it’s the same problem).
amatix 11y ago
> the stupidly high price of Slack. really? $7 per active user per month? How little do you pay your staff? At the median wage, save an average of 90 seconds a day per person through better communication and it pays for itself. And it's pretty likely any team members using slack are at a 2-10x salary multiplier on that, a $100K engineer only needs to save 24 seconds a day...
- SanDimasFootbal 11y ago
  I cost justified a tesla that way. How much I spent on gas gong to mountain view, plus time in the carpool lane, but time I rent it in getaround. Blah Blah Blah. Doesn't mean it is right or worth it.
- wadenick 11y ago
  Your strawman implies that his team would save time in Slack versus HipChat, but you ignored the justification he already gave about the integrations that are more useful to them edit and that the whole company was happy to go to HipChat. It's possible those integrations help them save the time that makes the difference, but having every user there would surely help.
- halostatue 11y ago
  If the choice was between $0 and $7, you might have a point. It isn’t. As a company we are not short of options: Slack (the dev team liked it, but no one else used it and even a large part of the dev team didn’t use it), Google Hangouts (what everyone else used), Skype (no one here uses it), and now HipChat—which everyone in the company uses. This means that we weren’t choosing between $0 and $7, but: • $0 (Slack) which provided something most people in the company didn’t use, and whose limitations we in the dev team hit fairly quickly (both 10k message chat history and the limited number of integrations). • $0 (HipChat) which provides something most people in the company do use, and whose limitations we have only recently hit (the last six weeks) and are not currently bothering us (the limitation is just the 25k message chat history). • $0 (Google Hangouts). Not really $0, but we already pay for it as part of GApps so it’s an incremental $0. The group chat functions suck, and there’s no integrations to speak of, but it is available. • $2/mau (HipChat). Adds video/voice calls and screen sharing and unlimited chat history. We only need the chat history, and that isn’t bothering us. • $7/mau (Slack). Just removes the 10 service integration limitation (which IIRC was 5 a few months ago) and the chat history and a few other features we don’t really care about but nothing to write home about. There’s also the $12/mau level and they are working on an Enterprise level. There is absolutely nothing that Slack provides—except a bigger bill—that HipChat doesn’t provide as well for less. (And, even if Slack were better than HipChat, it isn’t 3x better. Sorry.) This isn’t to say that Slack is a bad thing, just that it’s stupidly expensive and/or limited compared to other hosted options.

Ayaz 11y ago

Would you mind giving some examples of what are more useful integrations for you that Slack does not support? I am curious because we--at work--have been using HipChat for around two years and have integrated HipChat into our processes, yet now that we are exploring and using Slack (for another project), we find the integrations and APIs so much better to work with.

halostatue 11y ago
The issue that I’ve had with Slack is more related to text like this from the New Relic integration: This integration will allow you to receive updates in a Slack channel when an alert is triggered in New Relic. If you would like web, transaction, server, and mobile alerts to be posted in separate channels, you will need to set up separate integrations. You can quickly hit the limit of ten integrations on the free service by having to set up a separate integration for each channel you want things to appear in. So…between GitHub, Bitbucket, Semaphore, a custom API integration, and a couple of others we ended up hitting the limit of 5 integrations (which is what the limit was as of May or June when we made the switch to HipChat; it’s double that now, but we’re starting to use even more tools, so it’s the same problem).

amatix 11y ago

> the stupidly high price of Slack. really? $7 per active user per month? How little do you pay your staff? At the median wage, save an average of 90 seconds a day per person through better communication and it pays for itself. And it's pretty likely any team members using slack are at a 2-10x salary multiplier on that, a $100K engineer only needs to save 24 seconds a day...

SanDimasFootbal 11y ago
I cost justified a tesla that way. How much I spent on gas gong to mountain view, plus time in the carpool lane, but time I rent it in getaround. Blah Blah Blah. Doesn't mean it is right or worth it.
wadenick 11y ago
Your strawman implies that his team would save time in Slack versus HipChat, but you ignored the justification he already gave about the integrations that are more useful to them edit and that the whole company was happy to go to HipChat. It's possible those integrations help them save the time that makes the difference, but having every user there would surely help.
halostatue 11y ago
If the choice was between $0 and $7, you might have a point. It isn’t. As a company we are not short of options: Slack (the dev team liked it, but no one else used it and even a large part of the dev team didn’t use it), Google Hangouts (what everyone else used), Skype (no one here uses it), and now HipChat—which everyone in the company uses. This means that we weren’t choosing between $0 and $7, but: • $0 (Slack) which provided something most people in the company didn’t use, and whose limitations we in the dev team hit fairly quickly (both 10k message chat history and the limited number of integrations). • $0 (HipChat) which provides something most people in the company do use, and whose limitations we have only recently hit (the last six weeks) and are not currently bothering us (the limitation is just the 25k message chat history). • $0 (Google Hangouts). Not really $0, but we already pay for it as part of GApps so it’s an incremental $0. The group chat functions suck, and there’s no integrations to speak of, but it is available. • $2/mau (HipChat). Adds video/voice calls and screen sharing and unlimited chat history. We only need the chat history, and that isn’t bothering us. • $7/mau (Slack). Just removes the 10 service integration limitation (which IIRC was 5 a few months ago) and the chat history and a few other features we don’t really care about but nothing to write home about. There’s also the $12/mau level and they are working on an Enterprise level. There is absolutely nothing that Slack provides—except a bigger bill—that HipChat doesn’t provide as well for less. (And, even if Slack were better than HipChat, it isn’t 3x better. Sorry.) This isn’t to say that Slack is a bad thing, just that it’s stupidly expensive and/or limited compared to other hosted options.