HipChat

HipChat. HipChat was a cloud-based team communication and collaboration service, initially developed by a startup of the same name before its acquisition by Atlassian. It functioned as an instant messaging platform designed for workplace use, featuring persistent chat rooms, file sharing, and video conferencing capabilities. The service competed in the growing market for business communication tools, ultimately being succeeded by Atlassian's own Slack-competitor, following a strategic shift by the company.

History

The original HipChat service was founded in 2010 by Pete Curley and Garret Heaton, launching as one of the early entrants in the dedicated business chat space. The platform gained traction for offering a more organized alternative to email and consumer instant messaging clients like AIM. In 2012, recognizing the strategic importance of team collaboration tools, Atlassian acquired the company and its technology, integrating it into its suite of developer tools like Jira and Confluence. Under Atlassian's stewardship, HipChat underwent significant development, including the launch of a self-hosted on-premises version called HipChat Data Center to appeal to enterprises with strict data sovereignty requirements. Its evolution occurred alongside and in competition with other rapidly growing platforms like Slack and Microsoft Teams.

Features

The core functionality of HipChat centered on persistent, topic-based chat rooms for group discussions, alongside one-to-one and group chat windows. It supported rich media sharing, allowing users to paste images, GIFs, and share documents directly within conversations. A key feature was its extensive API and bot framework, which enabled deep integrations with third-party services like GitHub, Jenkins, Google Drive, and hundreds of other SaaS products through an app directory. The platform also included screen sharing and video calling features, powered initially by TokBox and later by Jitsi technology. For software development teams, features like syntax highlighting for code snippets and real-time notifications from version control systems were particularly valued.

Security and compliance

To serve business and enterprise customers, HipChat implemented several security measures, including TLS encryption for data in transit and encryption at rest for stored data. The HipChat Data Center edition provided organizations with full control over their data within their own IT infrastructure, which was crucial for sectors like finance and healthcare subject to regulations like HIPAA and SOX. Atlassian also pursued SOC 2 compliance for its cloud service and offered features like two-factor authentication and single sign-on via SAML to meet corporate identity management standards. These efforts were part of a broader industry trend to make collaborative tools viable for regulated industries.

Acquisition by Atlassian and discontinuation

Despite ongoing development, HipChat and its sibling product Stride struggled to gain market share against the dominant Slack. In July 2018, in a surprising strategic reversal, Atlassian announced a partnership with Slack wherein it would discontinue HipChat and Stride and sell the intellectual property related to its team communication tools to Slack. Concurrently, Atlassian made a minor venture capital investment in Slack. As part of this agreement, Slack acquired the intellectual property and hired staff from the HipChat team. Official support for both HipChat and Stride was terminated on February 15, 2019, marking the end of the service.

Alternatives and migration

Following the discontinuation announcement, Atlassian provided tools and incentives for users to migrate to Slack or, for users of its self-managed version, to Mattermost or other open-source alternatives. The market for team collaboration software was by then highly competitive, with major offerings including Microsoft Teams (deeply integrated with Microsoft 365), Cisco Webex Teams (from Cisco Systems), and Google Chat (part of Google Workspace). The closure of HipChat exemplified the rapid consolidation in the SaaS communication sector, where network effects often led to a few dominant platforms. Many former HipChat users transitioned to the ecosystems of these larger technology firms.