HipChat

HipChat
Name	HipChat
Developer	Atlassian
Released	2010
Discontinued	2019
Programming language	JavaScript, Java, Objective-C, Swift
Operating system	Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS
Platform	Web, desktop, mobile
Genre	Instant messaging, team chat, collaboration
License	Proprietary

HipChat was a proprietary instant-messaging and team collaboration application developed for business and enterprise use. It provided persistent chat rooms, direct messaging, file sharing, and integrations aimed at software development teams and operations groups. HipChat competed with contemporaries in the enterprise collaboration space and was acquired and ultimately discontinued following a strategic acquisition by a major networking company.

History

HipChat was founded in 2010 by Atlassian cofounders and entrepreneurs seeking an internal communication tool; early adoption included engineering teams at Atlassian, GitHub, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. The service grew alongside cloud-era platforms such as Heroku, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, and Microsoft Azure, attracting users from startups like Airbnb, Dropbox, and Stripe. In 2012 HipChat raised venture and strategic capital as competitors like Slack (software) emerged, and industry watchers compared it with legacy offerings from Microsoft and Cisco Systems. In 2017 Atlassian acquired HipChat and later partnered with Slack Technologies in arrangements involving product migration and intellectual property. In 2018–2019 HipChat’s on-premises and cloud products were phased out after a deal with Slack (software) and a subsequent acquisition by Cisco Systems for certain assets; the brand was retired and users migrated to alternative platforms such as Microsoft Teams and Google Chat.

Features

HipChat provided persistent chat rooms, 1-to-1 messages, searchable archives, message threading, and file transfer capabilities used by teams at Netflix, Spotify, Uber, and Pinterest. It supported screen sharing and video chat features comparable to services from Skype and Zoom Video Communications, and included emoji, @mentions, and customizable notifications familiar to users of Discord (software) and IRC. Enterprise-oriented features included LDAP integration compatible with Okta, Active Directory (Microsoft), and single sign-on via SAML 2.0 implementations used by organizations such as NASA and National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Security and compliance options echoed controls found in products from Symantec, McAfee, and Palo Alto Networks for audit logging and retention.

Architecture and technology

HipChat’s architecture combined web-based front ends built with JavaScript frameworks and native clients for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS similar to cross-platform efforts by GitLab and Atlassian Confluence. Server-side components used languages and runtimes akin to those employed by LinkedIn and Twitter engineering stacks, with real-time messaging facilitated by WebSocket-like protocols inspired by technologies from CometD and Socket.IO. For storage and indexing HipChat leveraged databases and search engines comparable to MongoDB, Redis, Elasticsearch, and MySQL setups used at Pinterest and Airbnb. Deployment modes included cloud-hosted services mirroring Amazon Web Services patterns and self-hosted appliances resembling offerings by Red Hat and Canonical for enterprise customers.

Business model and pricing

HipChat employed a freemium model with tiered subscription plans aimed at small teams and large enterprises, analogous to pricing strategies from GitHub, Atlassian Jira, and Box (company). Paid tiers unlocked features such as increased message retention, administrative controls, enhanced support, and on-premises deployment similar to enterprise options offered by Slack (software), Microsoft Teams, and Cisco Webex. Atlassian bundled HipChat commercially alongside products like Jira (software), Confluence, and Bitbucket in enterprise licensing deals with customers in sectors including finance firms such as Goldman Sachs and technology groups at Intel.

Integrations and ecosystem

HipChat supported integrations with developer and operations tools widely used across the software industry, including Jenkins (software), Travis CI, CircleCI, Jira (software), Bitbucket, GitHub, GitLab, Sentry (software), and PagerDuty. It offered APIs and webhooks for custom integrations common in tooling stacks at Netflix and Spotify, and marketplace add-ons that interfaced with services like Trello, Asana, Zendesk, Salesforce, and Google Drive. Third-party clients and bots were developed by communities around Stack Overflow, Reddit, and open-source projects hosted on platforms such as GitHub and GitLab.

Reception and criticism

Industry coverage praised HipChat for its simple onboarding and developer-focused integrations, with comparisons in outlets reporting on TechCrunch, Wired, The Verge, and ZDNet. Critics cited competition with Slack (software), platform maturity relative to Microsoft Teams, and concerns over reliability and scaling observed by engineering teams at Dropbox and Twitter. Security and compliance discussions referenced enterprise expectations set by IBM and Oracle offerings, while analysts from firms like Gartner and Forrester Research evaluated HipChat in broader unified-communications market reports. Following acquisition activity and migration arrangements involving Slack Technologies and Cisco Systems, commentators debated vendor lock-in and customer transition experiences similar to those seen in mergers across VMware and Red Hat.

Category:Instant messaging clients