Flock is a collaborative business messaging application developed by the small (but multinational) company of the same name, designed to compete with Slack. The company boasts that the app is a fast and reliable means of communication, and is available in a free edition.
$250
one-time fee up to 50 attendees
HipChat (discontinued)
Score 9.4 out of 10
N/A
Hipchat was discontinued by Atlassian. Users are being migrated to Slack.
$0
per user
Pricing
Flock
HipChat (discontinued)
Editions & Modules
Micro
$250
up to 50 attendees
Add-Ons
$250
one-time fee
Standard
$550
up to 500 attendees
Container
$950
one-time fee
PRO
$950
up to 2000 attendees
PLUS
$1500
up to 5000 attendees
Event App
$1950
one-time fee
HipChat Basic
$0
per user
HipChat Plus
$2
per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Flock
HipChat (discontinued)
Free Trial
No
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
*Indicative pricing, get in contact for a customised free quote
For Server pricing info please visit https://www.hipchat.com/server (Only $1.20/user/month at the highest user tier!)
Flock provides a casual as well as professional approach. Prevents the hassles of communicating over phones. Once logged out the employee will not be disturbed after work hours. All the information, messages, and data that have been communicated to date are secure & can be accessed anytime. A great channel to pass on information to all the employees within an instant.
HipChat is very stable and reliable. I have never had issues with not being able to connect or being able to communicate with others on HipChat.
HipChat integrates quite well with other applications, such as Jira and Stash. This is a main selling point for my team. It provides a convenient feed of actions on a JIRA story or Stash pull request.
HipCat does a good job of allowing 1-1 and group chats. It is simple to start a new conversation and it is easy to hold a group conversation and keep track of who is in the room.
I like how HipChat has away/here/on mobile statuses. This makes it easy to see if a person is available to be contacted.
Mobile app is not very responsive on iOS. Sometimes connection to Hipchat servers is taking too long even on good networks.
Both mobile and desktop versions have no alphabetical or recent sorting for groups and chat rooms.
Video and audio calls are pretty useless, they're slow and not always work.
The whole user interface is simple but very outdated - apparently Atlassian didn't focus too much on Hipchat even though they tried in the last 2 years.
The app itself had a pleasant if not generic interface. As a user experience expert and engineer I can say the interface is fairly intuitive if not bland. It does what you expect it to do and it's available on iOS and Android devices. If I recall it was generally pretty light weight in terms of installation size.
We've only needed customer support a few times with Flock (mainly concerning app integration and security), and they've always been timely and helpful, which are the only things I truly need from support. The response rate was still rapid, and there's plenty of support available online as well for Flock.
HipChat support is good . Responds in timely manner when ever we have raised the request via email , phone and gives us continue update on the request .Though most of the questions are answered by HipChat FAQs , but they can still improve it and add more to the knowledge base .
I did not like Google Hangouts. Hangouts is more geared toward personal communication instead of business related communication. Flock is also a lot easier to use and has more options related to a business setting.
We tried a lot of chat clients before choosing HipChat. The Skype for Business UI on the Mac side was 5 years old and terrible. Mac users hated the app including our CTO. Cisco Jabber was expensive to license and maintain; Skype was open to the public which took time away due to users dealing with spam and could allow viruses and malware. HipChat being a closed product, centrally managed and available to try without an upfront investment was perfect for our environment. All our Agile teams have their own room, chat and can communicate with others quickly and easily.
Actually I never shared of HipChat using with more than 25 persons in team simultaneously, but I believe it can be scaled for much largest collaboration teams. At least it works flawlessly for us, with transparent integration with Jira, and I am not see any reasons for some troubles for work at big scale.
It did provide a creative space for conversation and this does equal a great return on investment, considering the investment is free for the base use.
For the team members who enjoyed using it, it helped them save time in their day by having a repository for notes and creative ideas.
HipChat has increased the effiency with which I am able to communicate with my coworkers, particularly those who work out of other offices. Having a light, portable messaging solution has been beneficial for checking in on small things without the need to send emails or schedule phone calls.
