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HipChat (discontinued) vs. Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    HipChat (discontinued)

    Score9.7 out of 10
    N/AHipchat was discontinued by Atlassian. Users are being migrated to Slack.N/A

    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board

    Score9.1 out of 10
    Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
    Social Squared is a SharePoint Discussion Board App that can be deployed across SharePoint Online and Microsoft Teams. Social Squared improves productivity and efficiency by providing structured discussion forums for employee and student discussions. For Microsoft SharePoint Social Squared is a SharePoint discussion board application where users can post questions within relevant forums and receive answers to their questions from subject matter experts. The…

    $2,200

    per year per installation

    Pricing
    HipChat (discontinued)Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    Social Squared Discussion Board
    From $2200
    per year per installation
    Social Squared Discussion Board Enterprise Edition
    POA
    per year per installation
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    HipChat (discontinued)Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board
    Free Trial
    YesYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    YesNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesYes
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional DetailsPrices stated are minimum per installation for "stock" products. $2.20 per user/year on top of base price. Enterprise editions can be amended to suit business needs if deemed necessary, additional costs incurred and TBD. All packages include free technical support. Free upgrades available to latest versions of tool as they are released.
    More Pricing Information
    Features
    HipChat (discontinued)Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board
    Project Management
    Comparison of Project Management features of HipChat (discontinued) and Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board
    Feature
    HipChat (discontinued)
    7.3
    106 Ratings
    6% below category average
    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board
    9.1
    1 Ratings
    16% above category average
    Mobile Access7.397 Ratings9.11 Ratings
    Search7.2103 Ratings9.11 Ratings
    Communication
    Comparison of Communication features of HipChat (discontinued) and Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board
    Feature
    HipChat (discontinued)
    7.3
    132 Ratings
    9% below category average
    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board
    9.1
    1 Ratings
    13% above category average
    Chat7.7132 Ratings9.11 Ratings
    Notifications7.7130 Ratings9.11 Ratings
    Discussions6.5110 Ratings9.11 Ratings
    Surveys7.834 Ratings00 Ratings
    Internal knowledgebase7.043 Ratings9.11 Ratings
    Integrates with GoToMeeting7.023 Ratings00 Ratings
    File Sharing & Management
    Comparison of File Sharing & Management features of HipChat (discontinued) and Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board
    Feature
    HipChat (discontinued)
    6.3
    95 Ratings
    24% below category average
    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board
    9.1
    1 Ratings
    12% above category average
    Video files6.585 Ratings9.11 Ratings
    Audio files6.873 Ratings9.11 Ratings
    Access control6.660 Ratings9.11 Ratings
    Advanced security features5.949 Ratings00 Ratings
    Integrates with Google Drive6.027 Ratings00 Ratings
    Device sync6.055 Ratings00 Ratings
    Versioning00 Ratings9.11 Ratings
    Document collaboration00 Ratings9.11 Ratings
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    HipChat (discontinued)Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board
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    Troop Messenger
    Score9.8 out of 10
    Troop Messenger
    Score9.8 out of 10
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    Cisco Business Edition 7000 (discontinued)
    Score9 out of 10
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    User Ratings
    HipChat (discontinued)Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board
    Likelihood to Recommend
    6.8
    (133 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.8
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Usability
    7.2
    (8 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    7.1
    (7 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    8.4
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    7.6
    (8 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    7.2
    (10 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    HipChat (discontinued)Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Discontinued Products
    Well suited for
    Cross-teams communication.
    Webhooks support. Easy integrations with Atlassian products and other systems as well. File sharing directly or in a group. Video/Audio calls.
    Not suited for:
    Lacks apps integration like Slack.
    Lacks quality with video calls.
    Slow file transfer for large files.
    Frequent downtime due to app instability.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Lightning Tools
    Their customer service it top notch and always responsive. I struggled in the beginning a little bit because I'm not tech savvy and we had to add it to our SharePoint site but they helped me along the way and even had share screen meetings with me to assist!!
    Read full review
    Pros
    Discontinued Products
    • 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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Lightning Tools
    • Organizing Data
    • Opens up discussion, whether publicly or anonymously
    • Easy to setup
    Read full review
    Cons
    Discontinued Products
    • 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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Lightning Tools
    • I would love to be able to assign various people as administrators of different topics (this may be an option now but a couple years ago it wasn't)
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Discontinued Products
    If they fix the bugs the last update gave that are causing hipchat to crash more often.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Lightning Tools
    No answers on this topic
    Usability
    Discontinued Products
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Lightning Tools
    Our employees really like the fact that they can find things easily with the search feature and add questions and comments as they see fit.
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Discontinued Products
    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 .
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Lightning Tools
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation Rating
    Discontinued Products
    I don't have insights as I was not a part of the implementation. However, I love the end product
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Lightning Tools
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    Discontinued Products
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Lightning Tools
    No answers on this topic
    Scalability
    Discontinued Products
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Lightning Tools
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    Discontinued Products
    • 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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Lightning Tools
    • We signed up for a 3 year contract and hope to do another 3yr contract when this one is up. :)
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    HipChat (discontinued) Screenshots

    Screenshot of HipChat is with your team, whenever, wherever. Try it on your desktop, web, mobile, tablet, & wearable.Screenshot of Give your eyes the respite they deserve from your blaring white screen with HipChat dark mode!Screenshot of HipChat becomes your command center by integrating with over 100 awesome apps/tools your team already loves (like Uber!).

    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board Screenshots

    Screenshot of MODERN, RESPONSIVE SHAREPOINT DISCUSSION BOARD
Discussion Forums can be created for a variety of different reasons. This example is a Forum Group for the Microsoft 365 technologies such as Teams, Planner, and SharePoint. Forums are then created within the Forum Groups for more specific discussions. Under the SharePoint Forum Group, there is a Forum for SharePoint On-Premises and SharePoint Online. Anyone looking to ask a question regarding SharePoint 2019 for example would be able to post their question under SharePoint On-Premises rather than SharePoint Online. This also allows subject matter experts to focus more on the questions that they can respond to and provide value.Screenshot of SHAREPOINT DISCUSS BOARD – TOPICS VIEW
When navigating into a forum, the topics and discussions that are taking place are shown. Any new topics that not yet read will be highlighted. It also displays whether topics have been answered, their average ratings, how many views and posts are within the topic, and also provides the ability to subscribe to the forum to be notified of new posts within it.Screenshot of READING DISCUSSIONS AND PROVIDING FEEDBACK
Social Squared offers a threaded discussion view with the ability to provide feedback to other users.

Posts can be rated, voted upon, or liked by users in order to give feedback to the user creating or responding to a post. Additionally, replies can be marked as answered or marked as featured, which gives readers of forums assurance that the response they are reading is validated to be the correct answer.

Users also receive feedback through the earning of badges. The more users post or mark posts as answered, the more points are rewarded. This makes it easy to spot subject matter experts.Screenshot of SUGGESTED TAGS
Social Squared provides a rich text editor for creating and replying to topics. The Rich Text toolbar provides functionality such as inserting images, YouTube videos, Stream Videos, Formatted Code Inserts, as well as font formatting.

While typing, suggestions on how to tag a post appear. Selecting an existing tag will provide consistency in the tags used making it easier for other users to discover the post.Screenshot of SOCIAL SQUARED TAG CLOUD VIEW
The Social Squared Tag Cloud view makes it easy to navigate to posts within a specific category even if they span multiple forums. The more a tag appears in different posts, the more prominent it will be in the tag cloud. Users can navigate to posts with the tag in one click.Screenshot of DISCUSSION BOARD WITHIN MICROSOFT TEAMS TAB
Social Squared is a Discussion Board App for Microsoft Teams Tab’s and Microsoft Teams Personal Apps. Social Squared provides information workers the ability to post questions within relevant forums, and receive answers from their team. The Discussion Board layout for posts makes it easier to find answers to questions that may have already been asked before. Through features such as “Mark as Answered”, “Forum Moderation”, “Post Rating”, “Post Likes”, “Post Voting”, users will be assured that the answers they are reading are validated.