HipChat (discontinued) vs. Pigeon Messengr

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

Pigeon Messengr functions well as a general communication tool. In my experience, the only area it is not well suited for is transferring documents with specialized file formats. I also am not aware of what its auditability is like, but we are using it so it must be there.

• 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

• Notifications - I can minimize the window while I'm working and new messages will pop up on my screen so I don't have to remember to check the channel.
• Statuses - we always put up a status of what we're working on, I like how you can hover over user names and it will show you their statuses.
• Overall look - I don't know if my company chose the color scheme but it's really sharp. Also love that I can use Dark Mode, easier on my eyes for sure!

• 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• The whole user interface is simple but very outdated - apparently Atlassian didn't focus too much on Hipchat even though they tried in the last 2 years.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

• Sometimes a message will get broken up and I am unable to view it all at once.
• It would be nice if it had a way to select a message as being unread. I like to leave messages unread as reminders but sometimes need to just read them first.
• It won't allow me to upload a picture because it has to be of a very small size. Would be more personal if I could use a picture on my profile.

If they fix the bugs the last update gave that are causing hipchat to crash more often.

Incentivized

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

I've never had it be not available.

Occasionally, files can take forever to upload and download, and the calendar integrations also don't work sometimes.

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

I don't have insights as I was not a part of the implementation. However, I love the end product

Incentivized

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

Pigeon Messengr has everything in one, although there are some things that could be improved, what product doesn't? I prefer it over some of the other platforms because it is more organized for our business needs and communications, and it has several updates a month to make sure everything is working properly.

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

I have not noticed any issues for a company of about 400 employees. I imagine the channel functionality would enable fairly unlimited scaling.

• 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

• Positive - less time wasted on emails
• Positive - less expensive than having a chat tool and a video tool (and phones!)
• Negative - sometimes tone is hard to convey in text, and this has led to a couple of misunderstandings