HipChat

src: www.whatasoftware.com

HipChat was a web service for internal private online chat and instant messaging. As well as one-on-one and group/topic chat, it also featured cloud-based file storage, video calling, searchable message-history and inline-image viewing. The software was available to download onto computers running Windows, Mac or Linux, as well as Android and iOS smartphones and tablets. Since 2014, HipChat has used a freemium model, as much of the service is free with some additional features requiring organizations to pay per month. HipChat was launched in 2010 and acquired by Atlassian in 2012. In September 2017 Atlassian replaced the cloud-based HipChat with a new cloud product called Stride, with HipChat continuing on as the client-hosted HipChat Data Center.

Video HipChat

History

Founded by Chris Rivers, Garret Heaton, and Pete Curley, who studied together at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) and also created HipCal and Plaxo Pulse. They launched the first HipChat beta on December 13, 2009.

HipChat was made available to the public starting January 25, 2010.

On March 22, 2010, HipChat launched a web chat beta which allowed users to chat via the browser in addition to the existing Windows, Mac and Linux client. HipChat's web client came out of beta and SMS chat support was added on April 16, 2010. On May 12, 2010, HipChat unveiled its official API. HipChat is mainly written in PHP and Python using the Twisted software framework, but uses other third-party services.

On July 19, 2010, the team moved into an office in Sunnyvale, California. Co-founder Pete Curley announced that HipChat had secured $100,000 in funding on August 10, 2010. They had previously relied primarily on word-of-mouth, so this round of seed funding allowed them to start advertising and cover operational costs.

HipChat launched their iOS app on March 4, 2011 and their Android app on June 2, 2011.

On March 7, 2012, Atlassian announced it had bought HipChat and the team would be joining them in their San Francisco office.

On April 24, 2017, HipChat experienced a hacking incident in which user info, messages, and content were accessed.

On May 11, 2017, Atlassian announced HipChat Data Center, a self-hosted enterprise chat tool.

On September 7, 2017, Atlassian discontinued the cloud-based HipChat, replacing it with HipChat's successor, called Stride, which offers additional features to enhance efficiency of collaboration. The client-hosted HipChat Data Center continues to be supported.

Maps HipChat

Features

The primary features of HipChat are chat rooms, one-on-one messaging, searchable chat history, image sharing, 5 GB of file storage, and SMS messaging for one-on-one conversations. A premium version adds video calling, screen sharing, unlimited file storage, history retention controls, and a virtual machine version allows HipChat to run within corporate firewalls. A guest access mode allows users outside of the organization to join a group chat via a shareable URL. Inline GIF playback and custom emoticons are also available. The product is available as a mobile client, a web client and a downloadable native application.

HipChat Data Center is Atlassian's self-hosted team communication offering. Hipchat Data Center was built for large, enterprise customer that need to store their data on premise. Hipchat Data center offers active-active clustering, 24/7 support, technical account management, SAML 2.0 SSO, multiple deployment offerings, and integrations for internal systems, 3rd party products, and Atlassian products.

In addition to integration with Atlassian's other products, HipChat integrates with services such as GitHub, MailChimp and Heroku. To allow for more third-party integrations to be added, HipChat features a REST interface with several language-specific implementations.

Administrators can access 1-to-1 chat histories if the customer's company policies permit viewing of employee communications. There is no way for an individual or organization to opt out of this data collection/exposure.