When comparing Amazon Zocalo vs Stride (previously HipChat), the Slant community recommends Stride (previously HipChat) for most people. In the question“What are the best personal file-syncing solutions?” Stride (previously HipChat) is ranked 17th while Amazon Zocalo is ranked 34th. The most important reason people chose Stride (previously HipChat) is:
You can access HipChat from pretty much every common platform. HipChat even allows chatting via SMS.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Simple Document Feedback
Amazon Zocalo lets users quickly access and gather feedback on files. Users can comment on files, send them to others for feedback, and upload new versions without emailing files as attachments. Teammates can leave comments by highlighting a section of a file, or specific text, and typing feedback. Users can set optional deadlines for feedback, track files that are out for review, and are notified by email when they have been asked to provide feedback. Amazon Zocalo automatically stores previous versions of every file so that users do not have to. Amazon Zocalo uses an innovative overlay technology that enables users to see all the comments from others that they have been working with consolidated in one place. Microsoft Word users who prefer working with comments directly in a Word document can download a version of the document with the comments included.
Pro Integrate your Corporate Directory
Amazon Zocalo can integrate with your existing Active Directory. This means that your users can easily access Amazon Zocalo using their existing Active Directory credentials, and allows you to control which users in your organization are permitted to access the service.
Pro Secure
Amazon Zocalo offers flexible security settings and access controls to manage data storage and sharing. You can use policies to control users’ sharing behavior, choose the AWS Region where your users’ data is stored, and view audit logs to track document and user activity. All data is encrypted in transit and at rest, and users don’t have to send documents as email attachments.
Pro Low Cost
Priced at $5 per user per month, including 200 GB of storage, Amazon Zocalo is a low cost solution that is also fully managed. This means that there is no hardware to purchase and maintain and no software to deploy. You simply enable Amazon Zocalo for your organization and invite users. A 30-day free trial for up to 50 users with 200 GB of storage per user is available to help you get started.
Pro Central Hub
Amazon Zocalo provides users with a central location for both the documents and files they are reviewing as well as those they own and are soliciting feedback on. With all these files in one location, reviewers have access to all of the related feedback in a single web view, making reading or contributing comments as simple as a few clicks.
Pro Access and Sync from Any Device
Users can access files stored in Amazon Zocalo and view and leave feedback on files anywhere, anytime, from the device of their choice. Users can leverage the Amazon Zocalo apps for iPad, Kindle Fire, and Android tablets. The Amazon Zocalo Sync client lets users have files saved on their computer automatically uploaded to Amazon Zocalo over an encrypted connection and synced across their other devices.
Pro Available on Web, Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android
You can access HipChat from pretty much every common platform. HipChat even allows chatting via SMS.
Pro Powerful @mentions
You can ping people to get their attention even if they are not online by @mentioning them. Depending on how the person has set their account up it can be by notifications via in-app sounds, visual alerts, and even email, SMS, or mobile app push notifications.
Pro Huge list of integrations
Including Asana, Github, Zendesk, WordPress, MongoDB, TeamCity, JIRA, Confluence, PowerShell and more that 40 others.
Pro Cheap
Free with unlimited users, $2/user/month for voice + video calls, screencasts, full history retention and management. (Even enterprise feature like SAML)
Pro Simple, easy to use
An intuitive, easy to overview interface listing both online and offline users.
Pro Embeds files
Things like photos get automatically embedded in the chat thread once you upload them.
Pro Guest access
You can invite people to join conversations even if they don't have a HipChat account. HipChat will generate a link to share and the guest will only need to enter their name to join the conversation.
Pro Desktop client
HipChat has an optional desktop client powered by Adobe AIR.
Pro Good audio and video support
HipChat audio and video works on mobile platforms and web browsers.
Pro "Rooms" for persistent group chat
Participate and keep tabs on ongoing discussions on particular topics or amongst certain groups of people.
Pro Self-Hosting available
If you are worried about third-parties getting access to your data you should consider self-hosting. With self-hosting you are in control over where your data is stored, who has access to it. You will also not be vulnerable to exploits of a third-party provider.
Pro Plentiful GIFs and custom Emoticons
Pro Syntax coloring
Pasted code can be colored based on syntax.
Pro Will be updated to have more functions in the future
A big company with experience will bring in more options like Google Apps One Time Login.
Pro Reliability has been great
Pro Powerful command system
E.g. part, away, all, here etc.
Cons
Con Currently in Limited Preview
Con Will be discontinued Feb 2019
Slack acquired Stride / Hip Chat. Both Stride and Hip Chat will cease to exist. Sad since they were quite usable.
Con Prioprietary (non-free/libre)
Con Reliability of service has been weak
The reliability of the hosted HipChat service, particularly in the early days of version 4.x, has not been a strong suit.
Con Free plan has limited storage
Free plan comes with 5GB of storage, where as paid plan has "Unlimited".
Con Only one-on-one video calls in free version
There is no option for multi-user conference calls.
Con No emoji
There's no emoji support. Instead there are some strange custom emoticons which only make sense for people steeped in internet subculture and never get updated.
Con API calls are limited even on paid plan to 500 calls in 5min by default
This will force you to contact them when you need more calls.
Con Non-synced notifications
Messages read on one client don't sync their status to another client.