When comparing Stride (previously HipChat) vs FreeFileSync, the Slant community recommends FreeFileSync for most people. In the question“What are the best personal file-syncing solutions?” FreeFileSync is ranked 9th while Stride (previously HipChat) is ranked 17th. The most important reason people chose FreeFileSync is:
It will work with MTP, FTP, SFTP, FTPS, and more.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
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.
Pro It supports multiple protocols
It will work with MTP, FTP, SFTP, FTPS, and more.
Pro It can copy locked files
It supports Volume Shadow Copy Service, meaning that it can copy files even if they are in use or otherwise locked.
Pro Cross-platform
It runs on Windows, Linux and MacOS.
Pro Portable version available
Pro It is quite performant
Pro Google Drive support
FreeFileSync provides direct access to Google Drive, no additional software is needed.
Pro Completely free
Source code releases are provided under GPLv2.
Pro It supports realtime sync
It can be configured to constantly monitor two folders for changes and sync them instantly when a change is detected.
Pro It lets you program batch scripts
You can program your own jobs for execution as a script.
Pro It supports case sensitive synchronization
For Unix-like systems.
Pro It supports long file paths
It can copy files and folders with more than 260 characters in their paths.
Pro It supports versioning
Versioning is keeping multiple instances of the modifications of your files.
Pro It can sync both local disks and network shares
Cons
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.
Con Does not preserve folder timestamps when copying
Con Memory hog
It runs a little slow on computers who don't have much RAM available.
Con Limited built in history
The program only remembers the latest set of folders you synced, so you have to save your syncs or create batch files.
Con A little intimidating for novices
If you never ran a file syncing software, this can be a little tricky to configure as your first one.
Con No backup encryption
Con It doesn't run on older Linux systems
It's dependencies don't allow it to run on older systems.