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Add to SafariWhen comparing Stride (previously HipChat) vs Element (formerly Riot), the Slant community recommends Element (formerly Riot) for most people. In the question“What are the best Skype alternatives?” Element (formerly Riot) is ranked 1st while Stride (previously HipChat) is ranked 22nd. The most important reason people chose Element (formerly Riot) is:
You're not confined within Element's or even Matrix garden, and you don't have to make users of other networks switch to Matrix.
Specs
Question 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 Bridges to other networks
You're not confined within Element's or even Matrix garden, and you don't have to make users of other networks switch to Matrix.
Pro Markdown support
Code snippets in chats can be highlighted with Markdown.
Pro Simple interface
Element has a very simple interface, adding the ability for more inexperienced users to use it.
Pro VOIP and Videoconferencing
Pro Supports encryption
Element allows for fully encrypted text, voice, and video chatting.
Pro Widgets support
Want to watch that flick at YouTube and discuss it at the same time? Have Grafana graphs stacked above your DevOps team chat? Collaboratively edit Google Docs and chat over without switching applications? This is possible with Element.
Pro Decentralized
An open network for secure, decentralized communication.
Pro Self-hosting and federated network
Pro Libre/open source
Pro Search
Search messages in your current room, or all the rooms you're in. Not subject to a message history limit like Slack.
Pro Cross platform
Web browser
Linux
OS X
Windows
Android
iOS
Pro Large existing community
With public rooms for many people, and you can create your own and let people from the community join.
Pro Etherpad real-time document collaboration
An easy to activate integration that allows multiple authors to edit a document simultaneously.
Pro File Sharing
Pro Supports text, voice, video
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.
