Stride (previously HipChat) vs Discord

You can access HipChat from pretty much every common platform. HipChat even allows chatting via SMS.

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.

Including Asana, Github, Zendesk, WordPress, MongoDB, TeamCity, JIRA, Confluence, PowerShell and more that 40 others.

Free with unlimited users, $2/user/month for voice + video calls, screencasts, full history retention and management. (Even enterprise feature like SAML)

An intuitive, easy to overview interface listing both online and offline users.

Things like photos get automatically embedded in the chat thread once you upload them.

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.

HipChat has an optional desktop client powered by Adobe AIR.

HipChat audio and video works on mobile platforms and web browsers.

Participate and keep tabs on ongoing discussions on particular topics or amongst certain groups of people.

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.

Pasted code can be colored based on syntax.

A big company with experience will bring in more options like Google Apps One Time Login.

E.g. part, away, all, here etc.

Discord follows the same type of interface design popularised by Slack, which is extremely clean and attractive, and doesn't clutter the interface with unnecessary chrome and cruft.

Unlimited amount of users.

Users can invite others to join a Discord channel via a web link, which means no installation is required to use the software - which is one of the big typical barriers to entry for social software.

Discord allows inviting people to a specific channel with a link. Links can be set to expire. Low effort/passive invite mechanics.

You can quickly send invites to people and they can join in using the web client without having to create an account or install the app.

Behaves and looks like Slack for regular text channels, but with the ability to create voice channels as well

Deny access, Deny write message, Allow read messages etc.

Discord provides an API for creating custom bots.

Discord has a wide variety of bots for things from airhorn noises to automated server management, to leveling systems for chat. The bot API is open and there are dedicated sites for finding bots.

Discord shows which game each user is currently playing, which among other things helps users to form PUGs with minimal hassle.

For those that are used to the way Slack (a similar chat client) works, Discord will be familiar in its use, which lowers the learning curve quite a bit for those that have switched or tried Slack before.

The support is limited but still exists. It's a killer feature for dev teams.

Discord prevents users from being DDoSed out of games.

Targeting roles allows for quickly requesting someone from a group e.g. artist, moderator, etc.

Ability to create channel categories for channels to sit inside of.

Free account have no tangible restrictions.
Premium account is just a way to say "thank you" to developers. And it work for all servers of discord (not as in slack). And it can be purchased by one who wants. In contrast to Slask, where all active members of the server should be "premium".

Have localization for many language, including Russian.