HipChat True (Love) Story

Once upon time there was a day that Atlassian interested in real time communication. That official day was March 7, 2012 when Atlassian acquired HipChat an interesting startup chat solution..

Many days of development and marketing later we have a unique product that also fit with all other Atlassian products perfectly. From the user point of view experience was a lot better than other solutions on the market..

“Hipchat is incredible – perfect for product teams but fantastic for any team. Connecting and sharing ideas in real-time helps teams move faster, and Hipchat does this better than any other product I’ve used.”" - said Mike Cannon-Brookes, CEO and co-founder of Atlassian.

And that was so true!

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Yes, the market that was still fresh and ready to start using apps like HipChat. Seems like perfect situation to grow, but then suddenly a new player also came to the stage - Slack

Since then the big battle for the market begins…

In the past everyone was using IRC (Internet Relay Chat) and do not care about alternatives. Idea of channels and simple UI was great. Many people communicated via IRC (they still are) but the technology moved fast and IRC was no longer a good option for everyone.

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Overall Internet become more available and cheaper.. Everyone become more "mobile" and "social".. SMS was no longer a perfect way of real time communication. In the last decade that market was dynamic so much that we cannot even catch up what happened.

When Slack launched more than 8000 customers registered in the first 24h. Wow! Pretty powerful start..

So the market begin to react, the trend was one time up then down.. Hard to say who was the leader. In the meantime other solutions came to the stage and the current players improved their products. Then suddenly something happen that was a breakthrough..

HipChat started to lose the battle in the end of 2014.. The numbers show that Atlassian need to catch up.

Even giving a way to deploy HipChat behind the firewall (HipChat Server) or as a Data Center product did not help get more users. This was the time when Stride was introduced - new fresh solution that would become a replacement for HipChat.. Yeah.. replacement or alternative?

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Many people said - What? A new chat? What will happen to HipChat? Why not introducing a new version of HipChat instead? That introduced a big confusion on the market. The decision for moving backwards and developing a brand new product instead of improving current gave people time to look for alternatives..

Again many days of development and marketing later.. Stride was a product that was release to production, but never replaced HipChat officially and was never accepted by most of people. Everyone was asking question and waiting for a link "to upgrade" (more like to migrate) from HipChat.. For many people it never show… In the meantime Slack was growing and growing .. And grow so much that suddenly everyone was shocked by the massive usage. On the opposite side business users was pushed to use corporate solutions like Microsoft Team.. Market become so tight that Atlassian decided to make a big decision that shocked us so much...

On July 26, 2018, Atlassian announced that HipChat and Stride would be discontinued and that it had reached a partnership deal with Slack. Big battle come to the end…

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What does it mean?

This mean that if you are reading this there are no more than 2 days left to use those products on Cloud (until February 15) or make an export of your data (which should be still available until March 15), so if you still not decided what next there is not much time left to decide..

From this day forward Slack become more dominant solution on the market. For how long? Is this the best option? Not sure.. All current real time communicator vendors reacted dynamically on this message.. A new battle started - for current HipChat/Stride users. Everyone is comparing, testing, migrating to find alternative solution that would be so good as HipChat was..

For me personally it was a great product that change the way how we communicate. I would like to say a BIG thank you HipChat for all that time! I would always remember this tool to be the first and best, simple solution on the market. And as Elvis still lives (King of Rock'n'Roll), for me the King of Communication is only one .. King HipChat. That become so true (at least for me).  

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This T-Shirt would be the only thing left for me from HipChat. I would wear it now with glory and respect. We will miss you, HipChat ...

Goodbye! ..

5 comments

Andy - PTC Redundant
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February 12, 2019

Beautiful written @Mirek. I hope it can stay in the history files of Atlassian forever !

Sloan N_ B_
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Rising Stars are recognized for providing high-quality answers to other users. Rising Stars receive a certificate of achievement and are on the path to becoming Community Leaders.
February 12, 2019

r.i.p. HipChat, we will miss you!

Adam February 15, 2019

Really nice speech, hope in come back in the future...

Deleted user February 18, 2019

Thank you for the history and the information.

David Maye
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
February 27, 2019

Shared with the HipChat support team - thank you so much for the kind words! There are only a handful of Atlassians that own the King HipChat shirt (due to it's cost) and I'm lucky to have one as well, so you're in great company.

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