HipChat Server is dying and Slack isn't fit my needs. Now what?

[Mosh]

So HipChat and Stride are now dead  (see Atlassian's blog). They suggest to move to Slack but Slack doesn't offer on-premises ("server") option far as I know.
What should we do now? 

Moving to self-hosted alternatives like Prometheus? Anything else?

We use Jira and Bitbucket as well (all self-hosted "Server").

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

I've heard good things about mattermost

I've got prosody at home as well, for a simple jabber chat (but I don't have complex chat needs)

[Thomas Schlegel]

We are using our self hosted mattermost and are quite satisfied. 

[johan_ferner]

I'm looking into mattermost. Any thoughts about integrations with other Atlassian tools? I see Jira listed for example but would like some real world experience "war stories".  I'm running the full on-prem Atlassian stack.

[Ian Tien]

Hi @johan_ferner, Mattermost CEO here. Wargaming, creator of the "World of Tanks" franchise, has 2.6M issues in its Jira instance and they use Mattermost quite successfully.

Here's a case study and you can hear from Wargaming in this video as well. 

Mattermost has a number of Atlassian integrations and we're continually working on improving the list. 

@Moshthanks for the question and @Nic Brough -Adaptavist-thank you for the mention :) 

Any questions on Mattermost as an on-prem HipChat replacement, please let us know? 

[Black Hat]

Hi @Ian Tien, we're leaning towards Mattermost as a replacement to HipChat, but the one thing that's missing from that page of Atlassian integrations is a Bamboo integration. Is there any plan to add one? All we'd really need is build notifications being sent to a channel, just like the notifications were sent to a HipChat room.

[johan_ferner]

Hi @Black Hat and @Ian Tien,

I am in the middle of evaluating Mattermost and it's going good so far. I want to disable Hipchat by the end of this year as I don't appreciate paying for dead products.

Here is a list of plugins that I have tested in my test environment to integrate with Mattermost and Atlassian tools:

Mattermost Connector for Jira because the built in Jira support doesn't support delegation where project admins can connect jira projects to channels. This plugin is commercial.

Slack notifications for Bamboo is a free plugin that does the Bamboo integration you want. You get notified on build success/failure and deployment plans.

Slack for Confluence monitors confluence and sends chat messages on different events. Supports delegation where space admins connect to channels. This plugin is commercial.

Slack notifications plugin is a free plugin that monitors Bitbucket events and sends chat messages.

Importing with hipmost works but you probably need to map usernames, deal with bad characters in room names and other usual migration issues so it is not point and click but doable.

The only thing I'm missing right now is to have Mattermost lookup jira ids in chat messages without the /jira command. And have jira pickup on that on the issue screen like "mentioned in channel.". Commenting the issue would be enough integration for me.

I haven't tested removing Hipchat integration in Confluence. I think this will remove some emoticons as well... :(. I would be interested in any feedback on that.

I am still waiting for Atlassian to take some responsibility for their Enterprise on-prem customers in this matter.

[Black Hat]

@johan_ferner Thanks for the comprehensive info. :) I'll try out those plugins and see how they go, but from the looks of it, they'll meet our needs nicely.

Regarding having to use the /jira command, if you use Hubot (we do), perhaps you might be able to find a Hubot script that detects Jira issue keys. There seems to be a few different Jira-Hubot scripts, so I'll report back on what I find.

[Black Hat]

Just following up on my previous post. We switched to Mattermost a few weeks ago and we're very happy with it (I wish we'd moved sooner).

The Bitbucket and Bamboo plugins mentioned above did the job, but setting them up for each repository/build plan was very cumbersome (thanks to Atlassian's lack of project-level notification settings), so I ditched them in favor of custom plugins that can be configured at the project level. Integrating with Mattermost was very easy thanks to the webhooks.

I haven't yet had a chance to try out my idea of using Hubot to monitor for Jira keys in conversations, but I hope to look into that further over the coming weeks. I'll report back again if I have any success.

[Sloan N_ B_]

I have heard good things about Rocket Chat. https://rocket.chat/

[Jason Kemp]

Just to add to this, RocketChat is free and open source: https://github.com/RocketChat/Rocket.Chat

[Ondra Medek]

If you need just chat and voice, then try Discordapp, it's free https://discordapp.com/

[Thomas Unger]

Our team is researching Trillian Server: https://trillian.im/uses/self-hosted-instant-messaging/

[Stefanie Chernow]

Hi there - I wanted to chime in that if you are looking for a solution moving forward, Atlassian has a network of Solution Partners who can help you on a one-on-one basis. At Valiantys, we've posted some details on this new partnership between Atlassian and Slack, and you are likewise welcome to get in touch with us to discuss your options - whatever that might look like for your business. 

Cheers, 

[R]

Take a look at Wickr Pro & Wickr Enterprise: https://wickr.com/products/enterprise/

It has on-prem deployment, end-to-end encrypted, zero knowledge and ephemeral, works across mobile and desktop.