HipChat was a web service for internal private
online chat
Online chat may refer to any kind of communication over the Internet that offers a real-time text, real-time transmission of text-based, text messages from sender to receiver. Chat messages are generally short in order to enable other participa ...
and
instant messaging
Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of online chat allowing real-time text transmission over the Internet or another computer network. Messages are typically transmitted between two or more parties, when each user inputs text and trigge ...
. As well as one-on-one and group/topic chat, it also featured
cloud-based file storage, video calling, searchable message-history and inline-image viewing. The software was available to download onto computers running
Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
,
Mac or
Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...
, as well as
Android and
iOS
iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes ...
smartphones
A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, which ...
and
tablets.
Since 2014, HipChat used a
freemium
Freemium, a portmanteau of the words "free" and "premium," is a pricing strategy by which a basic product or service is provided free of charge, but money (a premium) is charged for additional features, services, or virtual (online) or physical (o ...
model, as much of the service was free with some additional features requiring organizations to pay per month.
HipChat was launched in 2010 and acquired by
Atlassian
Atlassian Corporation () is an Australian software company that develops products for software developers, project managers and other software development teams. The company is domiciled in Delaware, with global headquarters in Sydney, Australi ...
in 2012. In September 2017, Atlassian replaced the cloud-based HipChat with a new cloud product called
Stride
Stride or STRIDE may refer to:
Computing
* STRIDE (security), spoofing, tampering, repudiation, information disclosure, denial of service, elevation of privilege
* Stride (software), a successor to the cloud-based HipChat, a corporate cloud-based ...
, with HipChat continuing on as the client-hosted HipChat Data Center.
In July 2018,
Atlassian
Atlassian Corporation () is an Australian software company that develops products for software developers, project managers and other software development teams. The company is domiciled in Delaware, with global headquarters in Sydney, Australi ...
announced a partnership with
Slack under which
Slack would acquire the
codebase
In software development, a codebase (or code base) is a collection of source code used to build a particular software system, application, or software component. Typically, a codebase includes only human-written source code files; thus, a codeb ...
and related
IP assets of HipChat and
Stride
Stride or STRIDE may refer to:
Computing
* STRIDE (security), spoofing, tampering, repudiation, information disclosure, denial of service, elevation of privilege
* Stride (software), a successor to the cloud-based HipChat, a corporate cloud-based ...
from
Atlassian
Atlassian Corporation () is an Australian software company that develops products for software developers, project managers and other software development teams. The company is domiciled in Delaware, with global headquarters in Sydney, Australi ...
.
Following this, HipChat and Stride customers were migrated to the Slack
group collaboration platform in a transition that was completed by February 2019.
History
HipChat was founded by Chris Rivers, Garret Heaton, and Pete Curley, who studied together at
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute () (RPI) is a private research university in Troy, New York, with an additional campus in Hartford, Connecticut. A third campus in Groton, Connecticut closed in 2018. RPI was established in 1824 by Stephen Van ...
(RPI) and also created HipCal and
Plaxo Pulse. They launched the first HipChat beta on December 13, 2009.
HipChat was made available to the public starting January 25, 2010.
On March 22, 2010, HipChat launched a web chat beta which allowed users to chat via the browser in addition to the existing Windows, Mac and Linux client. HipChat's web client came out of beta and
SMS
Short Message/Messaging Service, commonly abbreviated as SMS, is a text messaging service component of most telephone, Internet and mobile device systems. It uses standardized communication protocols that let mobile devices exchange short text ...
chat support was added on April 16, 2010. On May 12, 2010, HipChat unveiled its official
API
An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how ...
. HipChat is mainly written in
PHP
PHP is a general-purpose scripting language geared toward web development. It was originally created by Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1993 and released in 1995. The PHP reference implementation is now produced by The PHP Group ...
and
Python
Python may refer to:
Snakes
* Pythonidae, a family of nonvenomous snakes found in Africa, Asia, and Australia
** ''Python'' (genus), a genus of Pythonidae found in Africa and Asia
* Python (mythology), a mythical serpent
Computing
* Python (pro ...
using the
Twisted software framework
In computer programming, a software framework is an abstraction in which software, providing generic functionality, can be selectively changed by additional user-written code, thus providing application-specific software. It provides a standard ...
, but uses other third-party services.
On July 19, 2010, the team moved into an office in
Sunnyvale, California
Sunnyvale () is a city located in the Santa Clara Valley in northwest Santa Clara County in the U.S. state of California.
Sunnyvale lies along the historic El Camino Real and Highway 101 and is bordered by portions of San Jose to the nort ...
. Co-founder Pete Curley announced that HipChat had secured $100,000 in funding on August 10, 2010. This round of seed funding allowed the company to start advertising and cover operational costs.
HipChat launched their iOS app on March 4, 2011, and their Android app on June 2, 2011.
On March 7, 2012,
Atlassian
Atlassian Corporation () is an Australian software company that develops products for software developers, project managers and other software development teams. The company is domiciled in Delaware, with global headquarters in Sydney, Australi ...
, which had been using the service internally, announced it had acquired HipChat.
On April 24, 2017, HipChat experienced a hacking incident in which user info, messages, and content were accessed.
On May 11, 2017, Atlassian announced HipChat Data Center, a self-hosted enterprise chat tool.
On September 7, 2017, Atlassian discontinued the cloud-based HipChat, replacing it with HipChat's successor, called
Stride
Stride or STRIDE may refer to:
Computing
* STRIDE (security), spoofing, tampering, repudiation, information disclosure, denial of service, elevation of privilege
* Stride (software), a successor to the cloud-based HipChat, a corporate cloud-based ...
, which offered additional features to enhance efficiency of collaboration.
The client-hosted HipChat Data Center continued to be supported.
Integration with Slack
On July 26, 2018,
Atlassian
Atlassian Corporation () is an Australian software company that develops products for software developers, project managers and other software development teams. The company is domiciled in Delaware, with global headquarters in Sydney, Australi ...
announced that HipChat and Stride would be discontinued February 15, 2019, and that it had reached a deal to sell their intellectual property to
Slack. Slack will pay an undisclosed amount over three years to assume the user bases of the services, and Atlassian will take a minority investment in Slack. The companies also announced a commitment to work on integration of Slack with Atlassian services.
Features
The primary features of HipChat were chat rooms, one-on-one messaging, searchable chat history, image sharing, 5 GB of file storage, and SMS messaging for one-on-one conversations. A premium version added video calling,
screen sharing
In computing, the term remote desktop refers to a software- or operating system feature that allows a personal computer's desktop environment to be run remotely off of one system (usually a PC, but the concept applies equally to a server or a ...
, unlimited file storage, history retention controls, and a virtual machine version allowed HipChat to run within corporate firewalls.
A guest access mode allowed users outside of the organization to join a group chat via a shareable
URL. Inline
GIF
The Graphics Interchange Format (GIF; or , see pronunciation) is a bitmap image format that was developed by a team at the online services provider CompuServe led by American computer scientist Steve Wilhite and released on 15 June 1987. ...
playback and custom
emoticons
An emoticon (, , rarely , ), short for "emotion icon", also known simply as an emote, is a pictorial representation of a facial expression using characters—usually punctuation marks, numbers, and letters—to express a person's feelings, m ...
were also available. The product was available as a mobile client, a web client and a downloadable native application.
HipChat Data Center was Atlassian's self-hosted team communication offering.
In addition to integration with Atlassian's other products, HipChat integrated with services such as
GitHub
GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, continuous ...
,
MailChimp
Mailchimp is a marketing automation platform and email marketing service. "Mailchimp" is the trade name of its operator, Rocket Science Group, an American company founded in 2001 by Ben Chestnut and Mark Armstrong, with Dan Kurzius joining at a ...
and
Heroku
Heroku is a cloud platform as a service (PaaS) supporting several programming languages. One of the first cloud platforms, Heroku has been in development since June 2007, when it supported only the Ruby programming language, but now supports Java, ...
.
To allow for more third-party integrations to be added, HipChat featured a
REST
Rest or REST may refer to:
Relief from activity
* Sleep
** Bed rest
* Kneeling
* Lying (position)
* Sitting
* Squatting position
Structural support
* Structural support
** Rest (cue sports)
** Armrest
** Headrest
** Footrest
Arts and entert ...
interface with several language-specific implementations.
Administrators were able to access 1-to-1 chat histories if the customer's company policies permitted viewing of employee communications.
[HipChat TOS update, April 25, 2014](_blank)
/ref>
See also
*List of collaborative software
This list is divided into proprietary or free software, and open source software, with several comparison tables of different product and vendor characteristics. It also includes a section of project collaboration software, which is a standard fea ...
References
External links
Official Site
{{Instant messaging
Web applications
Chat websites
Adobe Integrated Runtime platform software
Instant messaging
Atlassian products
Business chat software