[gregshap]

My current employer uses hipchat, and I've used Slack at previous jobs, social/professional groups, and with some of our contractors now.

Features: Slack wins. Slack is usually a little ahead. Hipchat was catching up and then I just popped back with threaded convos.

Uptime: Slack wins I think. Hipchat goes down/slow kind of often. Approximately github often. I don't use Slack as intensely, but can't think of many times that slack was down aside from major internet outages.

Rooms/Channels: Hipchat has rooms, slack has channels. Basically parity in terms of group/private/team channels.

Pricing: Hipchat wins. Both have free tiers, but those are for toy groups. Hipchat is about $2/user vs $10/user for slack. Slack doesn't charge you for inactive users though (2 weeks dormant), so it can be competitive if you have a small team of actually active users.

Mobile: I find hipchat to be slower and a little worse in tiny annoying ways. For instance on my phone/watch, I get notifications for 1:1 messages and @mentions. But in hipchat, if i'm not already in the room where someone mentioned me, it doesn't show up when I open the app, even if I get there by swiping the notification. Come on hipchat!