[cmp0]

I agree that the switching costs aren't technical. Maybe for small teams in a startup it's easy to relearn a new product, but don't underestimate the stickiness with large groups of people all using and relying on it. Just think about how many large (& small) organizations still use email even though it's terrible for intra company communication.

[themartorana]

Don't underestimate the stickiness to small teams. We did switch to Slack from HipChat (which was fine) and we love Slack. I imagine a deal of disappointment among the 6 people in our company if we switched to something else - especially something almost Slack.

Slack is one of the first companies walking around with a billion dollar valuation that makes me go... "Yeah, maybe..." We use it. We love it. It's mature, well designed, gets improved constantly, and is used by more local businesses I know than not. It provides real, actual benefit to our small organization above and beyond what we pay for it.

Slack, to me, is a real product, with a real revenue stream and real value to teams. I really hope they never get bought and acquired or rolled in to a larger organization. The app is a constant joy to use - I can only say that about one other program I use daily.

[JimmyL]

Can you highlight a few of the reasons you love it, in comparison to HipChat? When we ended our trial month and announced we were going back to HipChat, the biggest reactions was "OK".

[lobster_johnson]

Multi-team support is a big one. HipChat doesn't let you participate in multiple organizations. When you're doing B2B stuff, or contracting work, or just interfacing with some external team (eg., designers), being able to chat in the same room without having to jump through a bunch of hoops is super important.

For me, there is also a bunch of minor detail where Slack wins. Slack just looks better, behaves better with choppy connections, and has better code pasting support. It also does much better with automatic link extraction (HipChat's Linky is annoying and won't let you remove the automatic description). Lastly, Slack has integration playbooks that automatically uses APIs to configure stuff or (when that's not possible) gives you the recipe; for example, the Github and Zendesk integrations will automatically register the app and webhooks for you, almost no manual setup needed. HipChat is all manual.

And for the love of God, HipChat, fix your inane emojis. Immature 4Chan memes (trollface etc.) have no place in a business, not even among developers.

[rimantas]

> Immature 4Chan memes (trollface etc.) have no place in a business, not even among developers.

Oh, they do. E.g. to make fun of those trying to look sooo professional.