I had a "this is what all the fuss is about?" reaction.

I actually seem to prefer the hipchat UI personally, and apparently so do many of my colleagues. The fact that hipchat is cheaper only made it clearer to us.

note: only using and comparing the osx desktop app for both services.

One key example is the multiple teams feature: the ability to have multiple accounts logged in at the same time, and the ability to easily swipe between them on iOS or toggle on desktop is a huge advantage.

A quick look at HipChat indicates this still isn't possible [1].

Considering more and more people wear different startup / company / organisation hats not having this feature is a great way to limit participation / growth in a communications platform.

That Slack had this feature at the outset for me meant I've already spread use of Slack to multiple orgs and participate in all of them at the same time.

[1] https://help.hipchat.com/forums/138883-suggestions/suggestio...

Nonsense. Slack is very beautiful with everything around the core feature, but the core feature is awful. The main chat window wastes incredible amounts of space, even in the compressed mode. The least visible items on the screen (apart from timestamps) are the chat messages from users - instead their names, icons, channel names, navigation elements are HUGE. Cute niceties like emotes are screwy due to the standard layout. We're using the Jira integration, and it wastes so much space that one entire page is taken up by a mere 3 Jira ticket updates. Stick it into 'compressed' mode and now every chat line starts at a different point, depending on the user name. Hipchat has none of the problems I've listed here, though it has it's own - generally they're issues outside the core feature.

For people used to chat elsewhere, these issues are pretty obvious. But Slack seems to be marketing to people who've never used chat, so they get to set their expectations from scratch.

Well obviously we disagree on this point, as to me something being beautiful necessarily has to encompass the UX, and I think the Slack UX is great.

As a previous long-time Jira / Confluence user I also know about atrocious UX, and Atlassian delivers that in spades (along with appallingly slow page refreshes). If you've been sensitised to the kind of UX Atlassian delivers I'm really surprised you take issue with Slack, but each to their own.

> For people used to chat elsewhere, these issues are pretty obvious. But Slack seems to be marketing to people who've never used chat, so they get to set their expectations from scratch.

Our team are long-time IRC users and have used a lot of comms solutions over the years, and Slack is the first decent one we've come across.

So I'd obviously refute your assertion that savvy users dislike Slack and unsophisticated users like Slack.

Our team are also longterm IRC users (I get mocked for only being in half-a-dozen channels) and our Slack experiment lasted only one afternoon before everyone abandoned it. The only dev who was really fighting for Slack was wanting to use their IRC integration and bypass the UI completely.

So I'd obviously refute your assertion that savvy users dislike Slack and unsophisticated users like Slack.

Refute away, because that's not what I said. Your entire rebuttal to what I said has been a strawman, apart from 'we disagree'. I gave you some very concrete examples of my problems with the Slack interface, and you give me a vague dismissal about entirely different products.

Not currently possible, but officially confirmed as being worked on.

"It’s official: Development is underway for multiple account support in the HipChat clients. Stay tuned because updates are just around the corner."

But if you're right, it's no good and there's no switching costs, then I guess they'll die. Right?