HipChat- All Around Awesome Chat

Back when I worked at Hub City Media we used the "Atlassian Stack" a lot. I put that in parentheses because normally a technology stack refers to the front-end, server side, databases, etc. that work together to make an application function properly. Atlassian products are very different from this. There's Jira; a nice online task and bug tracking platform, Confluence; an internal wikipedia-ish documentation platform, and many other including HipChat. 

All Devices

Hipchat works in the browser, has downloadable clients for windows, mac, and linux, and also runs on a downloadable app for ios and android. It works everywhere, meaning you can chat however and wherever you want. 

Good Looks

It's just a nice program to use. This screenshot below is from the browser version in chrome on mac circa January 2016. It is responsive up to a point (the sidebar on left and right stay the same size, but the chat area "stretches" as the browser size changes. 

Free?

My friend's business was really suffering from a lack of communication because of distributed team members. I created a HipChat team and haven't paid a thing. We're not using any other Atlassian products, but I think Hipchat alone is free which is great!

Emoticons

One of the best parts of HipChat are the emoticons. Although it may seem odd to someone looking in weighing the platform against other options, the emoticons really do set HipChat apart from every other chat client. The complete list can be found here: https://www.hipchat.com/emoticons.

These emoticons are much more than just :) turning into a smiley face. I guarantee that