At ollaa.com we are 4 undergraduate CS students, developing a mobile social lifestreaming network. We are not working on this startup full time and we don’t have a budget to spend on fancy project management tools. One of the solutions that we proudly use to get things done is HipChat.

Basically it is a chat software that team members can communicate in chat rooms or in person. The different thing is, conversations are persistent and you don’t have to be online to keep up with previous chats. It also allows file sharing, video chat and has iOS, OS X, Android apps, which is pretty cool. 

Why we do love HipChat?

  • Simple. I instantly set up all the configuration for all the team in one minute or so.

  • It’s inexpensive. 30-day free trial and then $2/person per month. $8/mo is pretty affordable for a small business.

  • Everything is async. Idea behind the HipChat is it does not require anyone to be online at the moment. If you have to say something to team mate at 5am, he’ll see when he wakes up.

  • Searchable history. Anything you talk in-person and in the chat rooms before are recorded and searchable.

  • Multiplatform. We use OS X app, Anroid app, iPhone app and iPad app. Always in our pockets.

  • File sharing. We usually share reports, screenshots, various files in the chat room, with one-click and it’s on the cloud.

  • **GitHub integration. **Has a seamless integration with GitHub post-push hooks. We all can sync up with git pushes on our repositories (e.g. web backend, iOS app, Android app). It is about to replace our github-commit-notifier.

Why we hate HipChat?

Actually we don’t, but there are several particular annoying issues.

  • Push notifications. They’re confusing. All the in-person communication is pushed, however room conversation is not unless you are @mentioned. If you would like to make an announcement to 10 people, you have to mention them one by one manually.

  • **iOS app issues. **Can’t upload files from iPad. Reported this and not solved in a month. When app is minimized and then relaunched, it blocks the whole screen and logs you in every time. Makes you lose a lot of time even if you’re on a high-speed network. It could have been designed in a way that people can write messages until login is finished. UX issue.

  • Android app issues. Signing in everytime when the app relaunches also appears on Android and an annoying issue. Hope they can fix this, soon. They offer a quite simple service they should make it work really good. I believe this is one of their core features.

  • **OS X app issues. **Consumes 150 MB of RAM on a regular usage, we had to quit HipChat in order to use Xcode on a MacBook Air.

It is a good product and hopefully we’ll be using it if they fix these issues.