Team messaging app HipChat has announced a new group video chat feature for premium users of the platform.
The video conferencing option, set to roll out over the next few weeks, means HipChat Plus account holders can initiate a virtual meeting with another person and add up to 10 others to the call using an invite URL.
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Users also have the ability to share their screen during a video chat, so that others can live view open documents or browser pages on their desktop.
Mac users will need to update their HipChat installations to see the option, which is represented by a camera icon above the member list in every room. Initial rollout of the group video chat is limited to the HipChat desktop app, but the company says it will appear on its mobile version soon.
The announcement will be seen by HipChat owner Atlassian as a victory over rival service Slack, which has promised team video calling as part of its development timeline but has yet to deliver the feature.
HipChat Plus costs $2 a month per user, but the Mac app is a free download, while the iPhone and iPad version of HipChat can be downloaded for free from the App Store.
Top Rated Comments
I liked HipChat, and I liked Atlassian products, but Atlassian established themselves very much during the Web 1.0 days and I feel they're still playing catch up.
This may be so, but the nice thing about HipChat is that you have the option for self hosting. The self host ability to run and integrate Jira, Confluence, HipChat, BitBucket and Bamboo is really nice. For our small team of 10 people, its only $10 per application per year as well.The amount of features you can plug into Slack, the fact that the free feature list is amazing and the amount of momentum it has mean that HipChat is always going to be playing second fiddle at best. I admire your efforts guys but it's hard to fight the tide.
I don't get why I would use this when Hangouts is such a great app
Hangouts isn't really a business/corporate collaboration tool.The integration list for hipchat is massive, and coupled with the API you can push call/response bots into the service to do whatever you want.
We use it in our software development, and have multiple bots ferreting messages to and from Jira, Salesforce, Bitbucket, Jenkins, etc.
2/mo per user for what we get out of it is already a good deal; if this means we can ditch using Bluejeans for team video conferences all the better.
The amount of features you can plug into Slack, the fact that the free feature list is amazing and the amount of momentum it has mean that HipChat is always going to be playing second fiddle at best. I admire your efforts guys but it's hard to fight the tide.