I recently switched from a company using HipChat to a company using Slack, and the differences seem mostly cosmetic and immaterial.
Are the differences between these various chat programs big enough to affect user experience or productivity?
What distinguishes one from the next?
One of the biggest differences for us was the option for a self hosted solution with HipChat. Both companies are fairly open about accessing user communications without any sort of permission or audit trail. Being able to self host it ensures that Atlassian or Slack employees aren't dropping into our chats.
Check the fine print. Even with the self-hosted version, Atlassian is scraping the chat data for analytic purposes. This was confirmed by Atlassian support via a HIPPA audit at my last gig.
