We use HipChat at work, and I use Slack for some other projects; both pale in comparison to the simplicity, flexibility and client-options of IRC. But for those less technical it's a fantastic and easy to setup alternative. Pointless in an all-dev company, but anywhere else, priceless.
> both pale in comparison to the simplicity, flexibility and client-options of IRC
I can definitely agree on the flexibility part, but simplicity? No way. HipChat is easy enough for our completely non-technical users to be quite comfortable with immediately. The setup process is entering a username and a password. Ditto for the mobile apps.
I've set up an IRC server before and tried convincing a moderately technical team to install Colloquy and jump on. I will happily trade the features of Slack or HipChat for the simplicity of IRC. Persistent rooms alone (with zero config, no bouncers, etc) is worthwhile over vanilla IRC.
