“Messaging is one of the few things that people do more than social networking.”
This statement made by Mark Zuckerberg, in a public Q&A in November 2014 perfectly fits in this mobile-driven era. At present, more than three billion people are using Smartphones with numerous chat apps or messenger apps installed on it. Today’s chat apps (WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat, and more) are not just about sending and receiving messages; instead, they allow users to share photos, videos, gifs, emoticons, voice messages, and a lot more.
Apart from personal communication, people are using these chat messengers for business purpose also. Yes, most of the popular chat messengers are providing users with the facility of creating a business account for selling their products and services. If you too are interested in developing such an application, then you are in the right place.
Here, in this post, we have listed the latest trends, advanced features, and the technology stack required to build a chat app. Before checking them out, let’s have a look over the chat app statistics:
This statistics (Source: Statista) clearly shows that WhatsApp is one of the most popular chat app globally. The popularity and number of users of Whatsapp are increasing it keeps on bringing new features for its users. Apart from this, messenger apps like Facebook messenger, Wechat and Snapshot are also running parallel in terms of popularity.
Messaging app or chat app Trends 2020
- Focus on business messaging
- The rise of Artificial Intelligence in messaging
- Integration of payment gateways
- More focus on security
- Implementation of Rich Communication Services (RCS)
Advanced Features of a Chat App
With many chat apps or messenger applications already available in the market, making your chat app popular is not a cakewalk. However, by implementing highly advanced features into it, you can make this journey smooth and easy. For those who have a little idea of a messenger app development, we have also added the essential features that should be there in your app:
- Easy sign up and sign in
Registration is required to allow users to create an account using their phone number. You can add two-step verification or authentication to it to prevent unauthorized access. With sign in or log in, users would access their account even from some other device.
- Encryption and online privacy
To secure data and information users exchange through a messaging app, it is necessary to maintain end-to-end encryption and online privacy. Therefore, your app should have this feature so that only the sender and receiver can read the messages.
- Geolocation
Most of the messenger apps allow their users to share live location to their contacts. This is one of the essential features of a chat app that is also useful for businesses who want to use these chat apps for selling their products and services.
- Chatbots
Artificial intelligence makes a machine or software smarter by letting it think, behave, and act like a human being. AI-powered chatbots can help your users to simplify many tasks. For instance, Telegram offers its own bot platform that provides users with the latest news from all over the world, manage finances, and do a lot more.
You can also leverage this technology to provide your users the convenience of automatic answering or smart answering. After integrating AI, your chat app will show the users with recommendations for replying to a message. So, he/she doesn’t have to type it manually.
- Cloud synchronization
Messages, chat histories, files, media users share on a chat app gets stored on the cloud so that users can access it anywhere anytime. Adding a cloud sync feature to the app keeps this data up-to-date. In other words, when a user edits a file, then the changes get automatically applied to the other instances of it. This feature also helps users to recover their data in case they lost their device.
- Message broadcasting
With this feature, users would be able to send a single message to multiple users without sending it to them individually. Messaging broadcasting is not like group messages as the recipients receive the message as a non-group message. They also don’t know about the other recipients of the same message.
- Push notification
Add this feature so that the users can receive instant alerts about new software updates or text messages or received from their contacts. With the push notification feature, you can also make a user know when their favorite contact comes online.
- Dark mode
The dark mode is not only aesthetically appealing but, it helps in saving battery life. By using applications such as YouTube in dark mode, with screen brightness set to 50%, you can save up to 14% battery consumption.
- VR and AR technologies
Keeping in mind the benefits virtual reality and augmented reality are rendering to different business verticals, it would be no wrong to say that these technologies can also enhance your messaging experience. Using AR technology, users can do a video chat in real-time as if they are sitting beside their friends. VR can help users to share their social worlds virtually.
Messaging app development- Teams and Technologies
To develop a messaging app, you need a complete development team, including the following:
- Android or iOS developer
- UI/UX designer
- Project manager
- App testing engineers
- Support professionals
Tech Stack required for developing a chat app
Most of the developers use the following tech stack for building a chat app:
- Swift for iOS
- Java for Android
- Node JS as the backend with either XMPP or socket.io
The tech stack may change depending on your specific app requirements.
Estimate cost of chat app development
Calculating the estimated cost of developing a chat app is possible after considering the following:
- The platform on which the app will be released
- Size of the development team
- Location of the chat app development company or chat app developers
- The complexity of the app
- Features of the chat app
- Tools and technologies to be used for the development
Roughly, to develop a chat app or messenger app, you need to pay USD 40,000 to 50,000. More the features you want in the app, higher will be the price.
Some additional chat app features to be considered
- Location sharing
- Profiles Customization
- Scheduling messages for birthdays and holidays in advance
- Stickers (let users create their own stickers)
- Sharing content via statuses, pages and stories
- Chatting with emoji adds more fun
Hire Chat app Development Company
Quytech is a well-known and trusted mobile app development company with over a decade of experience in developing hi-performing applications. The team of highly qualified and skilled developers at Quytech has a considerable experience developing mobile applications for healthcare, finance, travel, and other business verticals. Apart from this, other reasons that will compel you to choose us for your messenger app development include the following:
- Timely delivery
- Clear and concise communication with the clients
- No hidden charges
- Round the clock support
- Hourly or monthly pricing plans
Choose Quytech to build a chat app with highly advanced features!