How to Create a Chat App like WhatsApp, WeChat, Viber or Snapchat?

In 2015, 75% of the mobile users used instant messaging apps for communication! To create a chat app that impresses users is gravely felt now than ever before.

Instant messaging apps have come to overtake email and other modes of communication. The monstrous growth of WhatsApp, Viber, WeChat, Snapchat etc only reaffirm the growing demand to create a chat app for interpersonal and inter-company communication. 

Simultaneously the technology to create your own whatsapp like app has also improvised with arithmetical progression. It is possible to create any kind of real-time chat app for businesses or for personal communication easily without any delay.

What distinguishes a real time chat application from the rest is its spontaneous and prompt delivery of messages/media between two users. Real Time communication is the essence of a chat application and hence technologies that specifically enables spontaneous messaging are required.

Technologies that make it Possible to Create a real time Secure Chat Application

ERLANG:Erlang is the powerful programming language based on which most top realtime chat apps like Whatsapp, WeChat are built. ERLANG is a general-purpose, runtime based, concurrent and garbage-collector programming language system that make chat apps so useful and intuitive as they are today.

"With Erlang you could build a chat app with many connected users and not worry about how they communicate," says Chad DePue, CTO of Whisper.

XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol) servers can be used to eliminate the need to have multiple client servers for information exchange. XMPP is a standardized version of open-standards based protocol known as Jabber which is now used to create chat apps like Facebook Messenger, WeChat, WhatsApp, etc.

Mnesia DB is the distributed database that is used to store messages, files, images, documents and so on. The goodness of Mnesia DB is that it can store any amount of data of arbitrary sizes of varying structures which is just the technology needed to create a chat app.

Cassandra: Cassandra is the best choice to create a chat app because it can be scaled at short notice to any extent and is also easily available. It supports replicating multiple datacenters and has a latency that will keep region based data outages at bay.

Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3): Amazon S3 cloud storage is what unleashes the true power of an realtime chat app. To build a chat app that is accessible from all corners of the earth, Amazon S3 provides a secure, scalable, durable cloud-storage for data objects.

Find out how to build a chat application using these technologies

Features that an ideal chat app must have

Every successful real-time chat app available in play stores have salient features that have stuck a chord with users. Text messages are not any more adequate for users. They expect elaborate features out of chat apps like the ones described below:

• Security: Security is the prime concern of any developer who wants to build a chat application. While building a chat app it is necessary to ensure to keep the data (conversations as well as multimedia) of the user secure, intact and insulated from any snooping, third party infiltration, etc.
• Real time connectivity: A real time chat app is preferred over other mediums of digital communication because it is prompt and happens immediately without any delay. Real time connectivity without any distance barriers is what ticks instant message communication.
• Group conversations: A real time chat application must give users the facility to engage in group conversations. These group hangouts must have also the facility to share multimedia files, documents, screens, location and anything that is possible in a desktop environment.
• Voice and video calling: WhatsApp introduced voice calling and Skype since the first days has video calling. The whole world rejoiced as this just took instant communication to the next level. Team chat, personal interaction and communication becomes interactive with these voice and video calling features.
• Presence indicators: Real time connectivity should not be made a bane for users. Hence presence indicators are a must for any instant communication app. Available, busy, offline, In a meeting - short, crisp; yet they say it all.
• Social integrations: A chat app should not be isolated from the social (virtual) life of a user. It should integrate the communication system with social media websites like Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus so that the user is able to make great use of communication and information sharing.
• Location sharing: Users of chat applications might want to share their locations at some point in time. This is of great significance in situations where there is a remote employee who wants to stay connected with his base office for information sharing.
• Quick search functionality: A search functionality will make it easier to search and track conversations that would have taken place a long while ago. This will prove useful in both personal and professional conversations where numbers, facts, details or anything of importance is shared via an Android/iOS chat application.

It is quite difficult to build a chat app from scratch integrating all these features in detail. Hence, the need for a framework which can be readily deployed in no time. Especially for enterprises which cannot spare much time for coding and development, a robust framework is of utmost importance. Perhaps, that is why chat app frameworks like Contus Fly have come to surface as reliable solutions for enterprises and teams equally.

Contus Fly - Purpose-built Framework for Creating a real-time Chat App for all Purposes

Contus Fly is a ready to deploy framework with which any chat application with intricate requirements can be easily developed. The framework adheres to impregnable security features that make it literally a digital fortress of sorts. With Amazon S3 storage and Erlang based programming, Contus Fly is almost a dream combination to bring the best messaging application that will top the charts.

And also when it comes to the cost factor like how much will it cost to build an app similar to whatsapp, wechat, viber or snapchat the answer would be, it completely depends upon the features that you expect and also much reliable with this readymade solution.

Be known that it is also possible to build an exact clone of WhatsApp with Fly’s capabilities. It also provides social integrations, voice calling, screen sharing, location identification/sharing etc. that successful chat applications have. Built with time tested technologies Contus Fly is definitely an excellent option to build enterprise chat applications or private team app solutions.