Why are In-App Chats Great for Customer-Centric Businesses?

“Wish to stay atop of user engagement & retention for your product? Then without a doubt, your go-to solution has to be ‘in-app chats’.”

In-app chats have been on rise from the past decade because of the pool of benefits it gives to customer-centric businesses. From seamlessly being able to connect with customers to ensuring quick solutions round-the-clock, in-app chats are becoming the most popular communication channel for users. 

And as per a recent report, almost 46% of customers prefer to reach out to businesses via chats than any other medium. Hence, these days web developers and SaaS-based companies are increasingly finding the need to integrate in-app chats to business chat application.

Why Are In-App Chats Important For Your Business?

We just saw about the percentile of customers preferring real time chat as a communication medium. In such a case, in-app chats are required for any online chat platform for boosting loyalty,  productivity, and collaboration.

Additionally, in-app chats are a great option for:

• Optimizing user experience with real time chat
• Product stickiness
• Customer retention 
• Increased conversation with gratification

Now that we see the importance of in-app chats for a business. Let us see what features in any in-app chat app makes it a boon in the user community.

Must-have In-App Chat Features

What features your business must include completely depends on the type of products you develop for your customers. Some of the basic chat features to include are:

• Group chats: Lets users to create groups and engage in a group chat for project discussions and team meetings.
• Real-time message translation: Translate messages received to the user’s preferred languages.
• Emojis: Allow users to send emojis and emoticons for maintaining the conversation going. 
• Ban user: This feature lets you ban any user from the group.
• Unread message count: Display the number of messages that are not read by the user. 
• Read and delivery receipts: Let users know when their messages are read and delivered.
• Typing indicators: Allow users to know when other users are typing a message.
• Alerts and notifications: Alert users whenever a new chat is received or missed. 
• Security: All chats and communications to and fro the app is secured using AES, SSL, and TLS encryptions and other security standards.

You can also include some of the collaboration tools to your product like:

• Screen sharing: Share screen during group calls for better conversation.
• File sharing: Lets users to share files in any format to peers either in a single chat or group chat.
• Interactive digital whiteboards: Display your ideas and views visually with other users using whiteboards.
• Message broadcasting: Display information, alerts, and updates across vast groups or chat rooms in just a click. 

Additionally, features like UI kits, and cloud services are few of the advanced features mostly searched by customers in any online chat platform. Giving your users different deployment models like cloud can be a treat to them!

We have just learned about some of the top features. But how do you build those?

Here’s how:

Platforms & Programming Languages

Programming languages are very pivotal for creating a fully functional chat app. Below, let us briefly see a tabular description of the different languages that are used to build a real time chat application on varied platforms.

In case you want your chat app to be built with a single code that can run on multiple platforms, you can make use of cross-platform programming languages like React Native and Iconic.

Also Read: Angular Vs React: Which One is Best for your App?

If you wish to master your skills on this section, take a look here. Our next section will surely glue you to your screens.

Eager to know what are the different chat API providers in the market? Take a look below:

Top 6 Chat APIs Providers in 2023

The market of some of the best canned real time chat APIs is massive and huge. So, we have curated a list of the top 6 providers that knit real time chats to your business chat applications smoothly. 

A short disclaimer that the provider’s list is explained in no particular order.

MirrorFly

MirrorFly’s chat APIs are built keeping customers in mind. Our software development kits are a powerhouse of canned features that every user expects in a chat platform. Be it the modern-looking UI kits or cloud deployment options or the SaaS pricing models, everything is hooked for the customers. 

Launched more than a decade ago, our chat APIs still stand tall amidst different players in terms of user experience, concurrent connections, low latencies, scalability, and top-notch chat features. 

Features

• Dedicated cloud hostings
• Dashing UI kits 
• Real time message translation
• Collaboration tools
• Security standards and techniques
• Location tracking
• Read and delivery receipts
• User-to-user blocking and ban user
• HIPAA and GDPR compliances
• User online presence

Pricing

MirrorFly gives its users a free trial for a certain number of days. After this, you may have to select one of the SaaS pricing plans to continue further. We also offer SaaP plans too.

Essential: $ 299/month
Growth: $ 699 /month
Premium: $ 999/month

Sendbird

Established in the year 2013, Sendbird has become the desiring messaging solution for all user-business communications. This credit is because of the premade chat features, analytics, chat moderation tools, and bots. Though Sendbird is into VoIP calling, their web chat APIs lack UI customization options.

Features

• Sendbird UIKit
• Typing & presence indicators
• Read & delivery receipts
• Chat moderations and channel management
• Push notifications
• Reactions
• User & channel mentions
• Unread message count
• Different analytics and tools

Pricing

There are 3 pricing plans from Sendbird and a free trial plan named as ‘Developer’:

Starter 5K MAU: $399/ month
Pro 5K MAU: $599/ month
Enterprise: Custom pricing based on features you opt for.

PubNub

PubNub’s everything that a customer looks for in gaining out-of-the-box messaging experiences. Their chat APIs have solved the biggest challenge of maintaining uptime SLA, and so, they have become a renowned provider for user retention and engagement.

Features

• Pre-built chat components
• Different security standards and mechanisms
• Alerts and notifications
• In-app and group chats
• Collaboration tools
• Location tracking
• IoT device control

Pricing

PubNub offers two pricing plans and a free plan up to 200 MAUs.

Starter: $49 per month
Pro: Custom pricing for different use cases.

Getstream

Stream is a SaaS solution that is known to be a counterpart of Sendbird. It offers a comprehensive suite of Chat APis, SDKs, UI and UX kits. What differentiates stream from the rest is the ‘news-feed‘ functionality that includes add-ons, comments, reactions, and many more. Stream also supports concurrent connections with minimal latency and SLA time.

Features

• 1-to-1 direct and group chats
• Message translation
• Call recording
• Moderations and banning users
• Live Video Calling & audio conferencing
• Screen & file sharing
• Security standards
• GDPR and HIPAA compliances

Pricing

Getstream offers a 30 day free trial of its features. After that, you may have to choose any one of the below plans. 

Startup: $499/month
Standard: $1,299/month
Premium: $2,299/month
Enterprise: Pay for the features you opt for.

Agora

This developer-friendly chat API provider is known to deliver exceptional chat, voice, and video functionalities to a larger customer base. With over 250+ data centers, they hold a wide networking solution offering low latency connections.

Features

• Message translation
• Read receipts
• Presence and typing indicators
• Notifications
• Emojis and GPS location tracking
• Exporting chat history

Pricing

Agora does not have any upfront costs. It lets you pay only for the services you opt for.

Free: Up to 1000 MAUs
Chat (Public Beta): Contact sales team for pricing.

Twilio

When it comes to web chat API and messaging SDKs, Twilio is the industry leader holding a suite of feature sets and customizable UI kits.

Their chat APIs are designed with customers’ needs in mind and their standout is their programmable SMS, MMS, and FB messenger like chats. Additionally, their APIs support multiple languages and platforms. 

Also Read: Best Twilio Alternatives in 2023

Features

• Alerts and notifications
• Reporting and analytical tools
• Collaboration tools
• Event streams
• Third-party integrations
• Programmable messaging and voice

Pricing

Twilio’s pricing plan depends on the user base.

Usage: $0.05/ user/month
Storage: $0.25/ GB/month

Final Words

Finally! We have come down to the end of the blog post. From analyzing the importance of in-app chats to the different chat API players, we think we gave you a fair insight on how to enhance communication on your customer-oriented business applications.

Interested in our in app Chat APIs? Feel free to reach out to our experts to get complete support on integrating messaging into your business apps. Happy Developing! 

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