Real-time instant messaging applications are distinguished by their real-time delivery of messages and multimedia between two users, and it’s of no surprise and investors and developers seek to replicate Whatsapp’s success in their own chat apps. In that spirit, this article will outline the main ways you can equip yourself to successfully create a chat app for iOS or Android, and see your app succeed on the market.
Here I’m going to discuss how and which platform is best for developing the chat application.
Some of the features of the chat application include –
- Instant Messaging
- Real Time Connectivity
- Multimedia File Transmission
- Security
- Push Notifications
- Quick search
- Group Chats
- Video and Voice Calling
- Social Integration
Here are the best technologies we prefer –
Erlang: This is the main programming language on which the massively popular chat apps Whatsapp and WeChat are built from. It’s a general purpose, garbage collector program that enables instant messaging apps to be so useful and intuitive to their users needs. Your server can be built from Erlang, but PHP and Java are also good alternative options. So this is the good news for the PHP and Java developers. But if you take my personal opinion then avoid PHP. The main reason is the load balancer, its not good for Group chat application, while Java is good option but its take much time and cost.
YAWS: Manage your multimedia with YAWS, a high-performance web server developed for apps with high loads of dynamic content streaming in and out. Low turn-around time just made this server wisely acceptable.
Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol Servers: XMPP server eliminates the need for multiple client servers for information exchange, allowing the app to scan the user’s contact book to build a contact list useable within your app. It’s the standardized form of Jabber, an open standard based protocol that’s been used to create Facebook Messenger, WeChat, Whatsapp, and the rest.
Mnesia DB: This is the database that will allow you to store messages, files, images, documents, and the rest of the multimedia files that will be running through your app. It’s vital to have a database like this, and Mnesia DB goes above and beyond your need by being able to store any amount of data, just the type of technology you’ll need to create and maintain your chat app.
Cost & Time Frame:
The last but not the least is the cost and time frame. Well thus varies somehow from $60k to $100k , AND the time frame fall under 9 months to 1yr (depends on your team strength).