The popularity of messaging apps such as Whatsapp, Telegram, Signal, Viber, Wechat, etc. is not hidden from anyone in the world now and the dependence on these messaging apps has increased so much that life seems empty without these smartphone apps. The complete communication process has been made far easier than before with integration of multiple modern features into these Mobile Application thus enabling the people to remain connected while sitting even in remote areas of the world.
This widespread popularity of these messaging apps insists a lot of potential investors in the world to think how much does it cost to build a messaging app like Whatsapp. Also, more questions arise such as how to start the app development process, which features to integrate, how much will the features add to budget, how to monetize the app, etc. For all the cost and messaging app development related queries, this article would prove to be very helpful.
First of all, let’s quickly find out what are the main features of Whatsapp that made the app so popular throughout the world, and must be added to your messaging app in order to make it successful.
- Quick registration
For registration process, once the user downloads and installs the messaging app, he is then required to enter his credentials such as name, contact number, country, etc. Then, the app sends a confirmation message to that contact number with a code, which once filled in the app, enables the user to complete his registration successfully. After successful registration, the messaging app automatically syncs all the contacts using the same messaging app.
- Both voice and video calling
This is another feature which is appreciated beyond expectation by the users. Multiple users using the same messaging app such as Whatsapp can talk to each other via the in-built calling feature which can be either a voice call or even a video call. Integration of these advanced features undoubtedly adds to the overall development cost of a messaging app, but the app is incomplete without them, and therefore must have such features to gain popularity.
- Multimedia sharing feature
Another feature of Whatsapp which is very useful for the people is that documents of different formats can be easily shared with other people with just a few clicks within the app. Sharing songs or videos or photographs with your contacts is thus very easy, along with forwarding documents such as Microsoft Docs or PDF Files.
- Contact and Location sharing
This is another useful feature of messaging apps with which you can directly share a contact which is saved in your phone with someone who needs it.
Also, if you want to send your location to someone, you can do it from within the messaging app, thus making it easy for them to know where exactly you are located.
- Quick notifications
Whenever your messaging app receives a new message or a call or you miss call in the app, all such important notifications pop up on top of your mobile screen thus allowing you to be careful about everything, not missing any of the notifications.
- Fully secure and encrypted one-on-one messaging
This is perhaps the best and most important feature of every messaging app – to allow its users to chat with each other with complete privacy. This is what has been done by Whatsapp, and this is what your messaging app should do as well. Adding more security to users by encrypting their messages adds to how much does it cost to build a messaging app but must be done for sure to give a safe experience to the users.
- Offline messaging
This is a cool feature which stands out in a messaging app. Even when you are in a bad network area, you can still type and send a message from your side. Even if this message does not get delivered at that moment, it will automatically get delivered as soon as the network is back in your mobile phone. Offline messaging therefore helps the users not to forget sharing important information with others even if there is no network at all.
- Privacy settings
The users can change various privacy settings in the messaging app such as adding or removing profile picture, adding a status, who can see their status and picture, who can see the last seen activity, etc. Again, the question of how much does it cost to build a messaging app keeps getting heavier with addition of such features, but these integrations must be done to complete the app.
In A Nutshell:
All the above-mentioned features are simple yet important for a messaging app. However, adding advanced features also adds up to the question of how much does it cost to build a messaging app. To give a rough estimate, with an expectation of adding all the basic and some of the advanced features in a messaging app, we would say that it might cost around $40,000 to $50,000 to develop a messagin app like Whatsapp. However, this cannot be considered a final amount which can only be decided by the mobile app development team after discussing the features to be integrated.
Designers and developers at Omninos Solutions leave no stone unturned to satisfy the customers and build the best-in-class app for them. Contact us at info@omninos.com for more details.
