Expectations and needs of people change with time, and technology should always be innovative to support it. In the year 2020, an unexpected pandemic made everyone stay at home. Most of the businesses suffered a lot initially as they were clueless about the situation. Business came to a stand-still without appropriate communication. Companies worried about conducting team meetings and client discussions safely amidst the Pandemic. Even commoners started feeling suffocated by being home all the time without meeting friends or extended family. Video chats/ Video conferencing apps like Zoom, Skype, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger helped businesses, companies, and people to overcome the pandemic and lead a normal life.
Few days into the Pandemic, video chat has already become a household activity. People easily adapted to these apps as they were easy and convenient to use. Business is all about trust and relationships with the customers. Meeting should be more than voice; thus, video chat apps helped businesses gain the trust of their customers with face-to-face interaction. Also, it allowed team members to stay connected and work together in achieving their organizational goals. In short, it improved communication by allowing us to have productive remote meetings.
Other than organizations and businesses, video chat apps improved the lives of people as well. It helped people to communicate with their loved ones effectively amidst social distancing and pandemics. Instant messaging and video calling was the need of the hour, and video chat apps fulfilled it and helped people in the pandemic time.
What exactly is a Video Chat App?
Video Chat App is an app that allows you to communicate visually with other people at different locations via computer/mobile phones. In simple words, it lets one-to-one visual communication between two internet users. However, most of the video chat apps allow more than one user and support group chats too.
Video Chat Usage Statistics
In the year 2020, with the pandemic outbreak, people started relying more on video chat apps as it allowed them to attend work meetings and converse with their loved ones.
Check the graph illustrating the increase in downloads of video chat apps during the pandemic.
Types of Video Chat Apps
Various people need video chat apps for several reasons. It can be organizations with frequent meetings with their employees and clients or general users looking for ideal ways to communicate with their friends. So, many types of video chat apps are available to fulfill the diverse needs of the audience.
1. Video conferencing apps
These types of apps are perfect for meetings indulging many users. Video conferencing apps can be used for business, work, and e-learning purposes. The major advantage of this app is that it supports many users to attend conferences simultaneously. The video and audio quality should be extraordinary so that the app can support conferences. Skype and Zoom are some popular examples of video conferencing apps.
2. Video calling apps
These apps are mainly used for instant messaging. However, it allows video chats/conferences as well. Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp are a few examples of video calling apps. These apps are free to use and do not limit the conference time. However, these apps limit user participation. Like both Facebook and WhatsApp allows up to eight users only. Still, these apps are quite useful for calls among friends/family and not for official calls that demand more users at a time.
3. Entertaining apps
Entertainment apps are for a wide range of interactive activities right from music, playing games to streaming media and instant messaging purposes. Houseparty is an example of an entertainment app. It has some built-in games. The app lets the user chat while playing games. Also, it will notify users when contacts are online. The user can invite them to join the party.
Another example is Discord. It is also an entertainment app exclusively made for gamers. It allows the users to make audio and video calls, launch gaming streams, and monitor their friends' play. It might be overwhelming with too many features initially, but users get used to it once they get the hang of it.
All these apps have received huge responses from users all over the world. So, cloning a video chat app is definitely a profitable business. However, you need to concentrate on a few key features to have an optimal video chat/conference. Let us dive deeper into the key features of video chat apps.
Key Features of Video Chat Apps
First, let us explore the basic features of video chat apps before moving on to their advanced features.
Basic features
Video and Voice Calls
Other than video calls, voice calls are also mandatory in the app. Users see in-app voice call as a cheaper alternative to make international calls. High-quality video and crystal clear audio is the concrete part of the video chat app.
Group Calls
The app should be able to accommodate more people instead of one-to-one calls. More users mean more benefits. People would like to have a group chat with many friends. The organization would want to conduct a conference with many members. Depending on the target audience, the app should support at least 10 to 50 users. People would chat with 10 friends, and for businesses, it would be meeting with 50 members. Also, the app must have important organizing features. For example, muting or unmuting users, inviting or rejecting users, etc.
Text Chat
Video and audio is always a priority in the app, but text chat is not something you can ignore. When users are busy with a meeting or stuck in a poor internet coverage area, text chat should come in handy.
End-to-end Encryption
The end-to-end encryption feature is important to have as it ensures the confidentiality of the messages. No one can read the message when it is being sent. The message is encrypted on the sender’s device and decrypted only on the recipient’s device.
Push Notifications
Having the push notifications feature will be very beneficial for the users. The app will notify users whenever they get new chat messages, missed calls, and other new updates.
Advanced features
Adding advanced features will improve app performance and enrich the user experience. Read on to get more insight into the advanced features of the video chat app.
Screen Sharing
Screen sharing is an essential feature in any online conferencing app. It lets you share your screen with fellow participants, especially in a business meeting. Also, people can share movies with their friends and use them for entertainment purposes as well.
Virtual Background
Virtual background lets the users change their background as per their choice. It helps people hide a messy room or a cluttered table when they are on a video chat. A feature that definitely adds comfort to the users and avoids embarrassment.
Virtual Noise Cancellation
A really advanced feature that can benefit the users when they work from home and have to attend an important meeting. It eradicates the background noise from the kitchen blender or the TV from the living area. By integrating Artificial Intelligence(AI), the noise from both conversations can be canceled.
Custom Emojis and Stickers
Today’s young audiences want innovations in everything. They easily get bored with the default in-app stickers and want to create custom emojis and stickers. Such custom emoji options are available in most messenger and chatting apps. It enables the users to share their local jokes in their chats. In short, it allows a lively conversation and lets the users share their sense of humor with others.
Custom Masks
People will never say no to customized services as it gives them some authority over the app. Custom masks allow them to create masks of their preference. Custom masks are quite popular among people as it is funny and unique to design their own masks.
How to Monetize your Video Chat app?
Now comes the most important question. How to monetize your video chat app? Any investor would want to generate income and grow their business. Video chat apps are quite a popular product, and here are the ways to earn money from them.
Advertisements
In the video chat app, you can’t integrate ads during the call. But you can show promotional banners during the conversation. You can also place unskippable ads at the end of the call. People may find it annoying and so avoid overusing it.
Paid calls
Users carry their mobile phones with them always, but they can't stay online always. In the case of network issues, the app should allow users to make mobile calls. Including mobile calls in your video chat development has its own benefits. A normal call will cost more than the call through the app. Skype is a perfect example of such calling services. It has specific call rates for every country that is predominantly cheaper than roaming.
Freemium
It is nothing new that video calls are always free in any video chat app. However, there is no harm in setting some limitations either on time or the number of participants. Zoom also has set some restrictions. It allows free conferences of up to 40 minutes and 100 participants. The user needs to pay extra to have longer conferences and include more users.
Paid stickers
People are ready to pay if they find any features quite entertaining and creative to use. No one will say no to funny and unique stickers. Having such stickers in your app is highly recommended. Users will be happy to spend a few dollars if the stickers are of high quality and appealing in their design.
Technologies used in Video Chat App Development
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Cost Estimation to Develop Video Chat App
The cost of video chat app development involves various aspects. There is no one fixed rate for all. It totally depends on the features you choose to have in your app. The more features, the more technologies is qual to more development time you would need. It would cost around $80,000 approximately to own a video chat app. However, you can easily monetize provided your app has all the needed features and appealing design to attract the audience.
Final Words
Video chat app enables effective and engaging communication, whether it is for personal or business purposes. It saves your travel time, increases productivity, and enables face-to-face communication anytime. In the technology-driven world, Video chat apps are always in demand. People choose comfort and time over anything else. Video chat apps come in handy to give prompt solutions to people in this fast-paced world.
At Cypherox technologies, we have an exclusive techie team to build personalized video chat apps as per client requirements. Contact us for further queries. Our support team will be happy to assist you.
