10 Best In-App Chat APIs and SDKs Worth Trying in 2023

Most active customers today look for secure and user-friendly chat features in every app they use. They seek to communicate with advanced functionalities whenever they send text messages, make voice calls and do video conferencing. To build these features within an app, a developer is subjected to spend a fortune and commit a great deal of time. 

However, several solution providers have risen over time to fix the problems in developing advanced communication features within apps. Developers from giant organizations have chosen to integrate chat APIs and SDKs to add in-app features and functionalities offered by world-class chat API providers. 

To make things easy for you, we have compiled below an assorted list of Chat SDK providers that may help you build apps with best communication solutions that your customers will love!

The Need for In-app Chat APIs and SDKs

Firstly, to build a leading app in a competitive market, you’ll need to develop features that can meet the changing requirements of your users,  just right on time. At this situation, you may be left with 2 choices:

1. To keep writing codes for each feature in your app-building pipeline while taking care of your business priorities in parallel
   (or)
2. To be a step ahead of your competitors in releasing your enhanced app with instant, safe and advanced messaging API integrations.

Several smart Businesses have adopted the latter and have become pioneers in delivering one-of-a-kind apps to their customers. Therefore, it is evident that choosing to integrate APIs and SDKs might save a lot of time, energy and effort to build a top-notch app for your customers.

Secondly, Customers’ expectations are rising over time for a convenient user experience. As the saying goes, ‘Customer is the King’, it would be righteous enough to focus on what exactly the user needs from your app within a time-frame. This demand to connect users within an application leverages companies with high user engagement and retention.

More than 28% of revenue growth was witnessed by 40% of companies within one financial year, as a direct result of API integration.

A report by Mulesoft (2022) testifies

With plenty of API and SDK providers spread across the internet, choosing the right one who can meet your requirements can be a real challenge. That’s why we step in, to get you a full span coverage of the top chat API service providers worth trying this year.

List of Top In-app Chat API and SDK providers for Web & Mobile Apps

1. MirrorFly

MirrorFly is a market leader in providing the best in-app Chat SDK in the industry. It offers both on-cloud and on-premise hosting that increases the flexibility of app control for developers.

Here are the highlights of MirrorFly’s cloud and self-managed solutions:

MirrorFly – Cloud-based Solution

MirrorFly is popularly known for providing high-end chat features and fastest average response time in the market. With its cloud-solution, you can avail their feature-rich chat SDKs for a monthly subscription along with hosting on their dedicated cloud servers.

With MirrorFly’s cloud-based solution, you can avail the following benefits:

• Fully Free chat SDKs
• Dedicated Cloud Servers
• Voice and video call SDKs for 21-day FREE trial
• Multi-tenant Chat Architecture

MirrorFly -Self-hosted Solution

For developers looking for 100% customizable chat solutions, MirrorFly’s self-hosted solution offers a variety of benefits. From taking full ownership of the chat features to hosting on your own premise, MirroFly ensures your user’s data and conversation and data are completely under you control.

With MirrorFly’s self-hosted solution, you can avail the following benefits:

• 100% customizable in-app chat SDKs
• White-label solution
• One-time cost for SDK license
• On-premise hosting

Key Chat Features of MirrorFly

Communication

• Direct and Group chat features
• File sharing

Scalability

• 99.999% Uptime SLA
• 100ms Avg API Response

Data Channels

• Private Channel
• Public Channel

Security

• Advanced Encryption Standard 
• End-to-End Encryption
• GDPR & HIPAA Compatibility
• Chat Moderation

UI Kits:

• Components to build an interactive and user-friendly app interface

Hosting

• On-premise/ Self-hosting solution (SaaP)
• Dedicated cloud hosting (SaaS)

Pricing

• One-time License Cost (SaaP)
• Monthly subscription (SaaS)

2. Apphitect

Apphitect is infamously known for its cross-platform APIs and SDKs offering features that helps Developers build a complete chat application. This in-app chat solution provider helps businesses build apps with enhanced cloud, social and analytical solutions.

Key Chat Features of Apphitect

Channels:

• One-to-one Chat
• Group Chat

Chat Essentials

• File Transfer
• Spell Check
• Cross Platform Messaging
• Smart Response
• Language Translation
• Multi Party Conferencing
• Screen Sharing
• White Board
• Backup & Storage

Hosting

• On-cloud
• On-premises

Pricing

• One-time payment

3. Cometchat

ComeChat delivers interactive communication solutions like in-app text messaging, voice and video call solutions to business applications and websites. It is considered as one of the budget-friendly API and SDK providers in the market.

Key Chat Features of Cometchat

Chat Essentials:

• Single Sign-On (SSO)
• 1-on-1 Private Chat
• Group Conversations
• Threaded Conversations
• Document and Media Sharing
• Custom Structured Messages
• Tagging & Search

Indicators:

• Unread messages and Counts
• Online Presence Indicators
• Typing Indicators & Read receipts

Moderations:

• AI Moderation
• Human Moderation
• Rule-based Moderation
• Group based Moderation

Extended Functionality:

• Webhooks
• Bots

4. TalkJS

TalkJS adds user-to-user chat features inside your app. The design and features offered by TalkJS are said to be compatible with any architectural framework making in-app development more easy and fast.

Key Chat Features of TalkJS

Chat Essentials:

• Channels, Groups & Topics
• In-conversation search
• Real-time translation
• Conversation history
• File sharing
• Location sharing
• Text formatting
• Emojis

Indicators:

• Typing & read indicators
• Online presence indicators
• Unread messages badge

UI Components

• Chat Popup, Chatbox and inbox UI
• Cross Device UI
• Cross Browser UX
• Multi language UI

Moderations:

• Mask Contact Information
• Word Blacklist
• Activities and Analytics Dashboard

5. Mesibo

Mesibo is a cloud communication platform that lets you add rich messaging features to your application. It allows you to build real-time messaging with ease and high chat security that can connect users over any device and across different locations.

Key Chat Features of Mesibo

Chat Essentials

• One-to-one Messaging
• Group Messaging

Hosting

• Cloud Hosting
• On-Premise Deployment
• Open Source

Popular Platforms

• Kotlin
• Java
• Objective-C
• Javascript
• Python

Other Technologies:

• Scientific computing 
• Machine learning systems 

6. PubNub

PubNub is an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) company well-known for providing APIs and SDKs for business communications. This provider builds APIs and SDKs that are compatible with mobile platforms, real-time chat apps and IoT applications.

Key Chat Features of PubNub

Chat Essentials:

• Unread message counts
• Update message
• File and image sharing
• Giphy
• Message reactions
• Mentions

Indicators

• Push notifications
• Typing indicators
• Delivery and read receipts
• User presence indicators

Moderations

• Spam prevention
• Profanity filters
• Mute/Ban users
• Access controls
• Delete messages

7. Chat SDK

Chat SDK offers developers an open-source framework where they can integrate communications APIs to their apps with Android, iOS or web compatibility and flexibility. They provide demo apps that lets developers check unique feature integration opportunities and performance.

Key Chat Features of Chat SDK

Channels

• Private Chats
• Group Chats
• Public Rooms

Flexibilities

• Login
• Search
• Full Source Code

Other Essentials

• Cross Platform Functionality
• Push Notifications
• Multiple Message Types
• User Profiles
• Scalability
• Message History

8. ChatCamp

ChatCamp makes real-time messaging more feasible for development with their multi-platform native chat SDKs and chat APIs. It helps developers integrate an advanced in-app infrastructure in simple steps of integration.

Key Chat Features of ChatCamp

Channels

• Direct Channels
• Open Channels
• Group Channels

Other Essentials

• Push Notifications
• Bot Messaging
• Chat Archiving

Indicators

• Typing Indicators
• Read Receipts
• Online Presence

Access Control and Moderation

• User Roles
• Profanity Control
• User Moderation

9. Quickblox

This HIPAA compliant API and SDK provider supports chat features that can be used across different verticals in varied industries. The integrations add essential chat features that are compatible across Android, iOS and web applications.

Key Chat Features of QuickBlox

Channels

• One-to-one Chat
• Private group Chat
• Public Group Chat

Privacy and Security

• Chat moderation tools
• End‑to‑end encryption

Indicators

• Read Receipts 
• Delivery receipts
• Typing indicators
• Presence

Other Essentials

• Chatbot Integration
• Multimedia Sharing
• Message History
• Offline messages
• Extended messaging

10. Sendbird

Founded in 2013, SendBird has emerged as one of the trustworthy chat API providers in the market. Their chat features cover everything needed to build a healthy in-app communication infrastructure. SendBird is one of the reliable providers especially for startup businesses.

Key Chat Features of Sendbird

Channels

• Private Chats
• Group chats
• Message Broadcasts

Other Essentials

• Broadcasting Message
• Secure Document Sharing
• Screen-sharing
• Cross-platform messaging across Web, iOS and Android. 

Privacy and Security

• End-to-end encryption 
• Multiple authentication levels

Verticals that use in-app chat integrations

Several verticals across industries have adapted to in-app communication to make user experience better.

Here are a few industries that are enjoying the benefits of chat API integration over the years.

1. Entertainment and Social Messaging Apps

In-app messaging has revolutionized the entertainment industry by bringing together audiences with similar interests and enabling interactions between them. Social messaging apps and Entertainment apps like OTT and video streaming apps enable users to comment or react with emojis during a live streaming or a match. One can express opinions on a movie, argue or debate on a topic inside the app. This energizes the activity of customers within applications, bringing more interactions and ensuring user-retention.

2. Gaming

Gaming has widely become popular among the younger generation in recent years. Several games these days include multiplayer options where they can play as teams towards achieving a target. For these occasions the gaming developers provide in-app chat features where the players can communicate within themselves via text messages or voice messages and oppose a different team who are connected as a separate group. This increases the curiosity of players to interact more with the game resulting in hours of user attention to the app.

3. Online Shopping apps

Giants in the B2B industries that connect buyers and sellers look to keep conversations among the stakeholders within their app. Thereby developers ensure building a more interactive chat infrastructure that enables exploring, making queries, placing requests and complaints directly to the authentic personnels of the brand. This cut off the need to move out of the app in order to communicate with the brand for their requirements. This makes in-app APIs an all-in-one package for the entire communication span.

4. Payment & Ticketing

Popular brands enable customers to book tickets and make payments for any of their essentials by just a click of a button in their in-app chat. They provide a vast range of options to communicate and interact within the app to fulfill almost all their needs like discovering transportation options, checking prices, receiving offer notifications, making payments for bills, booking tickets and getting instant updates via push notifications.

Checklist to choose the best in-app Chat API

If you’ve made up your mind to select API integration as your next step in building your app, check on these feature availability from the providers of your choice. Choose a provider who can deliver almost all these features for you, so you will not miss out on building an app with the necessary features your users might need.

• Direct Messaging
• Group Messaging
• Chat history
• End-to-End Encryption
• Privacy Controls
• Compliances like GDPR and HIPAA
• Push notifications
• Compatibility with platforms like iOS, Android,JavaScript, and .Net
• File & custom-data transfers
• Chat data analytics
• Webhooks
• Read receipts
• Delivery status 
• Moderation filters to rule out profanity
• Data Storage
• Voice Messages
• Chat Rooms
• Desktop Notifications
• Presence indicators

Conclusion

Making the right pitch on the user requirement to achieve their satisfied and connected experience speaks about a brand’s success. As a developer building such a brand, it is necessary to deliver users the right features at the right moment. We bid our bye with the recommendation to get more into the details of building the best chat infrastructures and select the best in-app chat API provider that hits the bottomline of your app’s success.