The pandemic situation worldwide has revolutionized the way businesses are conducted. The shift towards virtual business operations is accelerating every passing day. Given the present digital age, strong communication capabilities are the key to winning clients. With messaging platforms and chat applications gaining importance at a rapid pace, businesses are focusing on messaging systems more than ever. Are you planning to create a chat feature or integrate chat features into your website or app? In this article, we shall discuss whether using chat SDK is better than building a chat feature or not. Read on.
What is a Chat SDK & Benefits?
Building a chat app feature from scratch requires a large chunk of your time and resources. But in such circumstances, chat SDKs have got your back. SDK stands for the software development kit. It helps you integrate advanced chat features into your business website or application. Basically, it provides you with all essential components such as instant messaging, file sharing, and others that you might require to build a chat app for Android, iOS, or website. You should definitely use a chat SDK if you wish to save time on creating app features.
Let’s take a closer look at the advantages of utilizing chat SDKs for your chat platform:
- Get personalized templates and layouts according to your customers’ requirements. Avail separate chat templates for communication within the team and tweak other templates for customer interactions.
- Access both free and premium plugins to enhance the chatting experience. Integrate them into your web or application without any hassles.
- Gain multiple participation for better collaboration. Multiple user participation enables you to interact with a broader audience and helps expand your business reach. It also helps you collaborate with your team better.
- Save time and costs on hiring experts for building chat features and many more.
Few points use before making choice between SDK & building a chat app from scratch
Before you choose your preference, it is important to assess certain factors such as business goals, audience base, and others. Let one by one dig deep into them.
1) Comprehend and visualize your goals in-depth
Before proceeding with your final decision, it is crucial to understand the goal of your chat application. Now, chat platforms have different purposes such as fulfilling customer requirements, team collaboration, business announcements, and many others. If it is for enhancing customer satisfaction and expanding business reach, you might need advanced features. And, you can easily access those functionalities via a chat SDK for a quick communication set up with your customers. On the other hand, if you have a team ready to work on your chat app, you might consider investing time in building an efficient chat app platform for your business. Hence, it is essential to examine your goals before making your choice.
2) Study your audience reach
Assessing your client base is very important before moving ahead with your decision. Examine whether you want to develop your chat platform for a bigger or smaller audience. Chalk out your requirements accordingly. Generally, for a larger customer base, it is advised to go with chat SDK as you get all your favorite advanced features at one time and you can start customer engagement at the earliest. However, you can invest efforts in building the app features if you have extra time and a small audience base. You get more liberty to experiment with your strategies and personalize the customer experience.
3) Map out your required additional features
Make a list of your feature requirements, be it media sharing, multiple user functions, video conferencing, and others. It helps you build a strong foundation for your chat development layout. This way, you can develop accurate chat features for your chat platform. However, you can always opt for chat SDK if you want a cheaper alternative for enhancing your communication platform. Chat SDKs have most of the modern communication functions and are usually easy to integrate.
How is Building a Chat App Different from using a Chat SDK?
As discussed earlier, building a real-time chat application may consume a longer period of time and extra resources. Moreover, you also need efficient programming knowledge to build a well-structured chat app.
On the other hand, leveraging chat SDKs is highly cost-effective. Also, chat SDKs have multiple preconfigured functions that can be easily integrated into your chat system. You can get customized chat solutions according to your business requirements. The best part is that all setups can be performed only within a few hours.
Using SDK for building your chat app for iOS, Android, or website – Wise or not?
Of course, you can utilize chat SDKs for your chat app development. There’s no denying the fact that a chat SDK makes things easier for you. You can easily build a chat app via quick SDK integration. You can also combine the preconfigured components to craft your unique chat feature. Using chat SDK releases you from the burden of comprehending several lines of code and enables you to create your chat platform real quick.
Is chat SDK helpful in building the best chat app for websites, iOS, & Android?
When it comes to deciding the usefulness of chat SDKs, there are different perspectives attached to it. To some people, SDKs seem to be highly useful. For instance, business owners who want quick chat communication solutions for their business or developers who are not that experienced in a programming language. Chat SDKs help them combine all pre-configuration quickly and initiate their chat platform.
On the other hand, professional programmers would avoid using chat SDKs. They might be more interested in the final product or output rather than just combining configurations together.
Can you leverage chat SDK proficiently? – Know here
One of the best things about chat SDKs is that they can be used by anyone because of their easy-to-integrate advantage. All chat features are well-structured, organized, and categorized. Chat SDKs also come with detailed documentation with instructions to implement the chat features into your chat platform. Some features are easy to comprehend while some might need more learning time.
Also, chat SDKs work seamlessly on all kinds of devices. This is another factor that makes a chat SDK easy to use for anyone. Hence, if you want to streamline your business communication real quick, go with integrating chat SDK into your chat platform.
Make way for quick chat feature development with Chat SDK
Save your time and resources by implementing chat SDK for your chat application. Get the best advanced chat features integrated into your chat system real fast and without any hassles. We hope our article helped you comprehend the difference between using a chat SDK and building chat features from scratch.
Good luck with the leveling up of your communication strategies via chat platform development!