It is amazing how the evolution of technology has affected our social interactions. Nowadays, people would rather speak to friends and family over the phone or through a messaging app than have a face-to-face conversation. This has led to increasing popularity of messaging apps like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Viber, and SnapChat. Although there are a lot of messaging apps around, there is still a lot of potential in the market for new business owners.
WhatsApp is the biggest messaging app around with close to a billion users sending over 30 billion messages every day. However, the messaging app industry still has a vast amount of room for more investors. You can turn your business idea into a success by building an app like WhatsApp and putting it in the market, preferably with some unique features.

Before we go into how you can create your app, let us look at some essential features your app should have:

Using a QuickType feature makes typing a message easier for your users. Everyone wants to do things in the most natural way possible and providing the means will attract users to your app.

Emojis have come to stay in this age of online social interactions. Emojis add life and fun to a chat, and the new predictive emoji input has made its use more pronounced. Therefore, if you want to keep your customers, you should add an emoji to your messaging app.

Multimedia sharing should not be ignored, as most social media apps base their success on multimedia sharing. The prospect of sharing of multimedia files alone can attract a good number of users to your app.

Now, what does it take to create a messaging app like WhatsApp? Let’s look at basic, essential features.

Registration Page and Contact Integration
The first thing a user is required to do on a chat app is to sign in with their phone number. Then make sure contacts from their address book are added, as the more contacts a user has, the more they will use your app. Adding an option for users to customize their profile also gives them something to play around with, which adds to the appeal of your app. However, this option adds to the cost of building the app.

Messaging
It goes without saying that users should be able to exchange messages on your app. As simple as that may sound, there is a lot of little detail you must work into the app to achieve this. You need to think of other messaging features that give users a unique experience. For example, you can use the disappearing-message feature that deletes messages after they are read.

This is where the emojis come in, and you can use stickers that help users express emotions. Other features you may consider are the group chat and private chat, though, they add to the cost of building the app.

Notifications
It is important that your users be notified of new messages on your app. Therefore, you need to incorporate this feature into the app in its development stage. The regular reminder of new messages increases the use of your app as it helps to keep a chat going. You should also provide the option of muting or shutting off the notification, as some users may not want this feature. You can use Apple Push Notification and Google Cloud Messaging for this feature.

Media File Transmission
This feature is a significant determinant of how user-friendly your chat app is. If you want to create a messaging app like WhatsApp, you must go beyond emojis and texts to allow your users to share photos, gifs, stickers, and so on. There is no doubt about how compelling a picture can be in a real-time chat. You can even spice things up by including the option of adding text to the photos. Pretty cool right? Another smart idea is to synchronize the chat with cloud services.
Other Essential Features

Many other features will make your app more attractive to potential users. You can add a few important ones at first then add others as your business grows. Some of these features are video chats, voice calls, in-app purchase and subscription, event planning and calendar.

How Much Does it Cost to Build a Messaging App like WhatsApp?
A number of things influence the cost of an app like WhatsApp. The most significant factor is the amount of functions you want to be included in the app. The more features your app will have, the more the cost of building the app. You should bear in mind that the team handling the development of your app would determine the quality of your app.

If you are thinking of building an app like WhatsApp and you need a team that will handle the project to give you a top quality app. You can review our blog post here, which highlights how to hire an app developer - https://www.gomeeki.com/hire-an-app-developer/